FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Assistance Division is attempting to speed up disaster relief with its Swift Current program. The goal is to shorten the disaster/repair cycle for repetitively flooded or substantially damaged properties.
According to a FEMA press release, “Swift Current strives to better align the delivery of flood mitigation funding with the disaster survivor experience. Swift Current seeks to speed up the availability of flood mitigation funding to disaster survivors.”
Rather than rely on annual grant cycles, Swift Current makes money available immediately from a pool of $3.5 billion under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. This is the second of several rounds of assistance.
The application period for this round opened on Nov. 15, 2023 and will close on Jan. 15, 2025. The funding opportunity is available on Grants.gov.
Eligibility Criteria
For Fiscal Year 2023, Swift Current Flood Mitigation Assistance will offer $300 million after flood disasters for eligible individual flood mitigation projects. Eligible projects include:
Repetitively flooded or substantially damaged properties…
Insured by the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP)…
Following a flood-related disaster event.
Local government agencies must apply for grants first; individuals will be considered sub-applicants and must apply through the local government agency.
You or your local government relief agency can use grants to:
Acquire property, demolish structures and relocate residents
Elevate structures
Dry flood-proof historic residential structures or non-residential structures
Retrofit existing structures and facilities
Mitigate reconstruction
Applicants will meet eligibility criteria if they have received a major disaster declaration for a flood-related disaster event between June 1, 2023 – May 31, 2024. Flood-related disaster events include coastal storms, hurricanes, remnants of hurricanes, and floods. Additionally, one of the following criteria must be met:
The state has at least $1 million in prior National Flood Insurance Program claims from June 1, 2022 to disasters declared before May 31, 2024.
The state has 500 or more National Flood Insurance Program claims in a declared flood-related disaster event from June 1, 2022 to May 31, 2024.
75% – 100% Federal Cost Share
Swift Current funds for individual flood-mitigation projects fall into several different categories:
Repetitive Loss
Severe Repetitive Loss
Substantially Damaged
Socially Vulnerable
See below. The federal match varies depending on the category.
All eligible applicants must submit their FY 2023 Swift Current grant applications to FEMA via Mitigation eGrants. Upon Swift Current activation, the application deadline date will be provided to the applicant. All applications must be received by the deadline.
Local governments should consult with their state, tribal, or territorial agency to confirm deadline to submit subapplications for consideration.
This program is sorely needed and highly welcome. I know people whose homes have not yet been repaired from Hurricane Harvey in 2017.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 11/24/23 with thanks to Congressman Dan Crenshaw
2278 Days since Hurricane Harvey
https://i0.wp.com/reduceflooding.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/20231124-Screenshot-2023-11-24-at-11.30.13%E2%80%AFAM.jpg?fit=1100%2C487&ssl=14871100adminadmin2023-11-24 13:05:042023-11-24 20:54:47FEMA’s Swift Current Program Attempts to Speed Up Disaster Recovery Assistance
Part 3 of a 3-part series – In Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, I discussed root causes of flood damage. Today, let’s start a community brainstorming session about possible ways to address the issues. I’ll briefly summarize each of the root causes, then list three or four ideas to address them. What are your thoughts?
Unreliable Predictions of Future Rainfall
We can’t do anything about the amount of rain that falls from the sky. We can only control how we prepare for it.
Where do we build homes?
How high do we build them?
How much drainage capacity should we build in new subdivisions?
How much impervious cover should we allow?
How much stormwater detention capacity will it take to protect people downstream?
The amount of rainfall we predict forms the design basis for answers to all those questions and more. If you get the prediction wrong, you get the infrastructure wrong. Homes and businesses flood.
Compared to extreme rainfall estimates used through the 1990s, 100-year/24-hour estimates for Houston increased from 13 inches to 18 inches. 100-year events under the old system are now 25-year events.
If you designed a ditch to hold 13 inches of rain and got 18, where would that extra 5 inches go?
It would pond in streets, homes and businesses. The diagram below shows the difference.
Relative cross-sections of a ditch needed to accommodate a 100-year rainfall before and after Atlas 14.
