Description

1) Kentucky Division of Water's Eastern Kentucky Flood Response
Carey Johnson, CFM, Kentucky Division of Water, carey.johnson@ky.gov
Co-presenters: Mike Greene, mike.greene@stantec.com; Ben Conley, benjamin.conley@aecom.com

Abstract: Late July 2022, thirteen counties in Eastern Kentucky experienced catastrophic flooding. Kentuckians, who have lived on their land for generations, lost everything in a matter of hours. Ultimately 39 lives were lost because of the devastating record flooding that occurred. For those that remained, they were left with crippled infrastructure from essential facilities lost. Members of KDOW, KYEM, KYTC, and other state agencies as well as national entities including FEMA, EPA, and USACE came together to lend their respective expertise in transformative data sharing and analyses to assess and act swiftly to support Eastern Kentucky. DOW is responsible for helping citizens of the Commonwealth understand, prepare for, and mitigate potential flooding risk. Prior to the July 2022 Eastern Kentucky Flooding event, the state was in the process of updating the flood hazards across most of the impacted counties. In sharing these results with the partner agencies, the focus shifted to assess the impacted infrastructure under DOW’s purview: the water and wastewater systems. Considering most of this infrastructure was buried, aged, and inadequate before the record flooding, assessing the impacts from the storm proved to be no simple task. DOW relied upon community disaster response evaluations, reported outages, GIS infrastructure mapping, and aerial imagery of impacts to intersect with the updated flood hazards. The resulting assessment was shared with the partner agencies in their response with local communities in their recovery efforts. A web map was compiled with all draft preliminary flood hazard data along with water surface elevations and building footprints. Following the disaster, DOW deployed personnel to aid in floodplain permit applications so local communities could begin building back their livelihoods. This presentation will show that Eastern Kentucky has always been a resilient community, and DOW’s informed decision-making tools will help to make those community’s mitigation efforts even greater.

2) Simplifying Substantial Damage Estimates (SDEs) for Rapid Deployment
Traci Sears, CFM, MT DNRC, tsears@mt.gov
Co-presenters: Maria Cox, Cox@dnr.sc.gov; Anthony Moritz, Anthony.Moritz@mt.gov

Abstract: It is critical for local communities to get SDE information as soon as possible, but the very thought of conducting SDEs after a large disaster can overwhelm most floodplain managers. In June 2022 Montana was impacted by historic floods. The State Montana with the assistance and guidance of South Carolina were able to provide rapid response and support to local communities. Presenters will provide information on responding to the local and state request for support and understanding the SDE process. Additional lessons learned include innovative spreadsheet that helped simplify the SDE process, how SDE teams were put together to maximize response time, utilizing reporting tools in the field, merging existing land use data, SDE tailored results for the local community and community follow-up.

3) Making New York State more resilient to flooding and ice jamming
Mark Carabetta, PWS, CFM, SLR, mcarabetta@slrconsulting.com
Co-presenters: Mieke Scherpbier, SLR, mscherpbier@slrconsulting.com

Abstract: In the early 2010’s, New York State was hit by a series of storms, including Hurricanes Irene and Sandy, causing widespread flood damage. In response, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation created the Resilient NY Program, which has a goal of improving community resiliency to extreme weather events that result in flooding and ice jam formations. In this presentation we will provide an overview of the Resilient NY Program, discuss unique characteristics of the watersheds we’ve studied, share lessons learned about stakeholder engagement, and provide examples of hydraulic and ice jam analyses we’ve undertaken and flood mitigation strategies we’ve recommended through the course of our studies. The presentation will feature examples of successful flood mitigation projects that have advanced from the study phase, to engineering design, to construction.