Envisioning a More Resilient Future

One reason I have long loved being an urban planner is that, ultimately, planning is about imagining a better future. Or should be, anyway. Although I was in my early thirties before I returned to school for a pair of graduate degrees in Urban and Regional Planning and Journalism (a very unusual combination, I soon learned), I was intrigued with the creative process as early as high school. At the time, I applied it mostly to writing, but I learned in college that creativity was valuable for just about any endeavor. Much later, I was enthralled when I read University of Chicago psychology professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s path-breaking 1990 book, Flow, a study of the creative process. By then, I was already in the throes of writing my own books and learning where my planning credentials could take me.

While most planners never write or publish books, we all are quite accustomed to producing plans, reports, and other documents for consumption by the public, public officials, and other decision makers. We learn how to present these materials and visualizations in public at meetings and hearings. Visual depictions, for example, of what a neighborhood not only is, but could become, are standard fare. Many of us learn to work with various kinds of visualization and design software that create renderings of future versions of boulevards and parks and other public spaces. What architects do for individual buildings, we try to do for entire neighborhoods and cities. In the process, we try to feed and amplify the public imagination for what could be, hoping to find options for improvement that will appeal to a public that may be looking for alternatives to an unsatisfactory or uninspiring status quo. Whole books and software programs, such as CommunityViz, have been devoted to sharing strategies with planners for accomplishing these visionary goals.

The written word and visualizations are two ways, often combined, for helping people see new possibilities or change the way they see the familiar. I have used them for decades, in evolving ways, to help people better understand my own planning specializations, hazard mitigation and disaster recovery. When a natural disaster such as a hurricane or earthquake has shaken a community’s assumptions about its own future, it can be time to think about rebuilding in a way that makes that community more resilient in the face of future events. I helped advance the idea of pre-disaster planning for post-disaster recovery, that is, thinking before a disaster even happens about what would expedite the recovery process and allow the community to emerge stronger and more prosperous than before. This has become known as finding the “silver lining” in the dark cloud of disaster recovery, building hope during a process that can take years or even decades in the most drastic situations.

Left to right, crew members Jim Schwab, David Taylor, and Kim Taylor Galway toast the film project at Royal Peacock, Sarasota, FL, June 18, 2023

Even when I left the American Planning Association (APA) at the end of May 2017, I largely envisioned a continuation of my hybrid journalistic and planning career in the form of books and teaching, for the most part, augmented by various consulting jobs. It was only after conversations with high school classmate David Taylor at the 50th reunion of our Brecksville, Ohio, Class of 1968 in June 2018 that another idea took shape. David, a Purple Heart Vietnam Veteran, had taken a very different path in life after recovering from war wounds, by becoming first a photographer, and later a videographer. After retiring from a marketing position with the U.S. Postal Service, he opened his own studio and has done film and photography work for veterans and environmental groups, as well as traditional assignments like weddings.

Dave had followed my career for decades, starting with the publication of my first book, Raising Less Corn and More Hell (University of Illinois Press), in 1988. As I grew into my role as a leader in hazards planning, he became fascinated with what planners do in that realm, regarding them as “unsung heroes” of the recovery process. Further conversations led to a visit to his home in Sarasota, Florida, in February 2019, which included a presentation at a Florida Atlantic University symposium in West Palm Beach, and eventually that fall into the idea of producing a video documentary about the role of planning in helping communities address threats from natural disasters and climate change. As chair-elect at the time of the APA Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Planning Division (HMDR), I took that idea to the executive committee, and they chose to sponsor the project.

Devastation from Hurricane Michael, October 2018. Photo by David Taylor

Thus began, for me, a new way of thinking about how to engage the public on these issues. I had no experience with film as a vehicle for this process, except as a viewer, but the idea captured my imagination. What can one do with film that would be different from the written word? As the script writer, how would I think about the narrative differently? Moving out of my comfort zone forced me to think even more creatively than usual, but I welcomed the experience because I sensed that it might give us a new way to capture people’s emotions and imagination around an idea whose time was overdue. The United States, and the world, were suffering ever more massive losses from natural disasters, in part as a result of climate change, and needed new ways to approach the problem. Maybe the kinetic visual impact of a film could help affect that, if crafted with the right forward-looking perspectives in mind.

It would not be easy, and I readily understood that. Moreover, the first question was how to pay for the project. Movies are inherently more expensive to produce than books, and involve at least as much work in most ways. But if we could pull this off . . . .

Fortunately, incoming chair-elect Stacy Wright was able to arrange a $5,000 donation from Atkins, a consulting firm, to start the ball rolling in the fall of 2019. I became chair of HMDR on January 1, 2020, but the COVID pandemic intervened within weeks and by March 2020, we had to shut the project down and wait for the best. It was the fall of 2021 before we were again able to move forward. We created a Video Project Advisory Committee to provide guidance on the project. It consists of leading voices in the hazards planning subfield. We also began to assemble teams of regional volunteers who could assist us with logistics and recommend leading planners for interviews and advice.

We chose to name the film Planning to Turn the Tide because of the metaphorical implications of seeking to reverse the growing tide of losses of life and property from natural and other disasters. Well aware of the impacts and trends of climate change, we know that the number and costs of America’s billion-dollar disasters has risen rapidly in recent decades. We also know that planning can make a difference.

Outdoor interview with Julie Dennis, owner of OVID Solutions (also a member of Video Project Advisory Committee) in Blountstown, Florida, July 2022. Holding camera is Kim Taylor Galway; to her left is videographer David Taylor.

In the meantime, we raised additional donations from other consulting firms* and won two small grants from the APA Divisions Council to help us get started. We announced our project in May 2022 at the APA National Planning Conference in San Diego and recorded interviews with leading hazards professionals at the Association of State Floodplain Managers annual conference two weeks later in Orlando. By mid-July, we had recorded 14 more interviews in the Florida Panhandle, mostly in Panama City, following the area’s recovery four years after Hurricane Michael struck as the first Category 5 storm to reach the U.S. mainland since Hurricane Andrew in 1992. In that visit, we had extensive support from both City Hall in Panama City and the Bay County Chamber of Commerce, which provided its board room for a recording studio for an entire day.

Local entrepreneur Allan Branch explains his restoration efforts at History Class Brewing in downtown Panama City, July 2022

By then, our main problem was that we needed an easy way for people interested in supporting the project to make donations. Fundraising can be hard work, but there is little reason these days to make it harder than it needs to be. APA worked with us over subsequent months to create a dedicated donations page where people could donate online. Because we were the first division in APA’s history to attempt a project like this, we were also the first to need such a mechanism, but by late March of this year, it was ready. The donations page, which you can also reach with the QR code below, channels donations directly to HMDR and tracks the donor information for us, so that we can recognize our supporters appropriately (unless they choose to be anonymous). You can help keep this project moving ahead by donating now, and I sincerely hope you choose to do so. You will be helping us sell the concept of resilient communities to America.

If you need more information on the project itself, visit our project information page. I will be adding new posts regularly as we continue our work, including short blog videos summarizing what we are doing along the way. Please stay in touch.

Jim Schwab

*Early Supporters:

Atkins

APA Divisions Council

Michael Baker International

JEO Consulting

Association of State Floodplain Managers (in-kind donation)

Jim Schwab Consulting LLC

OVID Solutions

Richard Roths, AICP

Clarion Associates

Punchard Consulting

 

Catch Up and Slow Down

I was lying half awake in bed at 4 a.m., unable to return completely to sleep after using the bathroom. My mind kept rolling over various competing obligations and necessities, and the thought hit me:

“You must catch up while slowing down.”

Frankly, that made about as much sense to me in the moment as it probably does to you upon reading it. One’s subconscious mind can shed strange light sometimes. The whole idea is as paradoxical as it is imperative. And yet, I mention it because I strongly suspect that many people can relate to it at some level.

