Overall Strategies for Flood Recovery and Resilience—Part 1
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The 2011 flooding in Vermont damaged more than 500 miles of roadways and about 200 bridges; released hazardous wastes into water, sediment, and soil; caused wastewater treatment plants to overflow; and damaged agricultural crops and buildings. The damage to roads and bridges alone was estimated at $175 to $250 million. In its wake, however, the state and federal government undertook a comprehensive study of the many factors contributing to the event, and recently published recommendations that can benefit communities nationwide.
In its report, Planning for Flood Recovery and Long-Term Resilience in Vermont, the EPA provides four overall strategies. The first is to update and integrate comprehensive land-use plans and Hazard Mitigation Plans. According to the report, many local governments have adopted comprehensive land-use plans to guide decision making and development for the future, and many also have Hazard Mitigation Plans to help plan for and reduce or eliminate flooding risks. While both are important, the EPA notes that the two different plans are often not integrated and, as a result, “might inadvertently work at cross purposes.”
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For example, as stand-alone plans, a comprehensive plan may identify future growth in areas that a Hazard Mitigation Plan may deem a future flood hazard area. Conversely, a Hazard Mitigation Plan might recommend hazard mitigation activities in an area that the comprehensive plan has assessed for other purposes. As a result, the report recommends the two plans be integrated to ensure coordinated implementation of both. To do this, the EPA suggests the planners and others involved in the comprehensive plan also help develop the Hazard Mitigation Plan and emergency managers and that others involved in the Hazard Mitigation Plan also take part in the comprehensive plan process.
The second overall strategy is to conduct thorough policy and regulatory audits that include local comprehensive plans and Hazard Mitigation Plans, zoning and subdivision ordinances (including floodplain development standards), stormwater management ordinances, building codes, and regional plans.
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The expert team from EPA and FEMA initially organized the assessment according to three categories that represented the possible options communities typically use to guide safe growth:
- Protect undeveloped river corridors, including vulnerable areas, such as floodplains and wetlands along waterways, from incompatible development.
- Protect people, buildings, and facilities in already-developed, vulnerable areas.
- Encourage new development in safer areas.
The team also identified specific policies, regulations, and nonregulatory approaches used successfully elsewhere to see if they had been implemented. For example, in the category of protecting people and buildings in already-built vulnerable areas, the team looked at whether current zoning ordinances were sufficient to protect structures that are rebuilt. From this assessment, a list of flood-resilience policy options and implementation tools was developed for discussion by all stakeholders. Following the public input sessions, the team devised a checklist of policy options, based on the original three categories.
In addition to the local regulatory analysis, a state policy assessment was also undertaken that included:
- Analysis of state policies from a flood resilience perspective. This included policies from multiple state agencies and assessed those policies in terms of their ability to encourage flood resilience at the local level.
- Participation in a site visit to the Mad River Valley where the worst flooding occurred.
- Draft, review, and finalized policy options for state-level organizations.