Coastal Services Center

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Critical Facilities at Risk: Preparing Coastal Communities for Future Floods

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When Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf coast in August 2005, the storm surge flooded Mississippi’s Hancock County Emergency Operations Center with waist-deep water. Those manning the center had to create a human chain to evacuate.

In the flooding after Katrina, 35 residents at St. Rita’s Nursing Home in New Orleans died while trying to evacuate.

Many critical facilities in both Mississippi and Louisiana were either destroyed during the storm or were unusable afterwards because of flood damage or a lack of supplies and resources, such as power, potable water, food, and sanitation. In some cases, transportation infrastructure was so damaged that critical facilities could not be reached.

With the lessons of Hurricane Katrina still fresh, Larry Buss, a retired senior advisor and national expert with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the areas of flood risk management and nonstructural flood risk reduction, says coastal resource managers have a role in working with coastal communities to reduce flood risk and increase the resilience of critical facilities, such as hospitals, fire departments, utilities, evacuation shelters, and schools.

“Critical facilities are those that are essential to a community’s resiliency and sustainability” before, during, and in the days and weeks after a flood, Buss says. “Stated simply, critical facilities should never be flooded, and critical actions should never be conducted in floodplains.”

The flood risk to critical facilities across the country is such a concern that the Association of State Floodplain Managers (ASFPM) has issued a white paper outlining the problems and providing eight recommendations for federal, state, and local governments.

“I would encourage everyone to do their part to ensure their communities are more resilient,” says Al Goodman, state floodplain manager for Mississippi. “Katrina’s unprecedented storm surge damaged or destroyed critical facilities all along our 80 miles of coastline. When a local official states that all he has left is a shovel and a flashlight, it’s hard to coordinate and respond.”

Increasing Risk and Damage

“We began talking about critical facilities in the 1980s. These aren’t new concepts,” says Chad Berginnis, associate director of the ASFPM, a professional nonprofit organization dedicated to reducing flood losses and protecting floodplain functions and resources. “But in many cases, critical facilities are not recognized in association with their potential hazard risk.”

This is particularly a concern, says Buss, the lead author of the ASFPM white paper, because both flood risk and flood damage are increasing in the U.S., “despite many decades and billions of dollars spent trying to control floods, then to reduce flood damage, and now to reduce flood risk.”

Flood damage is increasing, they say, because construction is continuing to occur in high flood-risk areas and is often done without adequate mitigation for the existing flood hazard, much less future risks. Another issue is that when critical facilities are flooded, a community’s desire to rebuild quickly often usurps either the need to move the facility to higher ground or rebuild it to better withstand future flooding.

Deciding Factors

While flood damage is mostly thought about in economic terms, loss of life and human suffering, as well as loss of natural and beneficial floodplain functions, are important factors that coastal communities should take into account before deciding where future critical facilities should be sited, and before determining if current facilities should be relocated out of a floodplain or retrofitted to withstand a future flood.

Economically, the cost of a flood damaging a home versus a critical facility, such as a wastewater treatment plant, is often drastically different, Berginnis says. “A minor flood in a wastewater treatment facility could ruin hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of very specialized equipment that many communities could ill afford to purchase in the first place.”

While there is financial assistance available to communities if a flood is declared a federal disaster, Berginnis notes that after smaller floods, the cost of recovery comes out of community coffers.

“I believe the fundamental problem in this country and why flood damages are increasing is that many land use decision makers think dealing with flood damages is not a local responsibility and should be pushed up to the federal level,” Buss says. “Those decision makers say, ‘Why change how we make land use decisions if federal dollars will just roll in and help with response and recovery?’”

He adds, “Communities generally look at local economics first and often don’t look at loss of life and human suffering, which can occur when critical facilities are flooded and can no longer fulfill their function in response and recovery. This means that it takes longer for a community to get back to pre-flood levels of functionality.”

The natural and beneficial functions of floodplains must also be part of a community’s plan to achieve flood resilience and long-term sustainability, Buss says.