We get caught in situations. Mine is partial explanation of why it has been weeks since I last posted on this blog, but that is a minor measure of the overall impact of a combined events and circumstances. As a professional urban planner, I can state flatly that life does not always follow our plans. It springs surprises and throws nasty curveballs.

Work piles up, even if much of it, in my case at the moment, is pro bono or volunteer work. The thought that I am sharing occurred last weekend, and I wrote the first four paragraphs above that morning. I got sidetracked until now, but there’s no better time to finish a blog post than now–I guess.

Let’s go back almost two months. On April Fool’s Day, aka April 1, I flew with my wife (Jean) and a teenage grandson (Alex) to Philadelphia to attend the American Planning Association’s National Planning Conference. This was important to me on several levels, including my role as immediate past chair of the APA Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Planning Division, which keeps me on the Executive Committee until the end of this year. Even then, I will still be involved, primarily in charge of a documentary film project, but I will save that topic for my next blog post. You can see the work piling up already. Being there allowed me to network with numerous people about numerous issues and projects and attend our division reception, where we announced a fundraising campaign to support the film project. Over breakfast, it gave one colleague from APA’s International Division an opportunity to recruit me for its Ukraine Rebuilding Action Group. But it was also a chance, during spring break for the Chicago Public Schools, to tour parts of a historic city with Alex and Jean.

A much earlier request to speak at a conference in Georgia set me up to fly back to Chicago on April 4 to stay overnight and fly the very next day to Atlanta. The occasion was the Larry Larson Speaker Series of the ASFPM Foundation at Lake Lanier, attached to the annual conference of the Georgia Association of Floodplain Management. Our distinguished panel was addressing issues of disaster resilience from federal, state, nonprofit, and local planning perspectives.

Little did I know my own resilience was to be tested. Wicked weather sweeping through the Midwest and South that week created havoc. By the time I arrived at O’Hare International Airport, having neglected to check for cell phone text messages, I learned that my flight to Atlanta was canceled and no others were available that day. I needed to be at Lake Lanier by that evening, so I conferred with the event organizers. I had to cancel my flight and hotel room and ended up speaking the next morning by video connection, missing out on personal interactions but delivering my comments anyway. Perhaps my own most notable remark was that I no longer wanted to hear any local official say after a natural disaster that “no one could have foreseen” the event. If the event happened, I said, it was always within the realm of possibility. “What you’re telling me,” I said, “is that you may not have spent much time thinking about it beforehand.” Terri L. Turner, a long-time colleague and recently retired development services administrator for the city of Augusta, Georgia, told me later that there was a ripple of laughter in the audience after I said that. Floodplain managers too often know the truth of such assertions.

Within two weeks, I discovered that my personal resilience was to be challenged in more significant ways. By mid-April, I experienced a sudden problem on the bottom of my left foot that appeared to be some sort of lesion or blister. Not sure, the best move seemed to be a consultation with my primary care physician to see what he thought. That happened on April 19, but he was also uncertain and referred me to a podiatrist. However, the very next morning, I reported to Northwestern Memorial Hospital for a previously scheduled prostate biopsy, which produced its own complications over the weekend. I might have just waited those out restfully if I had not been scheduled as co-instructor for a week-long online, all-day FEMA class that week, which was largely an exhausting experience. In mid-week, I left right after class adjourned for a follow-up appointment with the urologist to learn the results of the biopsy, which were reassuring but will involve some further measures this summer.

I finally managed to see the podiatrist the following Monday. He determined a need to biopsy the growth, a decidedly painful and messy experience even with a local anesthetic. I went home with a bandaged foot that I needed to protect for several days until it healed. A week later, however, I learned that the growth was benign; surgery would still be beneficial though not urgent.

Somewhere, in between all this, my printer died. I bought a new one from Best Buy but asked that the Geek Squad do me the favor of installing it. After all, I bought it the day of the foot biopsy. Our aging electric mower also died, and I brought our 19-year-old college student grandson to Home Depot to help buy a new one. I let him assemble it and mow the yard. I’m fine with mowing now, but for a few days, it was decidedly not a good idea.

By now, the second week of May had arrived, and a number of commitments beyond the FEMA class were amassing a backlog of work for which I needed a rapid rise in stamina, which I have mostly managed to generate. Nonetheless, I wish I had more energy and more hours in the day. That does not even speak to family obligations as summer arrives and school ends, and I dream of a vacation while arranging to see doctors in August. I’ll figure it all out, but as I said, life throws curveballs. The value of being 73 is that one has presumably learned something about how to handle matters more efficiently and wisely. I am applying that wisdom to regain control over those pending tasks and establish priorities. I am learning how to catch up and slow down at the same time.

My next post, coming very soon, will share the biggest project currently on my plate. I hope you will find it as fascinating and exciting as I do. Resilience matters.

Jim Schwab

 

P.S.: While editing this piece for publication, I learned that a Sunday feature article in the Chicago Tribune, in which I was quoted, has appeared online here. The article discusses the impact of climate change on urban heat and social disparities in the city. In addition, the two links below provide methodology for the article and searchable maps:

https://www.chicagotribune.com/investigations/ct-viz-chicago-heat-disparities-climate-change-20230526-mzsazq6xa5b6rejv3rtvfefwoi-htmlstory.html

https://www.chicagotribune.com/investigations/ct-how-we-reported-on-heat-disparities-in-chicago-20230525-hsdhhgzgwrc7tffcre6ftanphi-story.html

Thanks to reporter Sara Macaraeg for alerting me to the article’s release.

Private Costs of Disaster Prevention

Champlain Towers collapse. photo from Wikipedia

The recent collapse of the Champlain Towers in Surfside, Florida, has cast a spotlight on numerous issues concerning building maintenance, private and public decision-making processes, potential (but highly uncertain) corrosive impacts of sea level rise, and even the continuing exposure of rescue workers to COVID-19, in addition to environmental and occupational hazards. That is all in addition to the governance questions surrounding condominium boards, given the news of past debates about deferred but expensive maintenance once consultants revealed structural deterioration in the 12-story complex.

I wish to be clear about my purpose in writing this post. As an urban planner and researcher, I have doggedly sought to focus on known facts and accurate assessments of hazardous situations of any type. Sometimes, the truth is clear enough. In others, it is wise to withhold judgment while raising questions that deserve thoughtful answers. In this instance, there are so many aspects to the story of the condo building collapse that caution is the appropriate approach because new facts seem to emerge daily. One question—why the North Tower did not collapse while the South Tower did—may compel further inquiry on the role of condo boards in driving decisions about investing in maintenance before catastrophe strikes, but further investigation may reveal many nuances to that story as well. Complete answers are not always simple or obvious.

I have no intention of rushing to judgment on the tragedy in Surfside. But I do wish to focus on one issue that I know is endemic to housing development on a nationwide basis: the roles and responsibilities of homeowners associations (HOA) for managing and maintaining property. Condo boards are one specific subset of HOAs, based on the nature of the buildings. But the issues are not limited to such buildings; they can easily affect the management of townhouse developments and gated subdivisions as well.

Five years ago, when the American Planning Association (APA) and the Association of State Floodplain Managers (ASFPM) collaborated to produce a Planning Advisory Service Report, Subdivision Design and Flood Hazard Areas, we confronted one ticklish issue that concerned us greatly, albeit with regard to flood (and some other natural) hazards rather than structural integrity of tall buildings. The underlying issue, however, dealt with the capacity of privately governed homeowner associations to manage, finance, and maintain hazard mitigation infrastructure over time. Of course, one can easily broaden the definition of such infrastructure to include structural integrity repairs in a situation where buildings can potentially collapse, just as it might include the need to maintain the structural integrity of bridges to prevent such tragedies as the collapse of the I-35 bridge over the Mississippi River in the Twin Cities in 2007. There is considerable room for flexibility in defining the issue so long as the focus remains on public safety.