Extreme rainfall probability estimates in this region have increased only twice since the 1960s. So there’s a lot of stormwater infrastructure around us built to old standards. It’s now under capacity. The problem is even worse in older parts of the city.
What can we do to improve reliability of our predictions and minimize this disconnect?
Build larger safety margins into both estimates and regulations. Instead of building one or two feet above the 100-year floodplain, build even higher.
Incorporate a rate of increase for potential climate change. (Note: NOAA is already working on this.)
Conflicting Floodplain Standards and Building Codes
Rural areas around Houston often still use older design standards. Lower standards help attract development because they lower developers’ costs. And more development fuels growth and tax revenue.
But it’s a dangerous bargain. Insufficient mitigation can flood people downstream. And as the region expands, insufficient mitigation will eventually cause even those recently developed areas to flood.
So, how can we get the entire choir singing from the same songbook?
Adopt a statewide or regional approach to development standards that affect flooding.
Create a regional flood authority.
Raise awareness of increased risk in/from areas with lower standards.
Building Too Close to Threats
People often build too close to flood risks, such as rivers. Developers love the cheap land and buyers love proximity to water. Until the floods come, it’s a “win-win” relationship propped up by the availability of nationally subsidized flood insurance. Then people realize they’ve been lulled into a false sense of security and they demand help.
But there may be no room for mitigation. To widen channels or build stormwater detention basins, HCFCD must sometimes buy out whole neighborhoods. That raises costs, extends mitigation timelines, and often creates political conflict.
Possible solutions:
Buy up green corridors along streams before areas develop. Use it for recreation to enhance community health and home values.
Require greater setbacks from rivers, streams, channels and detention basins to create room for future expansion.
Eliminate grandfathering clauses in floodplain regs that allow development in areas that we know will soon become floodways when new maps are released.
Change Benefit/Cost Ratios so that the purchase of raw land next to streams qualifies for federal grants before development occurs. Buying undeveloped land costs less than buying developed. But it’s difficult to estimate the future benefit of conserving undeveloped land.
Upstream Changes that Undermine Downstream Assumptions
Upstream development should not create “adverse impacts” downstream. But it frequently does. It can increase the amount of runoff; increase sedimentation; and make flood peaks build faster, higher, more frequently.
Suddenly, all those design assumptions for roads and developments downstream become invalid.
What do we do?
Protect green spaces next to rivers, streams and channels.
Tax floodplain development at higher rates.
Beef up enforcement to make sure developers don’t cut corners.
Ensure everyone plays by same rules.
Difficulty of Adapting to Those Changes Downstream
Once an area builds out, it’s difficult to expand stormwater infrastructure.
Historical Unwillingness to Fund Flood Mitigation at Meaningful Levels
As memories of major storms recede, so does the sense of urgency to prepare for the next ones. Historically, we have underfunded flood mitigation. Before Harvey, for instance, HCFCD’s budget averaged only $120 million per year.
Increase awareness of issues throughout the region; build consensus around solutions.
Communicate value being created…consistently.
Eliminate political interference in flood control; let professional engineers do their jobs.
Final Recommendations
Making such changes happen will take civic engagement by large numbers of people with a long view. It will also require putting public interest above self interest.
Politicians respond to voters. But they also respond to special interests.
In the end, our leaders must balance competing interests. Reducing future flooding will take relentless incremental change on many fronts. Even when memories of the last disaster fade.
Invitation to Comment
What are your thoughts on ways to mitigate the root causes of flood damage? Please send to me via the contact page of this web site. Remember to indicate whether I can use your name or you need to remain anonymous. I’ll make sure our leaders see your ideas either way.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 11/22/23
2276 Days since Hurricane Harvey
The thoughts expressed in this post represent opinions on matters of public concern and safety. They are protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution and the Anti-SLAPP Statute of the Great State of Texas.
https://i0.wp.com/reduceflooding.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/HumbleFlooding.jpg?fit=1500%2C839&ssl=18391500adminadmin2023-11-22 12:25:072023-11-22 12:25:09Mitigating Root Causes of Flood Damage
Second in a 3-part Series on the Root Causes of Flood Damage – Yesterday, I posted about three root causes of flood damage. Beyond “too much rain,” they included:
Inaccurate predictions of future rainfall – Why we don’t expect enough and therefore underestimate risk.
