The rains were going to come eventually. It was only a matter of when, and how bad.

With flooding from Tropical Storm Harvey still inundating Houston — exacting a toll of 31 deaths and incalculable damage so far — the city is left asking what could have been done to prevent the extent of the catastrophe, or at least diminish its effects. One of the questions is why federal funding that should have been in place to help Houston deal with flood mitigation never arrived.

Houston and surrounding Harris County, in Texas, had many ambitious proposals for flood mitigation projects lined up, but couldn’t afford them. And, despite the efforts of one of the city’s congressional representatives, Capitol Hill declined to fund the cash-strapped local governments.

“We’ve gone at this from every angle we could,” said Rep. Al Green, a Democrat from Houston who sponsored a bill to fund various projects after the “Tax Day flood” of April 2016. “We were hoping to help mitigate flooding across the city. I don’t know if we’ll ever mitigate all of it, but we can mitigate some.”

After the Tax Day flood, which left 16 dead, Green introduced a bill to fund $311 million for the Harris County Flood Control District. That bill stalled out in the House Budget Appropriations Committee and never came up for a vote. (Committee Chair Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, R-N.J., did not return requests for comment.)

The federal funds provided in the bill could have jump-started flood mitigation projects in Houston that had already been approved by the Army Corps of Engineers. Those projects had languished for years, even decades, because the federal share of their budgets was never appropriated by Congress.

“What I can tell you is that if it would have allocated funds, we would have tried to use those to our best ability,” said Nicholas Laskowski, the Corps’ Galveston District project manager, who declined to comment specifically on Green’s legislation.

Eight active Harris County Flood Control District initiatives are dependent on federal funding. Seven of them are concentrated on the bayous in the city and county; the eighth is on the Clear Creek tributary near Galveston.

Houston’s rapid growth has meant water has fewer paths to escape the city, so many of the projects were aimed at widening bayous and relocating bridges. “When you can make the channels wider, you can improve hydraulic conductivity,” said Laskowski.

The projects are supposed to be directly undertaken by the local flood control authority. The Army Corps provides oversight and technical assistance. “They do the work, they do the design, we review,” said Laskowski.

Once the projects are completed, the Corps checks that the work has been done to the approved specifications. After the Corps signs off on it, the federal government’s appropriations for reimbursement kick in. Without those funds, the county can’t afford to take on the mammoth outlays.

Only two of the Flood Control District’s eight projects are near completion. The other six projects are either being reevaluated or stalled, because of grants drying up.

Green’s bill would have released all outstanding funding in one piece to allow the projects to proceed all at once instead of piecemeal. By 2026, any unspent funds would have gone back to federal coffers.

“We tried to stick with projects that were approved,” said Green, “and that, if funded, would make a difference.”

The money, however, never came. “Congress was in an austerity mode, and we could not get the votes necessary to get [the bill] to the floor,” said Green, who tried other approaches, such as allocating the funds in a rider amendment to a Republican-sponsored energy and water development bill that failed on procedural grounds.

“Obviously if we had those kind of protections, we wouldn’t have had as many problems” with Harvey, Al Green’s House colleague Houston Democrat Gene Green (no relation) told The Intercept.