Our concern at the time was the potential for a financially challenged homeowners association or special district to fail to maintain critical infrastructure before a natural disaster leads to catastrophic failure, whether because of flood, landslide, earthquake, or wildfire, among other possibilities. Chad Berginnis, the executive director of ASFPM, alerted us to an article published by two lawyers involved in owner association litigation in California, Tyler Berding and Stephen Weil. They offered several examples of such situations including Bethel Island, which sits in the Sacramento Delta and includes about 2,500 residents whose homes are protected by more than 11 miles of levees that

USGS photo of Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in California

circle the island, just 12 miles from the Greenville Fault. Throughout the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the potential cascading impact of an earthquake triggering massive flooding with failed levees is a nightmare of major proportions. However, residents had defeated a proposed parcel tax to finance improvements through the Bethel Island Municipal Improvement District (BIMID), leaving the district broke and laying off staff. Berding and Weill offered a series of suggestions for better planning and management of these situations.

Whether the case involves a special district like BIMID or special assessments imposed by an owner association board, the issue is the local or private responsibility for financing and maintaining the protective infrastructure to avert such tragedies. Disasters are almost never solely a function of natural forces affecting human communities. They are also a function of the location, condition, and resilience of those communities, and the greater the exposure, the greater is likely to be the long-term cost of restoring that resilience over time to prevent catastrophic loss. In many cases involving floods, landslides, or earthquakes, insurance may be unavailable or financially problematic. The ultimate result can be a bankrupt association and property owners who cannot recover their losses, let alone rebuild, yielding a combination not only of loss of life and property, but of financial calamity as well.

Pad-mounted Transformer in a floodplain not elevated. Photo by Chad Berginnis from PAS Report, used with his permission.

In the report, we sought in several ways to address the issues posed by these dilemmas. We noted, for instance, that as of 2016, the Community Associations Institute reported that 66.7 million people, about 20 percent of the U.S. population, lived in some 333,600 common-interest communities, 55 percent of which were homeowners associations, the rest either condominium or other community associations. One result is the transfer of responsibility for infrastructure within a subdivision from the municipality permitting it to the HOA itself. The long-term problem is that association leadership not only changes over time but often lacks expertise pertaining to the significant risks and responsibilities involved. We suggested that local planning and other agencies extend technical assistance to overcome this gap. This gap, however, remains a serious problem in many communities. When disaster strikes, the idea of having shifted responsibility will become transparently short-sighted because the city or county will be providing emergency response and assistance, just as is happening in Surfside. It is impossible to ignore a disaster.

We noted that many such associations assume responsibility for stormwater infrastructure, such as detention ponds, seawalls, and levees, or even private dams. If they fall into disrepair, the flooding consequences can be severe, so provisions for inspection and maintenance are critical. It is vital for such association boards to understand, for instance, that levees are never totally flood-proof and failure can have various causes. Privately built and owned levees exist across the nation, many in poor condition, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers.

In short, these owner associations have assumed responsibility for some key areas of local flood risk management, including ponds, spillways, erosion and sediment control, flood control structural repairs, drainage improvements, managing vegetation that reduces flood risk, bridge maintenance, and open space management, among other possibilities. Given the potential financial and expertise limitations of these private associations, it may be incumbent upon local governments, in approving development, to assert some degree of control over the standards for approval, for which we offered several major recommendations for requirements related to maintenance costs and final plat approval.

There is, in the end, no perfect way to ensure adequate protection against disaster, but we were hoping to raise the level of concern and discussion, and attention to detail, in the relationships between local governments and owner associations as a way to avert tragedy and financial meltdown following disaster. It is not my intent here to explore the issue in depth but to introduce readers to the depth of the questions that these situations entail. Those wishing to learn more can follow the links to additional resources.

Jim Schwab

Digital Coast Act Becomes Real

Last Wednesday, December 2, the U.S. Senate passed the Digital Coast Act in a final vote that sent the legislation to President Trump for his signature. If that happens, it may provide a very useful gift to thousands of coastal communities wrestling with a wide variety of coastal zone management challenges.

For more than a decade, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has sponsored through its Office of Coastal Management a program that has racked up stellar achievements while awaiting congressional blessing of its existence. Digital Coast began as an effort, in collaboration with five nongovernmental partners, to share federal geospatial data and tools with communities in ways that did not require a Ph.D. scientist to interpret them for local government uses.

Geospatial technology, not a familiar term for the average American, refers to “modern tools contributing to the geographic mapping and analysis of the Earth and human societies,” according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). In a coastal context, that includes tools for measuring, projecting, and visualizing sea level rise, as well as monitoring land uses and land cover in coastal areas, and mapping offshore areas as well. The mission of Digital Coast was to make these tools ever more useful for local government planners, resource managers, economic development agencies, and others with some sort of meaningful engagement with coastal issues and data.

Why is that important? For starters, because more than half of the U.S. population now lives in counties along either an oceanic or Great Lakes coast, and that percentage is growing. It matters greatly where these counties, and their cities, allow new development, how they court economic growth, and how they manage coastal resources, including marine life, tidal wetlands, and offshore resources, as well as ports and near-shore transportation. These coastal areas are huge drivers of the overall U.S. economy, and better data, and better access to data, will deeply affect the American future.

Digital Coast partners and staff at a 2015 meeting. I am at front row, right. 

Improving that access and making tools easier to use, and data more understandable, has been the mission of the Digital Coast Partnership that was assembled from 2008 on, initially with five organizations: Association of State Floodplain Managers (ASFPM); The Nature Conservancy (TNC); National Association of Counties (NACo); National States Geographic Information Council (NSGIC); and Coastal States Organization (CSO). In the summer of 2010, the American Planning Association joined the partnership, an initiative I led as manager of APA’s Hazards Planning Center. Allison Hardin, a planner for the city of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and immediate past chair of APA’s Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Planning Division (which I now chair), reports that in 2009, she vigorously advocated for the addition of APA. At the time, Allison, a certified floodplain manager, was helping to represent ASFPM in the partnership. Today, there are eight nongovernmental partners, all of which serve as links to professional user communities to ensure widespread uptake of the data, tools, and resources available from Digital Coast. The two additions have been the Urban Land Institute and National Estuarine Research Reserve Association.

Allison Hardin speaking at Capitol briefing. 

So, what difference does statutory authorization of Digital Coast make? According to John Palatiello, president of John M. Palatiello & Associates, Inc., a government relations and association management firm representing the surveying, mapping, GIS, and geospatial community, which helped lead the effort to get the act passed: “The Digital Coast Act will enable NOAA to partner with other government entities and the private sector to help protect and promote America’s coasts and shorelines. This legislation creates a program to utilize the extensive capabilities, competence, and qualifications of private sector geospatial professionals to provide the surveying, charting, remote sensing, and geospatial data of America’s coasts, harbors, ports, shorelines and ocean resources for economic growth, recreational activities, conservation, and resilience of our fragile coastal environment.” Put more simply, the new law stabilizes the authorization and budgetary support for Digital Coast within NOAA. There were times in the past when this was less than a sure thing. Now, its codification makes its program status official.

Digital Coast Act briefing, with NOAA Digital Coast staff Miki Schmidt (left) and Josh Murphy (right), standing near door.

But Digital Coast, I can attest from personal experience, has a remarkably astute and dedicated professional staff in love with public service. The Act itself begins with this finding: “The Digital Coast is a model approach for effective Federal partnership with State and local government, nongovernmental organizations, and the private sector.” It goes on to note, a few paragraphs later, some of the needs that Digital Coast can help address, including flood and coastal storm surge prediction, hazard risk and vulnerability assessment, and community resilience, as well as ecosystem health. I applauded the program more than six years ago on this blog.