Conflicting standards and building codes – How some jurisdictions fail to update and enforce floodplain standards/building codes as a way to compete for development.
Building too close to threats – How some people invest too much confidence in engineering stamps and government approval, and begin thinking of them as safety guarantees.
Today, I’ll discuss three more root causes of flood damage:
Upstream changes that undermine downstream assumptions
Difficulty of adapting to those changes downstream
Historical unwillingness to fund flood mitigation at meaningful levels
Through this series, I hope to distill key lessons from thousands of observations during the last six years.
Upstream Changes that Undermine Downstream Assumptions
As development expands upstream, it sometimes changes the landscape in ways that increase flood risk for people downstream.
The standard in the development industry is to create “no adverse impact.” However, it doesn’t always work out that way as this tragic story dramatizes.
People living downstream from Woodridge along Taylor Gully in Kingwood had never flooded, even during Harvey. Then they flooded twice in 2019 – AFTER Perry Homes and its contractors clearcut 270 acres of forested wetlands upstream.
Montgomery County Appraisal District Records and Interviews
Then Perry Homes bought the steeply sloping land. Their engineer’s plan called for clearing a section, developing stormwater detention basins for it, then moving on to the next section.
But contractors clearcut and graded the entire area all at once, increasing flood risk. Detention basins were only 7% complete at the time of the first flood and less than 23% at the time of the second. Many Elm Grove residents downstream had just finished refurbishing their homes from the first flood when the second struck.
During the ensuing lawsuit and investigation, it came out that Perry’s soil testing firm had taken samples outside of the known wetland areas. Thus, they overestimated the rate of infiltration by up to 10X.
And LJA, their engineering firm, said there were no floodplains. In reality, the floodplains were there; they just hadn’t been mapped – a tragic misrepresentation. The flood survey simply stopped at the county line.
Lawsuits followed. Perry Homes blamed the victims. LJA denied responsibility, saying they owed “no duty” to victims. But investigation showed many problems with their construction practices.
Even had they built the entire detention capacity specified in the plans before the September storm hit, the site would have been 40% short of new Atlas 14 requirements. Montgomery County had not yet adopted Atlas 14. This would have created a deficit in perpetuity.
In addition to damaging the homes of up to 600 downstream residents, sediment discharged from the site also reduced the capacity of Taylor Gully. Harris County Flood Control (HCFCD) had to clean it out and is now looking for ways to expand channel capacity.
After all that, Perry Homes still blamed the flooding on Acts of God, a common ploy in flooding lawsuits.
Had HCFCD and the City of Houston not purchased the property and started increasing detention capacity, downstream residents would likely suffer from more flooding in the future. The only alternative would have been to raise approximately 600 homes.
Perry and its contractors eventually settled the lawsuit two years after the second flood.
Difficulty of Adapting Downstream to Upstream Changes
Luckily, the purchase of the Perry property happened while there was still open land available to increase flood mitigation. That’s not always the case.
Sometimes, homes, schools, and businesses are built before the flood potential is discovered. Then, mitigation becomes much more difficult.
Properties – or even entire subdivisions – must be bought out before channels or stormwater detention capacity can expand.
Halls Bayou provides two examples near I-69. Note the two subdivisions inside the giant detention basins that bracket the freeway.
Streets inside detention basins no longer exist.
This area used to be farmland. Then it rapidly developed. It looks like this today.
Buyouts for the two giant stormwater detention basins started in 2002 after Tropical Storm Allison.
Then HCFCD had to get permits from the City of Houston to demolish the streets. That took several more years.
Construction took three years for each basin; they were completed in 2015 and 2018.
Start to finish, the detention basins took 13 to 16 years.
During that time, we went through Memorial Day, Tax Day and Harvey floods. Those storms, along with Allison and Imelda damaged more than 25,000 structures in the watershed, according to HCFCD Federal Reports, making it one of the most flood-prone in the county.
