Delay in Satellites Could Jeopardize Severe Weather Forecasts

7 02 2012

The following article was published on January 16, 2012 by Emergency Management.  The author was Elaine Pittman.  Given the variety of weather related issues that confront our region, I found this article to be very interesting.  Accurate weather forecasts trigger many activities designed to protect the citizens of our community and less than accurate weather data could prove to be very tragic at some point in the future.

2016 is looming as the year during which a gap in weather satellites could leave the nation without some of the severe storm data that’s vital to early warnings. After 2011’s record-breaking severe weather — with 12 disasters that cost more than $1 billion — it seems counterintuitive that budget reductions may create a period of 12 to 18 months during which severe warnings days in advance of a storm likely won’t be available, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predictions.

Vital to weather forecasting, two polar-orbiting satellites collect data above the Earth’s poles 14 times per day and feed data into a computer model. According to NOAA, the satellites’ orbits “provide two complete views of weather around the world,” which allow meteorologists to “develop models to predict the weather out to five to 10 days.” In addition, polar-orbiting weather satellites provide about 90 percent of the data used in National Weather Service forecast models.

The two satellites provide continuity of information, with one providing data during the mid-morning orbit and the other in the early afternoon. The first is run by the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites, which partners with NOAA and benefits from the information collected in the afternoon orbit. The second satellite is owned by the United States — and is where the information gap issue lies.

Because of a funding reduction, Ajay Mehta, deputy director for NOAA’s Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS), said the launch of the new satellite, called JPSS-1, was delayed. JPSS-1 will replace a NASA satellite that was launched on Oct. 28, 2011. NASA’s satellite — called the National Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System Preparatory Project, or NPP for short — will provide operational data for four or five years.

“That is an important thing for our continuity because [it’s] the last of the old generation of satellites we had launched in 2009,” Mehta said. “That one is only going to last for another couple of years.”

While NASA’s satellite is providing continuity of information, its life cycle is expected to end in 2016, and Mehta estimated that JPSS-1 won’t be fully operational until 2017. The time between NPP and JPSS-1 is when the information gap is expected.

“For the polar orbit, we have had operational satellites since 1979, so this mission is critical to provide continuity of NOAA operational data sets,” said Mitch Goldberg, JPSS program scientist. “NOAA has products and services, such as weather forecasting, and they depend on this constant flow of data from satellites going to weather prediction models.”

Funding Issues Abound

Last year was rife with concerns over how much funding NOAA’s satellite program would receive and what that would mean for the future of severe weather forecasting in the United States. NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco had many poignant sound bites in 2011, including that budget cuts to the satellite would be a “disaster in the making;” that in a few years, the agency may not be able to do the severe storm warnings that people have come to expect; and that it could cost three to five times more to rebuild the project than to keep funds flowing toward it.

President Barack Obama requested a little more than $1 billion for 2011 and beyond for the polar-orbiting satellite program. On Nov. 18, 2011, legislation was enacted that gave JPSS $924 million for 2012. “While we’re happy with the level of funding in this fiscal environment, it was still almost $150 [million] less than the president’s request — therefore it will not eliminate the possibility of a gap,” Mehta said via email.

Accuracy Is Key

When thinking about impacts that the information gap could have on emergency management, a question arises: What would be different?

To help assess how beneficial the information from polar-orbiting satellites is to weather forecasting, the National Weather Service reran forecasts for Snowmageddon, the blizzard that hit the East Coast in February 2010, without the satellites’ data. “When they took the data out, they ended up mis-forecasting it by almost 50 percent,” Mehta said. With the polar-orbiting data, a 20-inch snowfall was predicted, and without it the forecast was 10 inches of snow. In reality during the week of storms, 28.6 inches of snow fell in Washington, D.C. — the most since 1922, according to NOAA.

“You can imagine the difference for decision-makers,” said Goldberg. “If someone tells you there is going to be a seven-inch snowstorm or two-foot snowstorm, you’re going to make different decisions based on those two scenarios.”