Briefing at the Capitol: APA Policy Director Jason Jordan at the mike; ASFPM Executive Director Chad Berginnis to his right.

It is important to note that this legislation is not the product of some recent brainstorm, but of a slow, steady process of building support, starting with a handful of legislators from both parties who saw its value. Perhaps most notable was Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), accompanied in the House by Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD), who noted in a press release that he had been advocating such action for nearly a decade. But Republican support came from Rep. Don Young (R-AK) and Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, both of Alaska, the state with by far the longest coastline. All of them, along with the Digital Coast partners, plus the indefatigable John Byrd of MAPPS, pushed relentlessly, year after year, to find the support necessary to move the bill across the legislative goal line. They have at last succeeded.

Jim Schwab

The Need for Resilient Infrastructure

This summer, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is at last rolling out its Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program, and its first Notice of Funding Opportunity will likely be issued in September. In July, FEMA is airing a series of five weekly webinars to introduce BRIC to communities and state officials around the nation. BRIC is the practical result of provisions in the Disaster Recovery Reform Act, passed by Congress in 2018, to create a secure funding stream for what was formerly the Pre-Disaster Mitigation program. I plan to discuss all that in coming weeks on this blog.

But the personal impact on me was to remind me to attend to an egregious oversight on my part that began earlier this year with the release by the American Planning Association (APA) of a new Planning Advisory Service Report, Planning for Resilient Infrastructure. I read it, attended to some other business in Texas and Nebraska in late February and early March, and along came the coronavirus, upending most of my existing personal and professional plans and refocusing my attention. But it is time for me to give this report the attention it deserves.

First, there is the question of why it deserves attention. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which funded the project led by the Association of State Floodplain Managers (ASFPM), which partnered with APA, chose their joint proposal in funding the first round of projects under its Coastal Resilience Grants Program in 2016. As Jeffrey Payne, director of NOAA’s Office for Coastal Management, states in his preface, “Tomorrow isn’t what it used to be. Increasingly, coastal conditions include all the risks of the past, but risks that are amplified by a changing climate, rising seas, and more rapidly fluctuating Great Lakes.”

In the interest of full disclosure, I was involved with ASFPM executive director Chad Berginnis in co-authoring the proposal for this project in the summer of 2015. (After I left APA, ASFPM hired me back as a consultant in later stages of the effort to help refine and focus the PAS Report.) Our intent was both simple and bold. Local governments spend tens of billions of dollars annually on the construction and maintenance of various kinds of infrastructure. Much of that infrastructure, related to essential services including water, wastewater, and transportation, is subject to the impacts of climate change. While, as Payne goes on to state, this is true away from the coast as well, some of those impacts are particularly significant and noticeable in coastal states and communities. In short, a great deal of taxpayer money is at stake regarding the ability of that infrastructure to withstand future climate conditions and natural disasters. Planning for greatly increased resilience is a recipe for improved fiscal stability. This holds true even if, as planned by statute, a greater share of that funding for hazard mitigation projects comes from FEMA through BRIC. Taxpayers are taxpayers, whether the money used is federal, state, or local.

All that said, the serious work of completing the work fell to Joseph DeAngelis at APA, now the manager of the APA Hazards Planning Center, and Haley Briel, a research specialist for the Flood Science Center at ASFPM, along with Michael Lauer, a planning consultant with deep experience in growth management programs in southeastern coastal states.

Global average sea level rise from 1880 to the present, based on tide gauges and satellite measurements (US EPA). Reuse courtesy of APA.

Their collaborative report addresses the most significant issues of infrastructure resilience. Particularly in areas subject to coastal storms, these involve not just the impacts of major disasters but the everyday nuisance impacts of flooding because of high tides atop sea level rise that already are yielding closed streets and parks and flooded basements. Urban flooding has become a “thing” where the term never used to be heard. They include a small table with projections by the U.S. Global Change Research Program showing ranges of sea level rise between 0.5 and 1.2 feet by 2050, and 1 to 4 feet by 2100. Of course, these are rough ranges in part because various geological conditions, such as erosion or glacial rebound, cause different results from one region to another, although most of the East Coast faces serious problems over the coming century. A major part of the problem is that sea level rise amplifies the impact of high tides in storms, leading to increased flooding and erosion that is already evident in low-lying cities like Norfolk, Virginia, or Miami. The authors note that, “Over the last half-century alone, with just one to three inches of average sea level rise, daily high-tide flooding has become up to 10 times more frequent” in American coastal communities. Even in Midwestern communities, including those along the Great Lakes, problems result from climate-driven increases in high-precipitation storms that frequently overwhelm stormwater drainage systems built in an earlier era based on other, less challenging, assumptions.

Storm surge heights are cumulatively based on the mean sea level, the height of the tide, and the high volume of water pushed toward the shore by coastal storms (National Hurricane Center). Reuse courtesy of APA.

It is natural that a planning document is going to assert a role for planners in addressing these problems. The role the report asserts is entirely logical, starting with “assessing long-term infrastructure needs and understanding future risks to infrastructure assets.” Equally logical, however, is that the report builds upon prior APA literature to outline the need for coordinated action through the plan-making process to integrate climate risk into local plans as a means of “capturing the future conditions to which existing infrastructure and any planned infrastructure projects will be subjected.” Put simply, if the local planning process does not identify those risks and provide clear recommendations for creating resilient infrastructure, it is not likely to materialize in any coherent and consistent fashion. The third chapter outlines a step-by-step approach (see illustrations below) for developing an inventory of local infrastructure, identifying risks, and moving toward an effective plan for adaptation.

The process for conducting an infrastructure vulnerability assessment (Joseph DeAngelis). Reuse courtesy of APA for both diagrams.

 

 

 

 

 

A project or asset’s vulnerability to flood impacts is a product of its exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity (Joseph DeAngelis).

Later, the report provides some examples of what such consistent planning for resilient infrastructure may look like. Its case study of San Francisco’s approach to assessing sea-level-rise impacts outlines how the Sea Level Rise Committee of the city’s Capital Planning Committee (CPC), a body responsible for overseeing capital investments for infrastructure, recommended using the upper end of estimates from a National Research Council report for the West Coast. These were fed into a CPC guidance document for assessing vulnerability and supporting adaptation to sea level rise, a primary outcome of climate change. Without engaging the full details here, the bottom line is that the City and County of San Francisco was working from a single play book for climate adaptation of project life cycles for future infrastructure. Capital planning could thus proceed in a more standardized manner based on common assumptions. The report also uses an extensive example from Toledo, Ohio, the site of one of two pilot projects supported by the ASFPM/APA project. Toledo, sitting on the shores of Lake Erie, has suffered from stormwater flooding and is approaching the problem with a mixture of green infrastructure and analysis of social vulnerability in affected neighborhoods. The report elsewhere delves into questions and methods of documenting and addressing environmental justice and social and racial inequities in environmental protection through appropriate local capital planning projects.

Both cases highlight the value for local planners of establishing credible data sources, which often rest within federal agencies such as NOAA and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. But, as one chapter illustrates, these can include experienced national nonprofits as well, such as Climate Central. Unquestionably, however, the best single assemblage of data and tools is NOAA’s own Digital Coast website. Planners can access additional high-quality resources on climate through other NOAA programs such as the Regional Climate Centers, located at a series of universities across the nation, and the Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments, where RISA staff work directly with climate scientists to communicate the science to the public and local officials.

Just as important as understanding where to find the proper data and tools, however, is a knowledge of best practices in local capital improvements planning, the development of effective standards, guidelines, and regulations for creating resilient infrastructure, and, finally, the best means for financing such long-term investments in infrastructure, especially with an eye to climate resilience. Each of these three topics is covered in separate chapters in the second half of the report.

View of part of the Jersey Shore after Hurricane Sandy, February 2013.