Worse, we no longer have easy flood-mitigation solutions in this watershed. Even with hundreds of millions of dollars from the GLO, mitigating flood damage will be difficult, expensive and time consuming. It will also be politically controversial because it will likely displace families and even whole neighborhoods.
Historical Unwillingness to Fund Flood Mitigation at Meaningful Levels
Another root cause of flood damage is historical unwillingness to fund flood mitigation at meaningful levels.
We tend to spend more on correction than prevention as you can see from the Woodridge Village example above.
Before the 2018 Flood Bond, HCFCD sometimes had to save up years to build one detention basin.
There was a bump in funding after TS Allison in 2001. But then, for the most part, mitigation spending averaged about $120 million per year through Harvey. Then, we had a large bump in spending with the flood bond.
A greater focus on prevention of flood damage through higher floodplain development standards, monitoring and enforcement could make more money available for mitigation.
Tomorrow, I will focus on more ideas that address the other root causes of flood damage.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 11/20/2023
2274 Days since Hurricane Harvey
The thoughts expressed in this post represent opinions on matters of public concern and safety. They are protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution and the Anti-SLAPP Statute of the Great State of Texas.
https://i0.wp.com/reduceflooding.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Screenshot-2023-11-20-at-4.18.25%E2%80%AFAM-e1700475638495.png?fit=1100%2C699&ssl=16991100adminadmin2023-11-20 09:48:492023-11-20 10:16:12Root Causes of Flood Damage, Part II
FEMA’s Swift Current Program Attempts to Speed Up Disaster Recovery Assistance
FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Assistance Division is attempting to speed up disaster relief with its Swift Current program. The goal is to shorten the disaster/repair cycle for repetitively flooded or substantially damaged properties.
According to a FEMA press release, “Swift Current strives to better align the delivery of flood mitigation funding with the disaster survivor experience. Swift Current seeks to speed up the availability of flood mitigation funding to disaster survivors.”
Rather than rely on annual grant cycles, Swift Current makes money available immediately from a pool of $3.5 billion under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. This is the second of several rounds of assistance.
The application period for this round opened on Nov. 15, 2023 and will close on Jan. 15, 2025. The funding opportunity is available on Grants.gov.
Eligibility Criteria
For Fiscal Year 2023, Swift Current Flood Mitigation Assistance will offer $300 million after flood disasters for eligible individual flood mitigation projects. Eligible projects include:
Local government agencies must apply for grants first; individuals will be considered sub-applicants and must apply through the local government agency.
You or your local government relief agency can use grants to:
Applicants will meet eligibility criteria if they have received a major disaster declaration for a flood-related disaster event between June 1, 2023 – May 31, 2024. Flood-related disaster events include coastal storms, hurricanes, remnants of hurricanes, and floods. Additionally, one of the following criteria must be met:
75% – 100% Federal Cost Share
Swift Current funds for individual flood-mitigation projects fall into several different categories:
See below. The federal match varies depending on the category.
For a higher resolution PDF, see FEMA PDF here.
Application Information
All eligible applicants must submit their FY 2023 Swift Current grant applications to FEMA via Mitigation eGrants. Upon Swift Current activation, the application deadline date will be provided to the applicant. All applications must be received by the deadline.
Local governments should consult with their state, tribal, or territorial agency to confirm deadline to submit subapplications for consideration.
For more information about the program and how to apply, visit FEMA’s Swift Current Page.
This program is sorely needed and highly welcome. I know people whose homes have not yet been repaired from Hurricane Harvey in 2017.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 11/24/23 with thanks to Congressman Dan Crenshaw
2278 Days since Hurricane Harvey
Mitigating Root Causes of Flood Damage
Part 3 of a 3-part series – In Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, I discussed root causes of flood damage. Today, let’s start a community brainstorming session about possible ways to address the issues. I’ll briefly summarize each of the root causes, then list three or four ideas to address them. What are your thoughts?