The last year also has seen an increase in severe weather. From the tornadoes in Alabama and Missouri to Hurricane Irene impacting the East Coast, tremendous amounts of devastation have occurred across the U.S., the forecasts for which have been “very good,” Goldberg said. Without data from the polar-orbiting satellites, however, he said there would be a major degradation of weather forecast performance.

Another issue is this information can’t be obtained from other sources. Although the United States partners with Europe’s satellite program, data from both orbits is needed, said Mehta. He added that NOAA is exploring all options and has looked into privately owned satellites — but that would not help prevent the predicted information gap.

“Our estimates show that for somebody to build a new instrument and launch it, it’s going to take much longer,” he said, “because we’ve already started building the instruments and spacecraft for JPSS-1.”

 And the lack of additional information sources also applies to state and local emergency management agencies. Larry Gispert, past president of the International Association of Emergency Managers and former emergency management director of Hillsborough County, Fla., said everyone — the private and public sectors — relies on NOAA and the National Weather Service for severe weather information. He said some companies will process that data and put their own spin on it — “but they all get that data from the federal government.”

Impacts on Emergency Management

What it comes down to is that emergency managers need severe weather data — and it must be as accurate as possible and provide enough time for preparing and evacuating people if needed. The island of Key West, Fla., is the year-round home to about 25,000 people, but sees more than 1 million visitors annually. Craig Marston, Key West’s division chief of emergency management and training, said evacuation procedures begin 96 to 72 hours before a storm is predicted to make landfall and having good, up-to-date information is key.

“We’re pretty far out there, so what really concerns us is that NOAA is able to maintain its air flights,” he said.

Marston works closely with the National Hurricane Center and the local Weather Forecast Office to know what the weather is doing and what to expect. In the event that severe weather data isn’t available for more than three days in advance, Key West’s ability to evacuate health-care patients and other populations could be jeopardized — 72 hours is the minimum amount of time needed to fly patients from the area. “We rely heavily on the Weather Service for its information,” Marston said.

Hillsborough County’s Gispert said the large numbers of people who live in coastal areas make storm information necessary to help with evacuations. “Emergency management people have a tough enough job without getting accurate data and some kind of advanced warning of potential threats,” he said.

Like most issues, it all comes down to money, and Gispert said public safety is one of government’s ultimate responsibilities. “If my congressman would ask me, and I often tell them, if it was a choice between funding one more bomb to Afghanistan or putting up a weather satellite, guess which one I am going to vote for.” 


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New Laws Could Sink Fort Bend Levees

26 09 2011

Published by Katy Times on Monday, September 26, 2011, the following article was written by James Hale, Times Staff Writer.

“Katy business and community leaders were called upon to contact their national representatives regarding the current legislation on the National Flood Insurance Program, which threatens to negate millions of dollars of development of levee systems in Fort Bend County alone.

Fort Bend County Judge Robert Hebert addressed the Katy Area Economic Development Council’s general assembly to discuss House and Senate bills which would reauthorize and amend the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), which would use actuarial rates to determine flood insurance premiums.

The House bill, passed in July, would implement the new rates over a six-year period and maintains the status quo with respect to flood control systems.

“House Resolution 1309 maintains the status quo for levee systems and land served by other flood control facilities,” Hebert said. “That’s extremely important to Fort Bend County, and it should also be important to any other county that has a creek, a river, a drainage district or is otherwise flat land.”

While both bills would implement actuarial rates on insurance policies, Hebert is particularly concerned with a provision in the Senate’s bill, known as the Johnson-Shelby NFIP Bill, that would classify land protected by levees as “areas of residual risk.”

“It means that areas located behind levees, dams, and other flood control structures – regardless of their certification or accreditation status – are areas of residual risk,” Hebert said. “Under section 107, (areas of residual risk) would be subject to mandatory flood insurance purchase requirements, and federal floodplain management regulations.”