Ultimately, the real challenge for local planners is overcoming a natural discomfort with the inherent uncertainties in planning for infrastructure that must withstand the impacts of climate change within a range of assumptions that, in part, depend on federal and even international action to mitigate rising global temperatures as a result of greenhouse gas emissions. Planners, and the communities they serve, must adjust to those uncertainties and the inherent complexities they embody. Planning, however, has always been a speculative enterprise riddled by uncertainties, yet cities have embraced assumptions about population growth, demographic change, and economic scenarios that have often been equally uncertain, for none of us has a crystal ball. What we do know, however, is the direction of existing and accelerating trends, and climate change is no myth. We are ultimately better off, and will better invest public resources, by anticipating climate change with the best projections available, so that our communities are not overwhelmed by future storms, sea level rise, and storm surge. We cannot say we did not see it coming. We can only hope to say we used a wise approach based on the best data available to avoid catastrophe for ourselves and future generations in the communities we serve.

Jim Schwab

 

Great Lakes Merit Protection

I grew up near the shores of Lake Erie, in suburban Cleveland. After a seven-year stint in Iowa and Nebraska, I ended up in Chicago, where I have lived since 1985. The Great Lakes have been part of my ecological and geographic consciousness for essentially 90 percent of my lifetime. As an urban planner, that means I am deeply aware of their significance on many levels.

It will surprise no one, then, that as a planner who has focused heavily on environmental and natural hazards issues, I have been involved in projects aimed at protecting that natural heritage. As manager of the Hazards Planning Center at the American Planning Association (APA), I involved APA as a partner with the Association of State Floodplain Managers (ASFPM) as ASFPM developed its Great Lakes Coastal Resilience website with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) support. Later, I prepared a successful grant for support from NOAA’s Sectoral Applications Research Program for a project on integrating climate change data into local comprehensive and capital improvements planning. In that project, APA collaborated with the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning and the University of Illinois. That project, which involved work with five pilot communities in the Chicago metropolitan area, was (and still is) ongoing when I left APA at the end of May 2017. The aim was to develop applicable models for such planning for other communities throughout the Great Lakes region.

It is thus always encouraging to see others pick up the same mantle. It was hardly surprising that the Environmental Law & Policy Center (ELPC), a long-time Chicago-based staple of the public interest community, would see fit to do so. On March 20, in concert with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, ELPC released “An Assessment of the Impact of Climate Change on the Great Lakes,” with 18 scientists contributing to the 74-page report. I spoke two weeks later with Howard Learner, the long-time president and executive director of ELPC, about the rationale and hopes for the report.

The impact of adding one more report to the parade is cumulative but important. Learner explained that national studies, particularly the National Climate Assessment, mention regional impacts of climate change, but that drilling down to the impacts on a specific region and making local and state decision makers aware of the issues at those levels was the point. Thus, he asked Don Wuebbles, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Illinois and a science adviser to ELPC, to assemble a team of experts for the purpose. Wuebbles recruited most of the team, with the goal not only of identifying problems but of developing or pinpointing solutions. Repeatedly, Learner emphasized the public policy role of ELPC as a “problem-solving” institution. The intended audience was governors, provincial ministers, congressional delegations from Great Lakes states, and other public officials, providing them with an assessment of the state of the science concerning the Great Lakes.

I won’t even attempt to review all the data in the report, but certain points are essential to an adequate public understanding. For one, the Great Lakes are simply huge and constitute a very complex ecosystem in a heavily populated region of more than 34 million people in the U.S. and Canada, the vast majority of whom repeatedly express support for protection of the Great Lakes in public opinion polls. It is the largest freshwater group of lakes on the planet, and second largest in volume. It is a binational ecosystem that demands cooperation across state, provincial, and national boundaries. It is home to 170 species of fish and a $7 billion fisheries industry. It has long been home to one of the most significant industrial regions of both nations. What happens here matters.

The term “lake effect” is most often associated with the Great Lakes because their sheer mass has a measurable impact on local and regional weather patterns. Winds pick up considerable moisture that often lands downwind in the form of snowstorms and precipitation. For instance, any frequent visitor of farmers’ markets along the Great Lakes is likely to be aware of western Michigan’s “fruit belt” offerings of apples, cherries, pears, and other crops dependent on the lake effect.

Figure 3. Observed changes in annually-averaged temperature (°F) for the U.S. states bordering the Great Lakes for present-day (1986–2016) relative to 1901–1960. Derived from the NOAA nClimDiv dataset (Vose et al., 2014). Figure source: NOAA/NCEI (Both images reprinted from report courtesy ELPC.

Figure 4. Projected change in annually-averaged temperature (°F) for U.S. states bordering the Great Lakes from the (a) higher (RCP8.5) and (b) lower (RCP4.5) scenarios for the 2085 (2070-2099) time period relative to 1976-2005. Figure source: NOAA/NCEI

The lake effect, of course, is a part of the natural system in a region carved out of the landscape by melting glaciers at the end of the last Ice Age. Recent climate change is another matter. The region has already experienced a 1.6° F. increase in average daily temperatures in the 1985-2016 period as compared to the 1901-1960 average. Those increases are expected to accelerate over the remainder of this century. It is not just temperatures that change, however, because changing weather patterns as a result of long-term climate change result in altered precipitation patterns. Summer precipitation is predicted to decline by 5 to 15 percent, suggesting some increased propensity for drought, while winter and spring precipitation will increase, producing an increased regional propensity for spring flooding. Increased intensity of major thunderstorm events will exacerbate the vulnerability of urban areas to stormwater runoff, resulting in increased “urban flooding,” often a result of inadequate stormwater drainage systems in highly developed urban areas. That, in turn, has huge implications for municipal and regional investments in stormwater and sewage treatment infrastructure. In addition, heat waves can threaten lives and public health. Public decision makers ignore these implications at the fiscal and physical peril of their affected communities.

Among those impacts highlighted in the report is the increased danger of algal blooms in the Great Lakes as a result of changing biological conditions. The report notes that the largest algal bloom in Lake Erie history occurred in 2011, offshore from Toledo, Ohio, affecting drinking water for a metropolitan area of 500,000 people.

There is also danger to the stability of some shoreline bluffs, an issue highlighted on the Great Lakes Coastal Resilience website, as a result of reduced days of ice cover during the winter. While less ice cover may seem a minor problem to some, in fact it means changes in water density and seasonal mixing patterns in water columns, but it also means the loss of protection from winter waves from storm patterns because the ice cover prevents those waves from reaching the shore until the spring melt. The result is increased shoreline erosion.

All of that harks back to the central question of my interview with Learner: What do you hope to achieve? “The time for climate action is now,” he insisted, noting that the Trump presidency has been “a step back,” making it important for cities and states to “step up with their own climate solutions.” Learner hopes the report at least provides a “road map” for governors and Canadian premiers to focus their actions on the impact of climate change on the Great Lakes, such as “extreme weather events.”

Curiously, one arena in which new action may be possible is the city of Chicago itself, which on April 2 elected a new mayor, Lori Lightfoot. Media attention has focused on the fact that she is both the first gay mayor and the first African-American female mayor in the city’s history, but equally significant is her history as a former federal prosecutor who campaigned against corruption. Learner notes that outgoing Mayor Rahm Emanuel convened a Chicago Climate Summit in November 2017, and that ELPC is now “looking to Mayor Lightfoot to step up Chicago’s game” to benefit both the local economy and environment with a stronger approach to climate change.

The same can be said, of course, for numerous other municipalities choosing new leadership and for the new governors of the region, including J.B. Pritzker in Illinois. They all have much work to do, but an increasing amount of research and guidance with which to do it.

