TWDB leaders share the history of the new state flood plan

Transcript

Sam Marie Hermitte – Asst. Deputy Executive Administrator, TWDB Water Science & Conservation

So, in 2015, there was a really significant flood around, on Memorial Day in the Wimberley area. And when that flood occurred, there was no gauge upstream. So, the weather service could not accurately predict and warn in terms of the wave of water that was coming down into that community. And it resulted in loss of life, which is terrible.

And, as a result of that, it was at the end of the legislative session in 2015, there was an additional hearing, and then the governor's office signed a memorandum of understanding with our agency to actually really try to start implementing more flood work quickly.

Carla G. Guthrie, Ph.D. - Director, TWDB Surface Water Division

Following the memorandum of understanding, which provided funding to the agency to spin up several different data collection and information efforts, the agency initiated installing flood gages. That was a key piece of information that was missing. The agency began installing gages in and around the Wimberley area, and then we proceeded from that to look at other areas in which, across the state, that the National Weather Service needed to have gaging for the purposes of flood forecasting.

Another piece of the data that was missing in that event was rainfall information. And so, the agency began what is now known as the TexMesonet weather network. And along with that, initiated the TexMesonet.org website. And then, another study that was conducted was and was actually a study to understand where the gaps are on the landscape—missing rainfall gages, missing stream gages.

Sam Marie Hermitte – Asst. Deputy Executive Administrator, TWDB Water Science & Conservation

So, the study that you were mentioning was working with the National Weather Service to identify where their models needed to be improved. So, in addition to understanding where we had gaps, where they didn't have real-time rainfall information that's crucial to their forecasting, also understanding which models were somewhat out of date and needed to be updated and revised.

And so, we funded updates to their models in specific areas associated with gages for a number of years. And then, as Carla was mentioning, you know, one of the other efforts was the development of TexasFlood.org because we found when you went to the internet to try to understand what you should do before a flood, what you should do during a flood, how to recover after a flood, it was, the information was there, but it was across many different websites. It wasn't always easy to understand. It wasn't in one place.

Carla G. Guthrie, Ph.D. - Director, TWDB Surface Water Division

It was a very impressive effort of the agency to respond. At the time, Chairman Charles Perry asked the question, you know, we have a state water supply plan, "Do we have a flood plan?" And so that kicked off what ended up being just a little footnote at the bottom of the general appropriations agreement that allocated $600,000 for a survey of over 1,200 floodplain managers to understand, I'll just say, the flood situation in Texas.

So, with that, that kicked off an effort to create the first state flood assessment for Texas. So, the precursor to the current state flood plan. We had a little less than a year to produce the document. We had conducted a survey of over a thousand respondents, eight workshops with over 300 participants, feedback from all corners, and all manner of people who were involved in flood in Texas.

And so, what we came up with were the three pillars: mapping, planning, and funding. Those were the means to ensure flood mitigation, flood protection, flood preparedness in Texas. And so, with that, the agency then prepared and launched into the next legislative session where there were a number of bills: Senate Bill 6, 7, and 8 that fully addressed Harvey flooding. And so, that got us to the doorstep of what is now the state flood plan.

Reem Zoun, P.E., CFM - Asst. Deputy Executive Administrator, TWDB Office of Planning

Because TWDB has done such a good job of water planning over the years, I think over 25 years of five-year cycles of water planning; I feel like that's why there was trust in this agency that, well, they have been doing such a good job of water planning, let them do the flood planning as well. So then, it mimics the flood planning process in terms of it being a bottom-up approach. And the administrative side of water planning and flood planning is very similar. However, the science behind flood is very, very different.

Water, as we all know, does not stop at jurisdictional boundary. So, it was very important to do river basin-based or watershed-based planning. We have 15 flood planning regions because it is river basin based. If you look at our flood planning areas, you will very clearly notice these are large river basins.

When the statewide regional flood planning process started, there was no regional flood planning groups. We had to start from scratch. One of the first thing that we did, we took the statue that the legislature provided and generated rules, which became the Texas Water Code. Then we had to create the regional flood planning areas, and then we had to set up the regional flood planning groups.

So, we did a statewide solicitation requesting for people who would volunteer to serve on these regional flood planning groups. There were 177 voting member positions. We received over 600 interest to serve in those positions, and the quality and expertise of those people were amazing. And because people who live in their area knows the regions the best—what are the specific problems? What were the complexities of it? That made it a very powerful and, in my humble opinion, these are the people who made it such a successful program.

The state flood plan has recommendations for the legislature, recommendations for communities. Second cycle will deep dive into understanding what our needs are. The first cycle of the state flood plan identified over $54 billion in need for project studies and strategies, so that is a need that's already identified. We know that is actually not all of what we need because we have smaller communities who does not have the resources and does not currently have the appropriate models to identify what their solutions are. So, that $54 billion number, I expect it to increase in the next five-year cycle. There is obviously funding need, and that funding need can come from any sources—local, federal, some state, a combination of those. So, communities will continue to work towards reducing the risk and impact of flooding. And we are going to continue to work towards doing mapping, better mapping.

Sam Marie Hermitte – Asst. Deputy Executive Administrator, TWDB Water Science & Conservation

The maps and the data are what everything else is built on. And it starts with the Lidar that's collected and is now statewide. We've had that for a few years, which, again, is a huge accomplishment. But we know we have challenges. We know that where riverine flooding and coastal flooding come together, that that's an area where we can really improve our understanding. And we know that's a shortcoming of some of the base-level engineering models, particularly the one-dimensional models. So, we're shifting to two-dimensional models. So, that is an improvement and a transition that will take time, and that we're already getting ready and starting to embark upon now.

Carla G. Guthrie, Ph.D. - Director, TWDB Surface Water Division

So, when we got to 2015, which is, we're coming up on ten years to that date, the agency had three small flood-related programs. So, flood grants, which included the state flood grants, the FEMA Flood Mitigation Assistance grants, we had the Cooperating Technical Partners program, which was a very small effort at mapping. And then we had the National Flood Insurance Program for outreach and assistance through that. We had a total of about six staff at that time. And now, we have two divisions. We have flood science and community assistance. We have the Flood Planning Division. We have various other people sprinkled throughout the agency that support and work on flood.

Reem Zoun, P.E., CFM - Asst. Deputy Executive Administrator, TWDB Office of Planning

So, this has been an amazing journey. Hours of dedicated effort by TWDB staff and the intent of Texas Legislature and need of Texas to do something in this area has, I think, culminated to this moment. We have just adopted Texas’ first state flood plan. It definitely is a milestone. The state flood plan identifies that we do have widespread flood risk in the state of Texas.

Before this first state flood plan, we did not have this information. We know at some level where our flood hazard is. Approximately one-fourth of Texas’ land area is located in flood hazard areas. About 21 percent of Texas' land area is a 1 percent annual chance flood hazard area, also known as a 100-year floodplain. We have about one in six Texans living or working in flood hazard areas.

We have identified what our need is as we know it today. This is a snapshot in time. It's a five-year cycle. We did not quite have five years to do our first flood plan. It was done in about two-and-a-half years and then about one year. So, a very compressed cycle. But the amount of information and knowledge and energy and outreach that happened through this process is absolutely amazing. I think we made a big step or leap forward in reducing the risk and impact of flooding in Texas.