Thomas Breen photo
Water resources consultant Murphy with a FEMA Flood Insurance Rate Map (FIRM) of downtown New Haven.
Anticipating higher sea levels, harsher hurricanes, and more frequent floods in the not-too-distant future as a result of climate change, officials are embarking on an outreach campaign to inform residents in flood-prone neighborhoods about how best to protect themselves against the threat of rising water.
They are also pointing residents to a 15 percent, nationally-subsidized discount on flood insurance that New Haveners are now eligible for thanks to the city’s recent efforts to bolster and protect its floodplains.
The latest stop on the city’s floodplain awareness tour came this past Tuesday night, as City Plan Department staffer Susmitha Attota and water resources planning consultant David Murphy presented background information and flood protection tips to the Downtown-Wooster Square Community Management Team (DWSCMT) during its regular monthly meeting at City Hall.
Attota and Murphy have made similar presentations to the Quinnipiac East and East Shore community management teams in recent months, and are planning upcoming presentations for residents of West River and Fair Haven.
“Who in this room has been going to the same part of the shoreline your whole life?” asked Murphy, who is the manager of water resources planning for the consultancy firm Milone & Macbroom, and has been working with the city to help develop its floodplain management plans and relevant community outreach.
“If you’ve fished from the same bridge, if you’ve lived near the same abutment, you’ve probably noticed that flooding is happening a little bit more every year.”
FEMA
FEMA’s National Flood Hazard Layer map of downtown New Haven. The areas in blue are classified by FEMA as a 1% annual chance flood hazard.
He referenced National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) data showing that New Haven has experienced six floods in the last five years, including one conventional flood and two flash floods in May and June of 2014. Most of these recent floods have taken place downtown and on the Route 34 ramp.
According to NOAA, a conventional flood occurs when water overflows onto a normally dry land for a period of days or weeks, while a flash flood is caused by heavy rainfall over a period of hours.
He also noted that NOAA, the United States Geological Society (USGS), and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) estimate that relative sea level on the Connecticut coast is projected to rise one to eight feet above 2000 levels by 2100.
“When you hear about climate change and all the uncertainties,” he said, “it’s not uncertainty that it’s happening. It’s uncertainty of how exactly it’s going to unfold.”
This threat of rising sea levels and increased flooding has a very real cost. According to Murphy, the street damages, downed trees, and other wears on municipal infrastructure that resulted from Superstorm Sandy in 2012 cost the city well over $3 million to clean up. He estimates that 75 percent of those costs were reimbursed by the federal government.
Attota and Murphy did not show up to the meeting simply to warn of the dangerous reality of flooding and storm damage. They were also eager to talk about how the city has been working to protect its residents from flooding, particularly considering that 1,901 acres of city land (which is around 15 percent of the city’s total square mileage) falls within what the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) calls special flood hazard areas, or 100-year flood zones.
Murphy cited five key strategies that the city uses to protect New Haven residents, property, and resources from flooding: public education, enforcing floodplain ordinances, stormwater and drainage system management, emergency management, and property protection. In practice, these strategies include everything from enforcing building code regulations and zoning ordinances for developments in floodplains, to making sure that the city’s emergency notifications systems are up to date, to implementing 200 bioswales throughout the city by 2019.
Attendees at Tuesday night’s DWSCMT meeting.
According to the city’s latest Natural Hazard Mitigation Plan, which was approved by FEMA in April 2017 and which describes the city’s plans for reducing long-term risks presented by flooding, hurricanes, earthquakes, and other natural disasters, the city has completed a number of capital projects since 2011 that directly address flooding hazards.
These include the cleaning of the Hemingway and Eastern Street culverts to reduce flooding during heavy rains, the design and construction of air conditioning and ancillary heating systems at four different fire stations, the repair of over 200 failed drainage structures throughout the city, and roof improvements for the Stetson library.
Furthermore, the city recently qualified to participate in the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) Community Rating System (CRS), which is a FEMA-run program that rewards communities that work to mitigate risks of flooding.
After a two-year-long application process, New Haven was approved in April 2016 as a Class 7 on the CRS rating scale, which, according to Attota, is the highest CRS status of any community in Connecticut. Thanks to this rating, New Haven residents can receive a 15% discount on NFIP flood insurance, which can cover up to $500,000 for commercial properties and up to $250,000 for residential properties.
She said that New Haven earned such a recognition from FEMA because of a variety of vigilant flood planning activities, including conducting public outreach on flooding, maintaining accurate record of elevation certificates that have been issued, and cleaning drainage catch basins regularly.
Murphy and Attota ended with suggestions on what residents can do to protect themselves and their properties from the risk of flooding. They encouraged residents to look up where their homes fall on FEMA’s latest Flood Insurance Rate Maps; to keep property clean of lumber, waste, and other debris that could be turned into projectiles by a flood; to elevate buildings that do fall in floodplains; and to take basic personal safety precautions, like getting to higher ground and never driving through floodwaters, during a flooding hazard.
Attota.
“If you know your neighbors who are in flood-prone areas and do not think that they need flood insurance anymore,” she continued, “I tell you this is not going to happen like it happened in the past. It’s going to be more severe, and hurricanes are going to be stronger than they were before.”
“We are committed to protecting the floodplains,” Attota said. “We are ensuring that we don’t overbuild in floodplains. We encourage property owners to take care of their own properties.”
For more information information about flood risks and mitigation efforts in New Haven, visit http://www.cityofnewhaven.com/CityPlan/FloodInfo.asp or download the city’s flood information brochure.