Jim Schwab

Why the Nation Should Invest in Mitigation

Cover of NIBS Interim Study from Marathon, Florida. “These modern, mitigated homes withstood Hurricane Irma. They are elevated to withstand high water and their roofs are constructed to withstand up to 220 mph winds. Good mitigation learns from mistakes to build more resilient communities.” Photo by Howard Greenblatt, FEMA,, November 22, 2017.

I should have written this blog post six months ago, but better late than never. Last December, the National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS), Multihazard Mitigation Council, issued Natural Hazard Mitigation Saves: 2017 Interim Report, a welcome update of its highly regarded, widely quoted, 2004 report, Natural Hazard Mitigation Saves: An Independent Study to Assess the Future Savings from Mitigation Activities. Why is this new report still relevant for blog discussion eight months after its release? Because it is having a significant, if not yet profound, effect on public and congressional thinking about the investment of federal dollars in hazard mitigation. That shift is long overdue.

The original report was a landmark in hazard mitigation research in its own right, finding that the nation eventually saved $4 in costs from disaster losses for every dollar of federal money invested in hazard mitigation, a remarkable return on investment by any standard. That report also differentiated specific savings related to specific disaster types ranging from $1.50 per dollar for earthquake mitigation efforts to $9 for flood-related mitigation investments. In short, presuming that specific projects merited investment based on cost-benefit comparisons, the U.S. could prevent a world of pain with timely and effective investments in mitigation projects to reduce such losses.

Still, over the years, the federal government has provided far more money after disasters to support mitigation against future disasters by more generously funding post-disaster programs, primarily the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP), than pre-disaster programs such as the Pre-Disaster Mitigation (PDM) program, authorized under the Disaster Mitigation Act (DMA) of 2000 (Sec. 203 of the Stafford Act, 42 U.S.C. 5133). Pilot funding actually began in 1997 under the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Project Impact, which was terminated by the George W. Bush administration, but by then the DMA was law, and so was PDM. However, secure funding is another matter, and over the years, PDM has been subjected to a roller coaster ride of erratic congressional appropriations. Disregarding the Project Impact years through FY2002, appropriations have ranged from a peak of $150 million when the fund was established in FY2003, to $35.5 million in FY2012, to $25 million in FY2014 following an attempt by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to zero out the fund and merge it into a single mitigation account, a ploy that did not succeed in Congress. Now the trend is in the opposite direction, with $90 million allocated in FY2017, and dramatically more under consideration for FY2019. In June, the Senate was looking at a proposed allocation of $246 million (House version), according to Meredith Inderfurth, Washington liaison of the Association of State Floodplain Managers. That is the same amount allocated the previous year, so one can hope PDM is stabilizing at a higher level. One must realize, also, that what is proposed from the administration of the moment is not necessarily what is disposed by Congress, where appropriations committees may act under significantly different influences from those affecting the White House.

What is the difference between PDM and HMGP? Most simply, PDM provides funding under a competitive grant system to communities for proposed projects to implement hazard mitigation before disaster strikes, under what some call “blue skies.” By contrast, HMGP funding is a percentage of overall disaster assistance following a presidentially declared disaster. That percentage has varied over time and among states; those with enhanced state hazard mitigation plans, which must meet higher standards and show a deeper state commitment to mitigation, receive a higher percentage of overall disaster assistance in HMGP funds. Currently, for states with enhanced plans, that amounts to 20 percent of overall assistance, in other words, $200 million in HMGP for every billion dollars of disaster aid. The amounts are smaller, beginning with 15 percent for the first $2 billion of aid, and shrinking as percentages of higher levels, for states without enhanced plans. The states then distribute this money to local jurisdictions for specific projects. But no HMGP money exists without a declared disaster.

However, at least the recent revived congressional interest in funding PDM suggests that the emphasis is changing, and it is no accident that this is happening after the release of the NIBS interim report. The $4 savings calculation from the 2004 report has been widely disseminated and quoted in disaster management circles. The new report accentuates that good news with increased savings estimates based on complex studies that have dug much more deeply into the logic of how those savings should be calculated. To be honest, I will not confess to following all the detail in 344 pages of text and appendices in the new report. Economics is not my field. My trust in the numbers, however, grows out of both admiration for the stellar collection of scholars involved in the study and an ability to at least follow the logic of their arguments, if not the details of every calculation. I can at least follow the logic of the methodology, which appears very sound.

What did they find? The report established a new, higher overall savings ratio of $6 for every federal dollar invested in hazard mitigation by “select federal agencies.” It did this by establishing methodology for including new but relevant factors into the cost-benefit calculations the study used. The new study goes farther by also examining investments “to exceed select provisions of the 2015 model building codes,” for which it found a 4-1 benefit-cost ratio. In the latter case, this meant that the analysis focused on those mitigation efforts that used stricter standards for building resilience than those in the model codes. It should be noted here that neither model codes, propagated by nonprofit code development organizations that research the effectiveness of various building standards and promulgate such codes for use by local governments, nor federal mitigation requirements, such as those in the National Flood Insurance Program, prohibit local governments from “going the extra mile” to strengthen protection against various potential disasters.

Like the 2004 study, this one also sought to establish more specific benefit-cost ratios for particular disaster types, for which the efficacy of mitigation investments can vary. Nevertheless, all proved positive to differing degrees. Flood mitigation led the pack, as it did in the earlier study, with a 7-1 ratio for federal investments and 5-1 for exceeding 2015 model code requirements. Investments for exceeding codes for hurricane storm surge bore a 5-1 benefit, but an inadequate sample for federal investments prevented the study from producing a ratio for federal investments. Wind mitigation was 5-1 for both analyses; earthquake and wildland-urban interface yielded 3-1 advantages for federal investments and 4-1 for code exceedance. Overall, however, the dominant area of U.S. losses in disasters has always come from flooding, generally by a very wide margin.

As I noted, a good deal of the refinement materialized from the study’s ability to quantify some aspects of future cost savings that were often left out of the equation in past analyses and in traditional benefit-cost analyses. Rather than paraphrase, I will simply offer the study’s own summary from page 9:

The Interim Study quantified a number of benefits from mitigation, including reductions in:

  • Future deaths, nonfatal injuries, and PTSD
  • Repair costs for damaged buildings and contents
  • Sheltering costs for displaced households
  • Loss of revenue and other business-interruption costs to businesses whose property is damaged
  • Loss of economic activity in the broader community
  • Loss of service to the community when fire stations, hospitals, and other public buildings are damaged
  • Insurance costs other than insurance claims
  • Costs for urban search and rescue

All these are important facets of the overall costs of disasters, many of which have been hard to quantify in the past. That is what makes this update so significant. What will make it more valuable is for advocates of effective hazard mitigation, whether experts or ordinary citizens, to learn the basic facts of these findings and share them with policy makers at local, state, and federal levels of government, so that it becomes clear that simply rebuilding the same structures in the same hazardous locations after each disaster constitutes a massive lost opportunity. The staggering losses last year from Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria, combined with the wildfires in California, should be a wake-up call. We can avoid a great deal of tragedy with smart investments in mitigation at all levels of government. Download or scan this study, at least read the summary, and be prepared to make the basic case. It is the fiscally conservative thing to do, in view of the hundreds of billions of dollars that have been poured into disaster recovery.

Jim Schwab

Knock Me Over

From left: Larry Larson; Maria Cox-Lamm, ASFPM Chair; myself; Ingrid Wadsworth, ASFPM Deputy Director

I confess: I was taken totally by surprise. Most of us, if we have a level head on our shoulders, do not do our work with the thought that we will some day be presented with a major award because of it. Especially those of us in the world of public service and nonprofits, where dedication to the greater good is a primary motive, even though we are not immune to thinking about raises and promotions, which, after all, may enable us to be more effective in what we do.

