Barriers to Floodplain Management in Rural Communities

What does a small town or a rural community mean to you? Steve Samuelson, CFM, the National Flood Insurance Program Coordinator for the State of Kansas, repeated this question over the course of his presentation during EESI’s briefing series, Rural Communities, Climate, and COVID-19 Recovery.

In Kansas, a small town can mean a community of 10,000 or fewer than 100 people. Through Samuelson’s extensive work across this range of communities, he has identified some of the specific challenges faced by rural communities when it comes to managing floodplains: inadequate or non-existent flood maps, lack of staff and resources to meet community needs, barriers to access federal programs, and misalignment between federal funding and community action.

 

Inadequate or Non-Existent Flood Maps

As Samuelson began his presentation, he shared the map below, explaining, “This map of Kansas has some white areas on it. Those white areas are counties that do not now nor have they ever had a flood map created for them by the federal government.” He continued, “The National Flood Insurance Program [NFIP] has existed since 1968. In over half a century, no flood maps have been made for large portions of the country. The Association of State Floodplain Managers has a white paper [describing this omission] called Flood Mapping for the Nation.”

Credit:  Joanna Rohlf, Cooperating Technical Partners

The absence of flood maps precipitates further issues for these rural areas, including confusion regarding flood risks and an inability to access federal flood insurance and mitigation resources. Samuelson elaborated, “Now one of my challenges in helping rural communities in Kansas is that I've got citizens who don't believe they have flood risk, and the reason they don't believe their flood risk is because the federal government never made them a flood map. I also have citizens that believe they do have flood risk, and they want to mitigate that flood risk, but it's very difficult without the flood information associated with a flood map.”

 

Barriers to Access Federal Programs

Because of their small size and lower property values, rural communities in Kansas do not receive the same federal attention as their more urban counterparts. Samuelson used the example of Strong City, Kansas, to illustrate the barriers small communities face when trying to access federal programs:

Strong City flooded three times. Got flooded in May, got flooded in June, and got flooded in July. In spite of all that flooding, they never saw anybody from FEMA. Not one of their citizens ever got a dime from FEMA because you'd have to flood about a hundred small towns in Kansas all at the same time from the same event to meet the dollar requirements for a presidential disaster declaration. So, these communities are not getting presidential disaster declarations; they're not getting the mitigation dollars that are associated with a disaster declaration.

Although unable to access FEMA disaster funding, Strong City and other towns across Kansas are still interested in mitigating their vulnerability to future flood events. One federal tool to support this work is FEMA’s Community Rating System (CRS), which incentivizes floodplain management by providing flood insurance discounts. Samuelson explained that, while it is a good program, it caters to larger cities:

Small towns have a hard time joining CRS. When you join the community rating system, or CRS, you have to have computer-generated geographic information systems mapping—GIS maps. Strong City doesn't have a GIS department, so my staff and I make all of the CRS maps for all the rural communities that want to join the CRS program in the State of Kansas.

I say my staff and I—it's two of us—myself and one other person. We get funding through a program that’s called the Community Assistance Program State Support Services Element, and because that program funds two people, I have 732 incorporated cities and unincorporated counties in the state of Kansas, so two people are meeting all the floodplain management needs and giving all the advice and all the help we can to 732 communities, all at the same time.”

 

Lack of Staff and Resources to Meet Community Needs

Minimal staff and resources, as described by Samuelson, both within cities and towns and at the state level, mean that it is nearly impossible to generate the data needed for communities to participate in helpful federal programs like CRS. Samuelson noted that many small towns do not have any paid staff—not even a full-time mayor or city clerk. This makes everything from organizing meetings to writing federal grant applications an uphill climb.

 

Misalignment Between Federal Funding and Community Action

Despite their small size, many municipalities in Kansas are taking steps to reduce the impacts of flooding on their infrastructure and homes. In the case of Strong City, as described by Samuelson below, those efforts backfired when their proactive steps to reduce flooding meant they could not access federal funding to build upon and scale up their work.

Strong City, our town of 583 people, they have a highway that runs into town. It's got this culvert under it. On the north side of the highway there are houses. On the south side of the highway there is a stream. The problem arises when it rains on both sides of the highway at the same time.

Courtesy: Steve Samuelson

When that happens, the volunteer fire department—unpaid volunteers—come out there in the middle of the night, set up a pump, and pump water across the road and close the highway (pictured).

Strong City asked for a mitigation grant to put in a small, flood-proof pump house right here near this culvert, where they could pump water under the road and not have to close the highway. One person could go there and flip a switch. You wouldn't need a crew from the volunteer fire department. That would help protect those houses and keep the road open.

Unfortunately, when they applied for their mitigation grant, the grant was denied. You see, when you apply for a mitigation grant ... you have to prove that for every dollar you're gonna spend, you're gonna have one dollar in losses avoided. Unfortunately, Strong City has done a wonderful job of avoiding losses, so they didn't have a history of homes being flooded thanks to that volunteer fire department. So, the fact that they've done a good job has meant that their grant was denied.

Someday their truck will malfunction or their pump will fail, and the houses will flood. At that point, we'll qualify for a mitigation grant. But it seems a shame we have to let the houses flood before we can do that.

 

Many small-town leaders are adept at crafting creative solutions within the confines of small budgets and with few—or no—paid staff. But, as Samuelson observed, “Small towns can't do it on their own.” There are a host of active federal programs Samuelson flagged in his presentation, including the Cooperating Technical Partners (CTP), the Community Assistance Program's State Support Services Element, the Community Rating System (CRS), Dam Safety programs, and Hazard Mitigation Assistance grants, that exist to help cities and towns manage their floodplains. Yet, small, rural communities face significant barriers to access these programs—a challenge in need of federal attention.

To learn more, watch EESI’s briefing series, Rural Communities, Climate, and COVID-19. Steve Samuelson’s presentation is featured in the briefing, Rural Communities Rise to the Challenge of Dual Disasters.

 

Author: Anna McGinn