The YMCA of Greater Houston’s Camp Cullen was among more than 200 camps as of Friday still waiting for state health officials to renew their license ahead of the 2026 camp season. The camp has spent tens of thousands to update its emergency resources in response to new rules put in place after last year’s deadly July 4 floods.
Courtesy of YMCA of Greater Houston
Campers are set to arrive at the Houston YMCA’s Camp Cullen in less than a month, but the camp still doesn’t know if it will be able to reopen — one of hundreds across the state with pending licenses as summer camp season rapidly approaches.
The camp north of Lake Livingston spent nearly $50,000 on safety upgrades mandated by new state laws passed in response to last year’s July 4 floods, which killed more than 130 people, including 27 girls and counselors at Camp Mystic.
READ MORE: Camp Mystic failed to train teenage counselors for floods, expert tells lawmakers
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Camp Cullen, unlike Camp Mystic, isn’t in a flood plain. But it was still pushed to build a new public address system and install lighting and signs along evacuation routes. It laid down costly new fiber-optic cables. And it spent $10,300 on the state’s new licensing fee, up from $450 the year before.
Bobby Thomas, the camp’s director, thought the license renewal process would be easy given all the upgrades. Instead, the state has twice sent back the application, requesting minor fixes that Thomas described as “busy work.” Those included adding a screenshot of the Federal Emergency Management Agency website showing that the camp is not in a flood zone and copying and pasting the camp’s evacuation plans to a series of emergency scenarios, even though the plans were the same in each case, and though some of the cases didn’t apply to his camp.
Thomas submitted those fixes in mid-April. As of last week, staffers were beginning to arrive and Thomas still did not know if the camp would be open when campers show up on June 7. Even if the paperwork goes through, the state still needs to do a site visit before issuing the license.
“We’re just kind of sitting on our hands now,” Thomas said. “I know there’s a lot of frustration now from the camp side and probably from some families too. I’m just really nervous that I’m going to have to tell a couple hundred kids we can’t do summer camp the first week.”
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Hundreds of summer camps are facing the same uncertainty. The state was still weighing licenses for 245 camps — roughly 75% of those that have applied — as of Friday, according to the latest available data from the Department of State Health Services, which oversees camp licensing.
The situation has left state leaders scrambling to ensure the new camp safety laws passed swiftly last summer do not inadvertently shutter hundreds of camps.
The agency last week essentially waived a requirement written into the laws that camps install fiber-optic cables, like the ones Camp Cullen did, to ensure internet access in emergencies, saying it would not deny licenses to camps that have another form of backup internet. That came after Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Dustin Burrows issued a statement saying other means of ensuring backup internet “would satisfy the purpose and spirit of the law.”
And now the health agency has started telling camps with pending licenses that they can operate as long as they applied before their current license expired. Even those that have their licenses denied or suspended by the state can stay open if they appeal the decision under a lengthy appeals process.
“While that is going on, the camp can continue to operate under the license that they had when they submitted their renewal application,” said Lara Anton, a spokeswoman for the state health agency. “The hearings process will likely take several months to complete.”
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The rocky rollout of the new safety requirements underscores what critics say are clear flaws in the new laws. And the authors of the laws have indicated the Legislature will need to act to fix them when lawmakers return to Austin next year.
The lengthy appeals process would appear to allow virtually any camp to operate this summer, even if they do not meet the new rules, which were designed to prevent another crisis like Camp Mystic, where camp operators and staff have acknowledged they missed official flood warnings, lacked a detailed evacuation plan and waited too long to try to get the children out. Camp Mystic initially applied for a new license to reopen this summer, but withdrew its application last month.
State Rep. Drew Darby, a San Angelo Republican who authored one of the laws, told health agency officials last month that he disagreed with their interpretation of his bill. He said the law directs the agency to revoke licenses in specific cases, such as if a camp does not have an evacuation plan. Those camps should not be able to draw out a decision with an appeal, he said.
“The legislature acted with specific intent to establish non-negotiable safety standards, eliminate agency discretion and ensure no procedural mechanism could be used to keep a dangerous camp operating,” Darby said during a hearing. “These bills exist because children died.”
State Rep. Wes Virdell, a Republican whose district includes Kerrville and many of the camps ravaged by last year’s floods, said in an interview that state leaders and the health agency appear to be “trying to find ways to circumvent the law to fix the mistakes that the Legislature made.”
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Virdell opposed the laws, which he said were well-intentioned but would create major operational and financial hurdles for camps. Virdell said he has heard from many of them that are in the same situation now as Camp Cullen. He has called for Gov. Greg Abbott to bring lawmakers back for a special session this year, but acknowledged that is unlikely to happen.
“I’m frustrated that we could have fixed it before,” he said. “I think the people of Texas deserve better than what we gave them.”
This article contains material from the Associated Press.