Consequently, when the Association of State Floodplain Managers (ASFPM) asked me to attend the annual ASFPM conference in Phoenix last week (June 17-21), I naively accepted the rationale that, since they had recently contracted with me as an independent consultant to lead the production of a Planning Advisory Service Report on climate resilience and capital improvements planning, under a Regional Coastal Resilience grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), they needed me there to discuss the project. I had helped write the grant three years ago while still leading the Hazards Planning Center at the American Planning Association (APA), which became the major partner to ASFPM in conducting the three-year project. Although I retired from that position a little more than a year ago, there was a great deal of logic in bringing me back to see at least that part of the project to a successful conclusion.

There was only one problem in Phoenix. No one seemed all that concerned about spending time talking to me about the NOAA project. I was certainly learning a great deal by listening to presentations, and I certainly enjoyed networking with colleagues at receptions and in hallways at the Phoenix Convention Center, but the question was bugging me: Why did they really want me out here?

On Thursday morning, June 21, before the morning plenary began in the Ballroom, I approached David Conrad and Larry Larson at a front table after initially parking my belongings at another table further back. David Conrad was once with the National Wildlife Federation and wrote a path-breaking report following the 1993 Midwest floods. Larry is the former executive director of ASFPM and now a policy advisor working with current executive director Chad Berginnis. Both are prominent in the field of floodplain management.

I patted David on the shoulder and with self-effacing humor said, “I used to sit at the front table before I retired from APA, but now I’m nobody anymore.” They chuckled, and ASFPM’s public information officer, Michele Mihalovich, said from across the table, “Jim, you’ll never be nobody.” We all laughed, David invited me to join them, and I moved to the front table for the plenary. All good for a laugh. Afterwards, Larry made a point of asking me to find him at a front table, off to the side, for the awards luncheon at noon. Still clueless, I assumed he was simply being friendly but honored his request when the time came.

Lunch was served, and Doug Plasencia, president of the ASFPM Foundation, and Diane Brown, retiring from her post as outreach and events manager at ASFPM after 35 years of excellent service, introduced award recipients and their achievements one at a time, with images on the screen, and each winner stood with presenters for a photo. Interesting, I thought, in considering the various prizes, but routine. I was happy for the winners, some of whom I knew. Almost every national professional organization does such things. Meanwhile, I ate my salad, the roast beef entrée, and the dessert. In a little while, it would all be over, and we would move on to an afternoon of presentations and discussions in a variety of concurrent sessions. I flipped through the program to see what looked interesting.

Finally, Diane Brown began to describe the winner of the highest honor ASFPM bestows, the Goddard-White Award, described thus on the website:

“The Goddard-White Award is named in honor of the contributions made to floodplain management by Gilbert White (1911- 2006) and Jim Goddard (1906-1994). This award is given by ASFPM to individuals who have had a national impact carrying forward the goals and objectives of floodplain management. It is an indication of the level of esteem the association holds for the two namesakes as well as the recipients and is ASFPM’s highest award. It is not necessarily presented every year.”

I’m not sure because one does not time such things. I believe it took about 30 seconds of Diane’s narration of the story behind this year’s award before it suddenly dawned on me that I was the person they were talking about. I had never spent one minute before that contemplating this specific award or how I might have anything to do with it. The revelation that I was a recipient struck me like a lightning bolt. Larry was looking toward me, and I pointed to myself silently as if so say, “Moi?” He kept his Cheshire cat smile and waited for the emcees to invite me forward. Larry, by the way, was in 1985 the very first recipient of this honor. He had known all along precisely what was coming. Diane invited me to the podium to say a few words. A few tears started to run down my cheeks, so I struggled to get them under control. At the podium, Diane asked, “Are you okay to talk?” I nodded yes.

I cannot repeat verbatim what I said because it was all spontaneous, but I know that I began by saying that we in the hazards world are “supposed to be prepared. I am not. You caught me off guard.” I took the crowd on a two-minute tour of what we had achieved together in the partnership of recent years that I helped construct between ASFPM and APA, and said, “Eventually, you look back and ask, ‘Did we do all that?’” I then explained that it was not just me. I had learned a great deal over the years from many other people, that big achievements require collective effort. And I thanked everyone for this high honor before stepping over to the curtain for a photograph that you see above.

I checked later and found that only 24 people have received this award, including former NOAA Coastal Services Center administrator Margaret Davidson, a truly memorable individual, U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, a perennial warrior for better disaster legislation, and French Wetmore, who helped create the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Community Rating System for the National Flood Insurance Program. All I can say is, Wow. What a band of high achievers and visionaries I have apparently joined.

It is hard to top such an honor, except in one way: It is important not to rest on these laurels, but to continue to contribute, to encourage others to find their passion, and to remain an effective voice for positive change. I hope I am doing that and can remain part of the action for many years to come. Thanks, ASFPM. I hope I can prove you right.

Jim Schwab

FEMA Needs to Think about This One

Flooded property in Lyons, Colorado, after the St. Vrain River flooded in September 2013.

There is that old saying that, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. To that, one might add that, if you’re thinking about fixing it anyway, you may want to clarify exactly how you wish to improve things and why you think the improvement will be better.

In a February 27 notice in the Federal Register, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) proposed a major change in long-standing hazard mitigation rules regarding grants for acquisitions of flooded properties that made almost no effort to meet that test. I wish I had noticed it earlier because the deadline for comments was April 30. I submitted a brief comment on that date and tried to rally others on Facebook, but the truth is that this one got away from me. I was busy on other fronts. I have subsequently spent a few days gathering background information.

I am very glad that a few national organizations like the Association of State Floodplain Managers (ASFPM), American Rivers, and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) found time to file substantial objections to FEMA’s notice on Property Acquisitions and Relocation for Open Space (Docket ID: FEMA-2018-0006). Their objections raise profound questions about both the process and the substance of FEMA’s proposed changes. Others have also submitted comments.

Here’s the bottom line: For 30 years since the passage of the Stafford Act, which provides the basic framework of most federal disaster law, federal hazard mitigation grant programs have required that lands being acquired from property owners whose homes have been flooded must be placed into perpetual open space following demolition of the structures. The clear intent is to reduce the ongoing exposure of the federal government and the National Flood Insurance Program to repeated losses by precluding further development in those flood-prone areas. By and large, those grants go through state and local governments, which then maintain those open spaces and must periodically certify to FEMA that the lands remain in that status. Today, those grant programs include not only the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP), a sometimes-substantial source of mitigation funding that is available after a presidentially declared disaster; the Pre-Disaster Mitigation (PDM) program, created as part of the Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000, which amended the Stafford Act; and Flood Mitigation Assistance (FMA), part of which deals with Severe Repetitive Loss properties, which make up a disproportionate share of overall flood claims.

In the notice, FEMA has announced a new option to allow owners of flooded properties to retain the underlying land while being paid to demolish the structures, thereby permitting them to eventually rebuild on that same flood-prone land. Because mitigation grants have gone from FEMA through states to local governments, those governments have been responsible for the open space programs that result. This new approach would allow the property owner the option of taking the grant directly from FEMA. In its comments on the proposal, ASFPM noted that, in the 2004 NFIP reform legislation, it supported providing FEMA the option to deal directly with property owners, mostly because some local governments have lacked the capacity to monitor the open space requirements, but it still expected that FEMA would consult with those governments before using that option as a means of maintaining consistency with state and local hazard mitigation policy. The current notice makes no mention of such coordination.

Elevation of flooded properties remains a viable option in many cases.

It is not as if these owners do not have other options for mitigating future flood damage, including elevation of residential structures above the 100-year base flood elevation established on FEMA flood insurance rate maps, or floodproofing the structure. But, the thinking seems to be, some owners will be more willing to demolish if they can retain the land. One possibility for some might be to retain the land, rebuild in due course, and flip the improved property while leaving the NFIP with continued flood loss exposures. How that helps federal taxpayers or other flood insurance rate payers is not especially clear.