Fort Bend County has over $10 billion in structures behind levees, and Hebert made the case that Fort Bend has already spent a significant sum of county funds – $45 million – to certify all drainage and levee systems on the 100-year floodplain.

“There’s a vast difference in the quality of design, construction, maintenance of flood control structures through out this nation,” Hebert said. “You can’t lump flood control devices into one category for the determination of risk.”

Hebert stressed that Fort Bend taxpayers have paid for the construction and maintenance of their levee system without any federal help, and have even contributed to the latest Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) project to map the flood plain.

The county gave $1.2 million, compared to $.8 million in federal money, to fund the use of light detection and ranging (LIDAR) technology to generate a highly accurate flood map for the county when FEMA announced the project to map the area.

Due to a looming deadline, Hebert believes a continuing resolution funding the NFIP after Sept. 30 is a likely outcome in the immediate future.

Right now Hebert has had an amendment drafted and sent to the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee that would protect the investment his county, and many others, have made in flood control systems by classifying land protected by levees as above the floodplain.

In the meantime, Hebert is urging others to join the effort to stop the Senate bill, or at least amend section 107, which is seen as the most onerous part and grants FEMA power to enforce mandatory purchase requirements and federal floodplain management regulations.”


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Do you need a good example of why Mitigation projects save lives and money?

15 05 2011

Okay, so a couple of days ago, I lamented the prospect of deep cuts in FEMA budget, especially in the area of grants to state and local governments.  I made a point of why it might be a bit foolish to eliminate grants for mitigation projects which have proven time and time again to be a cost effective method for saving lives, reducing property damage, and lessening post-disaster recovery costs.

So, keep that in mind as you read about former Mayor Kotaku Wamura of Fudai in Japan.  The Associated Press article by Tomoka A Hosaka, published May 13, 2011, can be found below.  You really have to appreciate the vision former Mayor Wamura and his dedicated efforts to get the wall built before it caused additional deaths in his community.  Wamura served ten term mayor of Fudai.  As the article clearly notes to the reader:  “Without the 51-foot costly floodgate, Fudai would have disappeared.”

How One Japanese Village Defied The Tsunami

In the rubble of Japan’s northeast coast, one small village stands as tall as ever after the tsunami. No homes were swept away. In fact, they barely got wet.  Fudai is the village that survived — thanks to a huge wall once deemed a mayor’s expensive folly and now vindicated as the community’s salvation.

The 3,000 residents living between mountains behind a cove owe their lives to a late leader who saw the devastation of an earlier tsunami and made it the priority of his four-decade tenure to defend his people from the next one.  His 51-foot (15.5-meter) floodgate between mountainsides took a dozen years to build and meant spending more than $30 million in today’s dollars.

“It cost a lot of money. But without it, Fudai would have disappeared,” said seaweed fisherman Satoshi Kaneko, 55, whose business has been ruined but who is happy to have his family and home intact.  The floodgate project was criticized as wasteful in the 1970s. But the gate and an equally high seawall behind the community’s adjacent fishing port protected Fudai from the waves that obliterated so many other towns on March 11. Two months after the disaster, more than 25,000 are missing or dead.

“However you look at it, the effectiveness of the floodgate and seawall was truly impressive,” Fudai Mayor Hiroshi Fukawatari said. Towns to the north and south also braced against tsunamis with concrete seawalls, breakwaters and other protective structures. But none were as tall as Fudai’s.

The town of Taro believed it had the ultimate fort — a double-layered 33-foot-tall (10-meter-tall) seawall spanning 1.6 miles (2.5 kilometers) across a bay. It proved no match for the tsunami two months ago. In Fudai, the waves rose as high as 66 feet (20 meters), as water marks show on the floodgate’s towers. So some ocean water did flow over but it caused minimal damage. The gate broke the tsunami’s main thrust. And the community is lucky to have two mountainsides flanking the gate, offering a natural barrier.