Needed Changes

While the ASFPM white paper calls for broad-scale changes by all levels of government to reduce the flood risk to critical facilities, there are areas where coastal resource managers could play a role.

One area of critical need, Buss says, is educating communities on the connection between land use decisions and flood risk responsibility and cost.

“The issue is that most communities—most people in general—ignore the presence of critical facilities in a floodplain,” Buss says. “They don’t realize what the critical facilities are during times of flood, and the importance of those facilities to the resilience of their community during a flood, and their ability to recover quickly after a flood.”

Coastal managers also can help communities incorporate resilience concepts into longer-range planning efforts, such as hazard mitigation plans, coastal management plans, and local comprehensive plans, Berginnis says.

Coastal management data and information on coastal processes, including sea level rise and other climate change impacts, can also augment state and local floodplain maps to improve decision-making, Berginnis says. “Particularly in coastal areas, flood maps that only show the 100-year floodplain don’t show the complete flood risk a community faces.”

Berginnis also encourages coastal managers to reach out to state floodplain and emergency managers to share information, participate on state hazard mitigation teams, and encourage other interagency collaboration.

Mississippi’s Goodman urges coastal managers to “do as many proactive things as you can to mitigate storm surge or flooding conditions. Money spent now will pay huge dividends later.”

Severe Awakening

Buss says he hopes the ASFPM white paper will result in a “rapid and severe awakening in regard to the need for higher levels of flood risk reduction and floodplain management for critical facilities.”

“We need to do whatever we can to give flood risk a high priority in land use decisions,” Buss says.

“In my professional experience,” Berginnis says, “I have worked several flood disasters, and time and time again critical facilities get damaged, needlessly so. This paper does capture the different issues and the broad range of actions that can be implemented at the federal, state, or local level.”

He adds, “This is personally an issue that is very near and dear to my heart. Any way we can lessen flood impacts on communities, that’s important. Hopefully, this paper will help highlight those issues.”

To view the Association of State Floodplain Managers’ “Critical Facilities and Flood Risk” white paper, point your browser to www.floods.org/ace-files/documentlibrary/ASFPM_Critical_Facilties_and_Flood_Risk_Nov_2010.pdf. For more information, contact Chad Berginnis at (608) 274-0123 or cberginnis@floods.org, or Larry Buss at (402) 995-2300 or l-bbuss@iowatelecom.net. For information on how Mississippi addressed critical facilities after Hurricane Katrina, contact Al Goodman at (601) 933-6884 or agoodman@mema.ms.gov.

 

Recommendations

Here is a summary of the eight recommendations the Association of State Floodplain Managers (ASFPM) has for reducing the flood risk to critical facilities, with an emphasis on the role of coastal managers. For the complete list, go to www.floods.org/ace-files/documentlibrary/ASFPM_Critical_Facilties_and_Flood_Risk_Nov_2010.pdf.

Reconnect land use decisions and flood risk responsibility and cost. Funding and financing construction or repair of facilities should be based on land use decisions that incorporate resilience and long-term sustainability. Communication and education for communities on the importance of flood risk and appropriate land use decisions is a critical need.

Ensure that communities are aware of their critical facilities. Community hazard mitigation plans should inventory and assess susceptibility of critical facilities and identify potential mitigation actions.

Shift flood risk management thinking from "short term" to "long term" by not externalizing costs of poor land-siting decisions and requiring long-term planning.

Issue an updated federal executive order (EO) on floodplain management to replace the 34-year-old EO 11988. The nation should be moving to a "no, or minimal flood risk" environment by incorporating the concept of "no flood risk" into every land use decision.

Provide accurate floodplain information for communities. Incorporating information that reflects future conditions must be a high priority within communities and within agencies at the state and federal levels.

Adopt or update state executive orders on floodplain management dealing with critical facilities to ensure that state facilities are operable to at least the 500-year flood level.

Shift the understanding of who pays for "at-risk" development in order to support good community decision-making, and fully implement the concepts of "No Adverse Impact."

Incorporate higher minimum standards for critical facilities to reflect their importance to the community and future conditions.