The Federal Register announcement does nothing to make that clear. If you follow the link and read the notice, you are likely to experience my reaction, which was that I felt left in the dark regarding the rationale for making this move, which is not explained. Nor does FEMA provide any data to support the idea that this initiative would do anything to reduce flood losses. The opposite could easily prove true.

In an April 26 article in Insurance Journal, former FEMA administrator Craig Fugate offers some support for the new option by noting that placing land in permanent open space through a buyout is often a “hard sell.” That may well be, but it is partly because the solution is meant to be effective and lasting. It is also not as if the approach has lacked success. As NRDC notes in its comments, citing ASFPM case studies, more than 30,000 floodplain properties have been removed from development since 1993, many of them following major cataclysms such as the 1993 and 2008 Midwest floods and various hurricanes.

Perhaps more telling is the question of homeowners’ motivation in making the difficult decision to sell and relocate. The idea that people would necessarily prefer to be able to rebuild in the same location is not as clear or straightforward as some might assume, though there are, no doubt, advocates of property rights who would prefer to create the new option. But this emotional decision contains some factors that should not be ignored. Perhaps straight to the point is this comment from American Rivers:

Our experience working with floodplain managers has taught us that convincing property owners to accept a buyout is an emotional and difficult decision, and many are only willing to accept the buyout offer after they are assured that the property will be preserved as open space for the good of the public. Offering direct grants that allow new construction where a structure was demolished could be at odds with local hazard mitigation plans and efforts to acquire flood prone properties for open space. FEMA should instead be working to support the implementation of open space goals in local and state hazard mitigation grants.

In other words, many of those choosing a buyout, having suffered the damages of severe and repetitive losses from flooding, and aware of the larger issues concerning the public good in these situations, would rather ensure that nothing like this happens again, at least in their community. But what happens to the motivation undergirding their willingness to sell if they become acutely aware that their neighbors now have the option of prolonging the pain by not placing the land in permanent open space? Will they still feel that they are accomplishing anything by pursuing the traditional option? In any event, are these not the people whose choices we most want to honor for the greater good of the community?

City-acquired open space in Cedar Falls, Iowa, near the Cedar River.

The essential reason all this is important is that we have learned much over the years about the natural and beneficial functions of floodplains, which include soil enrichment, wildlife habitat, reduced flood severity, and reductions in erosion and stormwater runoff, to name a few, in addition to the potential recreational functions of waterfront parks and open space. All this is in addition to the fiscal benefits of reducing future floodplain losses in the areas affected. If all that is not reason enough for FEMA to pause, rethink the question, and at least offer some solid scientific and economic documentation of the benefits of the proposed new approach, then I am not sure what is. Otherwise, count me a serious skeptic.

Jim Schwab

On Enacting False Economies

Claiming to protect the public’s purse is always great politics, at least in some quarters. Actually doing so requires considerable thought and homework, but grandstanding is cheap and makes for great sound bites in an election season. And thus, it is often silly season not only in Congress, but in many of America’s state legislatures.

I say this because a legislative alert from the Illinois chapter of the American Planning Association (APA), of which I have been a member for decades, turned my attention to an attempt in three pending bills to prohibit (HB4246) the use of local government funds “for expenses connected with attendance by an employee or contractor of the unit of local government at a convention or gathering of personnel.” HB4247 disallows spending on “access to physical space for booths, hospitality suites, or other physical space” at such events. All three bills, HB4246, 4247, and 4248, create the Local Government Convention Expense Control Act, sponsored by Rep. David McSweeney, a Republican conservative from the collar counties north of Chicago. A quick check on McSweeney in Wikipedia illustrates a history of such initiatives, some of which may make sense, but this one is clearly a case of tossing out the baby with the bath water. That said, he has a number of co-sponsors including some Democrats.

I have no problem with appropriate limits on the ways in which public funds are used for conventions and conferences. Public money clearly should be used for sensible and responsible purposes at such events. But I have attended and presented at dozens of professional conferences involving local and state government professionals all across the United States, and I have yet to see anything highly or even mildly inappropriate. When such outrages do occur, they tend to find their way into mass media coverage that goes viral, and heads roll, but such incidents are extremely rare, which raises the question of the necessity of the proposed legislation.

There is a reason for professional conferences that involves an intelligent use of public money. If we can at least accept the notion that we want our professional public servants—planners, financial officers, civil engineers, transit officials, and others—to be well informed and up to date on best practices in their fields—then there is a solid argument for affording them the opportunity to attend professional conferences at which they can attend sessions and workshops and learn. What they bring back to their jobs enhances the service they provide on their jobs.

In my own role, I was usually speaking or attending as an employee of a national nonprofit professional association, APA, most of whose members work in the public sector. Many of the rest are consultants, professors, or land-use attorneys, but there are numerous special niches in which people find useful employment. I did not attend state or regional conferences for urban planners, floodplain mangers, and other professional groups for the social opportunities. I can think of much better forums for enhancing that aspect of my life. I was typically either trying to learn something that would make me a better manager for the research and training projects I was leading, or because I was presenting information in a session or as a keynote speaker. Urban planning, for example, is a rapidly evolving field of practice. Being denied access to the networking and learning opportunities afforded by such gatherings is a blow to the professionalism of the dedicated public servants who work for local government. The alternative—to say that they must spend their own money to attend, which some do anyway—is to drive the best of them away from the public sector to firms that offer such opportunities as a means of maintaining a top-flight staff. It is as much a question in job interviews as compensation or prospects for advancement.

Let me offer a couple of minor examples to make my point. Just three years ago, I attended the Illinois APA conference to present findings from a national study APA’s Hazards Planning Center had completed with support from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) on planning for post-disaster recovery. Sharing the podium for the session was Jon Oliphant, the planning director of Washington, Illinois, a Peoria suburb, which was struck by an EF-4 tornado in November 2013. He complimented my presentation with real-life details of the rebuilding experience in Washington since that event. For the people in that room, many of whom had not experienced a similar disaster in their own communities, but worried about the day they might, it would be hard to replicate the value of being able to hear all this first-hand and to “kick the tires” by asking questions of the panel. The modest expense of attending that two-day conference, within driving distance for many registrants, must be weighed against the considerable value of the knowledge and insights they gained from not only that session but many others they undoubtedly attended while there. The same could largely be said whether the topic is stormwater drainage, public finance, or economic development. If many people later exchanged business cards over drinks and snacks at a reception (typically sponsored by exhibitors), so what? In most cases, in my experience, it was an opportunity to chew over and compare impressions of what they had heard and discussed throughout the day.

In another example, Chad Berginnis, the executive director of the Association of State Floodplain Managers, and I tag-teamed an opening keynote for the Illinois Association for Floodplain and Stormwater Management. Our topic was a forthcoming report, also supported by FEMA, on subdivision design and flood hazard areas. How do we better design and review new developments to minimize or avoid damage from floods? The annual losses from poor handling of this issue can easily exceed any costs associated with anyone’s attendance at that event. It is important that our planners, engineers, and floodplain managers be aware of current best practices in this field. Impoverishing access of such public employees to professional education simply weakens the expertise and knowledge base of the people a city employees.

Simply put, if we are going to insist that public employees do their jobs well, we need to do two things. One, which is the diametrical opposite of what bills like these would achieve (and such proposed legislation is hardly limited to Illinois), is to ensure that our public servants have meaningful opportunities to improve their skills, to say nothing of meeting continuing education requirements for professional certification in their fields. The other is to insist that legislators do their own jobs by making an honest effort to determine whether their proposed legislation helps enrich the quality of service these employees can offer or is a simplistic smoke screen for being too intellectually lazy to undertake an honest evaluation of the true impact of their proposals. I repeat: This is yet another case of throwing the baby out with the bath water. It offers false economies that undermine the value of public service. Taxpayers do not gain; they lose.

Jim Schwab