AUSTIN -- Austin City Council unanimously approved $35.5 million to buy and demolish 140 homes in the Onion Creek floodplain.
The money will come from $9.20 drainage fee already charged on Austinites' utility bills.
After last year's Halloween floods, the city put together nearly $20 million to buy out 116 homes.
90 have been purchased so far.
The federal government has offered nearly $12 million to the city and Travis County, but that money won't come through until later this summer.
After the flood in 1998, 926 homes needed to be bought out. 625 of those homes were in the 25-year floodplain. 229 were in the 100-year floodplain, and 72 were in Williamson Creek.
Before the Halloween floods last year, the city bought 323 homes.
