Planning for flooding and stormwater challenges can feel like a lot to take on. Communities need to consider existing infrastructure, future needs, project costs, and available funding. Figuring out how those pieces fit together isn’t always straightforward.
In this video, three ms water resources experts—Anil Tangirala (Director for Water Resources), Chad Boyer (Practice Area Leader for Water Resources), and Kari Mackenbach (Vice President of Water)—share their perspectives on how communities can approach resiliency planning. They talk about the issues communities may face and how taking it step by step can help them move forward.
Q1: What do we really mean when we talk about the Roadmap to Resiliency™?
Kari: We’re talking about simple steps a community can take to become more resilient. The intent of Roadmap to Resiliency™ isn’t to make things more complicated. It’s a simple way to look at where you are today in your resiliency strategy and where you want to be in the future.
Q2: Can communities continue to grow and become resilient at the same time?
Kari: Yes. It starts with knowing what you want your community to look like in the future. What does that 20-year outlook look like? Many communities already have comprehensive plans and other tools they can use. We’re trying to leverage those existing resources to help communities develop a more strategic and thoughtful process for becoming more resilient.
Anil, you recently mentioned a statistic that I just can’t get out of my mind. You said that in the state of Ohio, we have had four 1,000-year events in the last decade.
Q3: What is the biggest challenge or surprise communities face when they start reviewing their stormwater infrastructure and regulations?
Anil: One of the biggest hurdles is realizing that stormwater infrastructure designed a decade ago is no longer enough for today’s conditions. We don’t have the capacity in our storm system to handle the same storm we handled 10 years ago. Communities are struggling to understand why they are flooding. They’re asking, “Why is this happening?”
We know that rainfall intensities have been increasing. We’re seeing more cloudburst events, and these events are occurring more frequently. Communities are trying to understand what that means for their stormwater infrastructure.
Having a plan helps communities get ahead of those challenges by understanding their current level of service and how that level of service can be improved. That will look different for every community.
Emergency preparedness is another important piece. Communities often react after a major rainstorm, but they may not know where their safe routes are. Can they get their law enforcement personnel to those low-lying areas that really get hit by flooding? Do they know which of their structures are most at risk? Developing a plan helps answer those questions ahead of time and provides a clearer path forward.
Chad: When communities get started in the process, it can feel very daunting. It can seem like one big master plan that community leaders have to tackle all at once. The trick is to break that master plan, or Roadmap to ResiliencyTM, into smaller, manageable pieces that communities can address proactively rather than reacting after a storm.
The only time some communities think about flooding or stormwater management is when they’ve had a recent event, which is happening more frequently here in Ohio. Their constituents come to them after the rain event and say, “My house flooded. What are you going to do about it?” If the community has already started their Roadmap to ResiliencyTM, they have a response plan and projects in the pipeline that can begin addressing those needs.
Anil: That also helps with cost, right? Communities face funding challenges, and phasing the work can make it easier to meet funding goals.
Chad: Absolutely. That roadmap can be spaced out over however many years the community needs. It could be 20 years; it could be 50 years. It gives communities the opportunity to determine their own schedule and priorities.
Q4: Can you share any examples of communities that have successfully become more resilient?
Chad: Some of the biggest impacts we’ve seen with a relatively small level of effort have come from regulatory changes.
Some of the communities we’ve worked with are future-proofing by increasing their design standards. It could be something as simple as increasing the design standard from a five-inch rainfall event to a six-inch rainfall event—a 20% increase. That relatively small change can have a large impact on managing flooding and stormwater. That’s a simple fix.
Other communities are addressing needs at the neighborhood level. They may evaluate stormwater runoff or flooding in a particular area and develop a phased storm sewer improvement plan over 10 or 15 years. That allows them to address flooding in a manageable way within the funding they have available each year.
Q5: What are the benefits of starting your resiliency plan now, and what does success look like?
Anil: A resiliency plan should focus on long-term implementation. When communities combine that plan with funding strategies, they can get ahead of issues by planning for them. That’s the biggest thing.
Another important part of resiliency is knowing what the critical structures are in your community. Where are those structures that flood often? How can you protect them when you know a storm is coming?
Chad: Some of the worst outcomes of these flooding scenarios happen when you evacuate part of a city to what you thought was a safe area, only to have that area flood as well.
We’ve seen that in places like North Carolina, Florida, Houston, and Ohio—where communities thought for sure, “Hey, this high school is safe.” And then you wind up having to evacuate the high school by boat because it started to flood, too.
Kari: A lot more places that aren’t designated as floodplains are flooding now. We’re seeing a paradigm shift in the way we get rainfall, the way it falls, the way it flows off, and what’s left behind afterward.
Q6: How can communities leverage their existing resources to begin their Roadmap to Resiliency™?
Kari: A lot of times, looking at the issues or the level of service in your community can be intimidating. And what we want to do is take that intimidation away.
You may already have a lot of the resources you need. There are comprehensive plans and hazard mitigation plans for counties and communities that are easily accessible. If your community is already an MS4 community, expects to become one, or is seeing dramatic growth, a lot of the work has already been done.
Chad: That would include things like the hazard mitigation plan you mentioned, past projects, future projects, planning-level documents, and even conversations you’ve had in the hallway with other city staff.
All of those things factor into that resiliency plan.
Anil: In addition, a lot of communities have used flood insurance rate maps and flood insurance studies. They’re getting older, but I think they certainly have a role.
And I would say land use plans. A lot of communities are looking at future land use right now, and that information can be used in hydraulic modeling to understand how future land use could impact flood mitigation solutions and what those impacts might look like.
Kari: In today’s state of flux, we really don’t know where the Federal Emergency Management Agency is going. Taking on some of that responsibility as a local community and coming up with your own plan means you’re not depending on something uncertain, and it gives you a comfort level in your strategy.
Chad: To your point about that uncertainty, being proactive as a local community allows you to govern what’s happening with the development and resiliency of your community, independent of what the state or federal government is managing.
Kari: The flood insurance rate maps that we use on a daily basis were never intended to be comprehensive floodplain management. That was never the intent.
And unfortunately, that’s what a lot of communities lean on, something that was designed to rate insurance. It’s not comprehensive floodplain management.
So one way to figure out how you can become more resilient is to look at what other communities of a similar size are doing. There’s a comfort level in that. Then, you just need that champion who wants to take the work forward.
Q7: What’s one piece of advice for communities just starting this roadmap?
Anil: Think big, but start small.
Developing a resiliency plan can involve a lot of elements, and it can be expensive when you’re trying to do everything at once. But if you break it down into phases, it helps you plan ahead, secure funding, and incorporate the work into other projects you’re already doing.
The key is to think big and start small.
Kari: Do it now.
Most of the communities we work with have stormwater regulations that are 50 years old, or 25 years old when they’re newer. And we’re wondering why we’re flooding more. We’re wondering why we have stormwater issues.
Take the step to resiliency with one first step.
Chad: I think, to wrap things up, it’s about leveraging what you’re already doing. Start small, start now, and start with what you’ve already got in the hopper.
Most communities across the country already have some form of engineering plan, CIP plan, watershed planning, or something else they’re working on.
Take that work and use it as the next step toward your resiliency plan. Partner with your emergency management departments, service departments, engineering departments, and economic development departments to come up with a comprehensive plan for your community.
Kari: Take ownership of your community and make that plan now.
Not sure which stormwater challenges to tackle first?
Our water resources team can help you leverage what you already have and identify the next step.