Unreliable Predictions of Future Rainfall
We can’t do anything about the amount of rain that falls from the sky. We can only control how we prepare for it.
The amount of rainfall we predict forms the design basis for answers to all those questions and more. If you get the prediction wrong, you get the infrastructure wrong. Homes and businesses flood.
But those predictions are a moving target. Research indicates the number and magnitude of extreme rainfall events is increasing worldwide.
Compared to extreme rainfall estimates used through the 1990s, 100-year/24-hour estimates for Houston increased from 13 inches to 18 inches. 100-year events under the old system are now 25-year events.
It would pond in streets, homes and businesses. The diagram below shows the difference.
Extreme rainfall probability estimates in this region have increased only twice since the 1960s. So there’s a lot of stormwater infrastructure around us built to old standards. It’s now under capacity. The problem is even worse in older parts of the city.
What can we do to improve reliability of our predictions and minimize this disconnect?
Conflicting Floodplain Standards and Building Codes
Rural areas around Houston often still use older design standards. Lower standards help attract development because they lower developers’ costs. And more development fuels growth and tax revenue.
But it’s a dangerous bargain. Insufficient mitigation can flood people downstream. And as the region expands, insufficient mitigation will eventually cause even those recently developed areas to flood.
So, how can we get the entire choir singing from the same songbook?
Building Too Close to Threats
People often build too close to flood risks, such as rivers. Developers love the cheap land and buyers love proximity to water. Until the floods come, it’s a “win-win” relationship propped up by the availability of nationally subsidized flood insurance. Then people realize they’ve been lulled into a false sense of security and they demand help.
But there may be no room for mitigation. To widen channels or build stormwater detention basins, HCFCD must sometimes buy out whole neighborhoods. That raises costs, extends mitigation timelines, and often creates political conflict.
Possible solutions:
Upstream Changes that Undermine Downstream Assumptions
Upstream development should not create “adverse impacts” downstream. But it frequently does. It can increase the amount of runoff; increase sedimentation; and make flood peaks build faster, higher, more frequently.
Suddenly, all those design assumptions for roads and developments downstream become invalid.
What do we do?
Difficulty of Adapting to Those Changes Downstream
Once an area builds out, it’s difficult to expand stormwater infrastructure.
How can we retain flexibility for the future?
Historical Unwillingness to Fund Flood Mitigation at Meaningful Levels
As memories of major storms recede, so does the sense of urgency to prepare for the next ones. Historically, we have underfunded flood mitigation. Before Harvey, for instance, HCFCD’s budget averaged only $120 million per year.
Final Recommendations
Making such changes happen will take civic engagement by large numbers of people with a long view. It will also require putting public interest above self interest.
Politicians respond to voters. But they also respond to special interests.
In the end, our leaders must balance competing interests. Reducing future flooding will take relentless incremental change on many fronts. Even when memories of the last disaster fade.
Invitation to Comment
What are your thoughts on ways to mitigate the root causes of flood damage? Please send to me via the contact page of this web site. Remember to indicate whether I can use your name or you need to remain anonymous. I’ll make sure our leaders see your ideas either way.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 11/22/23
2276 Days since Hurricane Harvey
The thoughts expressed in this post represent opinions on matters of public concern and safety. They are protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution and the Anti-SLAPP Statute of the Great State of Texas.
Root Causes of Flood Damage, Part II
Second in a 3-part Series on the Root Causes of Flood Damage – Yesterday, I posted about three root causes of flood damage. Beyond “too much rain,” they included:
Today, I’ll discuss three more root causes of flood damage:
Through this series, I hope to distill key lessons from thousands of observations during the last six years.
Upstream Changes that Undermine Downstream Assumptions
As development expands upstream, it sometimes changes the landscape in ways that increase flood risk for people downstream.
The standard in the development industry is to create “no adverse impact.” However, it doesn’t always work out that way as this tragic story dramatizes.
People living downstream from Woodridge along Taylor Gully in Kingwood had never flooded, even during Harvey. Then they flooded twice in 2019 – AFTER Perry Homes and its contractors clearcut 270 acres of forested wetlands upstream.
Then Perry Homes bought the steeply sloping land. Their engineer’s plan called for clearing a section, developing stormwater detention basins for it, then moving on to the next section.
But contractors clearcut and graded the entire area all at once, increasing flood risk. Detention basins were only 7% complete at the time of the first flood and less than 23% at the time of the second. Many Elm Grove residents downstream had just finished refurbishing their homes from the first flood when the second struck.
During the ensuing lawsuit and investigation, it came out that Perry’s soil testing firm had taken samples outside of the known wetland areas. Thus, they overestimated the rate of infiltration by up to 10X.
And LJA, their engineering firm, said there were no floodplains. In reality, the floodplains were there; they just hadn’t been mapped – a tragic misrepresentation. The flood survey simply stopped at the county line.
Lawsuits followed. Perry Homes blamed the victims. LJA denied responsibility, saying they owed “no duty” to victims. But investigation showed many problems with their construction practices.
Contractors failed to:
Even had they built the entire detention capacity specified in the plans before the September storm hit, the site would have been 40% short of new Atlas 14 requirements. Montgomery County had not yet adopted Atlas 14. This would have created a deficit in perpetuity.
In addition to damaging the homes of up to 600 downstream residents, sediment discharged from the site also reduced the capacity of Taylor Gully. Harris County Flood Control (HCFCD) had to clean it out and is now looking for ways to expand channel capacity.
HCFCD also purchased the Perry property with the City of Houston. HCFCD is doubling the site’s stormwater detention capacity.
After all that, Perry Homes still blamed the flooding on Acts of God, a common ploy in flooding lawsuits.
Had HCFCD and the City of Houston not purchased the property and started increasing detention capacity, downstream residents would likely suffer from more flooding in the future. The only alternative would have been to raise approximately 600 homes.
Perry and its contractors eventually settled the lawsuit two years after the second flood.
Difficulty of Adapting Downstream to Upstream Changes
Luckily, the purchase of the Perry property happened while there was still open land available to increase flood mitigation. That’s not always the case.
Sometimes, homes, schools, and businesses are built before the flood potential is discovered. Then, mitigation becomes much more difficult.
Properties – or even entire subdivisions – must be bought out before channels or stormwater detention capacity can expand.
Halls Bayou provides two examples near I-69. Note the two subdivisions inside the giant detention basins that bracket the freeway.
This area used to be farmland. Then it rapidly developed. It looks like this today.
Buyouts for the two giant stormwater detention basins started in 2002 after Tropical Storm Allison.
Then HCFCD had to get permits from the City of Houston to demolish the streets. That took several more years.
Construction took three years for each basin; they were completed in 2015 and 2018.
During that time, we went through Memorial Day, Tax Day and Harvey floods. Those storms, along with Allison and Imelda damaged more than 25,000 structures in the watershed, according to HCFCD Federal Reports, making it one of the most flood-prone in the county.
Worse, we no longer have easy flood-mitigation solutions in this watershed. Even with hundreds of millions of dollars from the GLO, mitigating flood damage will be difficult, expensive and time consuming. It will also be politically controversial because it will likely displace families and even whole neighborhoods.
Historical Unwillingness to Fund Flood Mitigation at Meaningful Levels
Another root cause of flood damage is historical unwillingness to fund flood mitigation at meaningful levels.
We tend to spend more on correction than prevention as you can see from the Woodridge Village example above.
Before the 2018 Flood Bond, HCFCD sometimes had to save up years to build one detention basin.
There was a bump in funding after TS Allison in 2001. But then, for the most part, mitigation spending averaged about $120 million per year through Harvey. Then, we had a large bump in spending with the flood bond.
A greater focus on prevention of flood damage through higher floodplain development standards, monitoring and enforcement could make more money available for mitigation.
Tomorrow, I will focus on more ideas that address the other root causes of flood damage.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 11/20/2023
2274 Days since Hurricane Harvey
The thoughts expressed in this post represent opinions on matters of public concern and safety. They are protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution and the Anti-SLAPP Statute of the Great State of Texas.