The man credited with saving Fudai is the late Kotaku Wamura, a 10-term mayor whose political reign began in the ashes of World War II and ended in 1987.  Fudai, about 320 miles (510 kilometers) north of Tokyo, depends on the sea. Fishermen boast of the seaweed they harvest. A pretty, white-sand beach lures tourists every summer.  But Wamura never forgot how quickly the sea could turn. Massive earthquake-triggered tsunamis flattened Japan’s northeast coast in 1933 and 1896. In Fudai, the two disasters destroyed hundreds of homes and killed 439 people.

“When I saw bodies being dug up from the piles of earth, I did not know what to say. I had no words,” Wamura wrote of the 1933 tsunami in his book about Fudai, “A 40-Year Fight Against Poverty.”  He vowed it would never happen again.

In 1967, the town erected a 51-foot (15.5-meter) seawall to shield homes behind the fishing port. But Wamura wasn’t finished. He had a bigger project in mind for the cove up the road, where most of the community was located. That area needed a floodgate with panels that could be lifted to allow the Fudai River to empty into the cove and lowered to block tsunamis.

He insisted the structure be as tall as the seawall.  The village council initially balked.

“They weren’t necessarily against the idea of floodgates, just the size,” said Yuzo Mifune, head of Fudai’s resident services and an unofficial floodgate historian. “But Wamura somehow persuaded them that this was the only way to protect lives.”

Construction began in 1972 despite lingering concerns about its size as well as bitterness among landowners forced to sell land to the government.  Even current Mayor Fukawatari, who helped oversee construction, had his doubts.

“I did wonder whether we needed something this big,” he said in an interview at his office.  The concrete structure spanning 673 feet (205 meters) was completed in 1984. The total bill of 3.56 billion yen was split between the prefecture and central government, which financed public works as part of its postwar economic strategy.

On March 11, after the 9.0 earthquake hit, workers remotely closed the floodgate’s four main panels. Smaller panels on the sides jammed, and a firefighter had to rush down to shut them by hand.  The tsunami battered the white beach in the cove, leaving debris and fallen trees. But behind the floodgate, the village is virtually untouched.

Fudai Elementary School sits no more than a few minutes walk inland. It looks the same as it did on March 10. A group of boys recently ran laps around a baseball field that was clear of the junk piled up in other coastal neighborhoods.  Their coach, Sachio Kamimukai, was born and raised in Fudai. He said he never thought much about the floodgate until the tsunami.

“It was just always something that was there,” said Kamimukai, 36. “But I’m very thankful now.”  The floodgate works for Fudai’s layout, in a narrow valley, but it wouldn’t necessarily be the solution for other places, Fukawatari said.

Fudai’s biggest casualty was its port, where the tsunami destroyed boats, equipment and warehouses. The village estimates losses of 3.8 billion yen ($47 million) to its fisheries industry.  One resident remains missing. He made the unlucky decision to check on his boat after the earthquake.

Wamura left office three years after the floodgate was completed. He died in 1997 at age 88. Since the tsunami, residents have been visiting his grave to pay respects.  At his retirement, Wamura stood before village employees to bid farewell: “Even if you encounter opposition, have conviction and finish what you start. In the end, people will understand.”


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City of Simonton Holds Emergency Operations Exercise

11 05 2011

 Emergency preparedness is not simply a responsibility for large cities or Texas counties.  All jurisdictions, not matter what the size need to prepare for emergencies that happen locally.  In Fort Bend County, one only needs to look at the efforts of the City of Simonton’s Emergency Management Coordinator over the last seven years. Under the leadership of Lou Boudreaux, Simonton, a community of only 814, has undertaken preparedness activities which many larger communities have not completed.

Simonton understands the threats to the community, primarily flooding issues given its proximity to the Brazos River.  As the article notes, many of its elected officials and its citizens have completed various training designed to make the community safer in times of disaster.  Working in collaboration with Miles Tollison, Senior Planning Coordinator from the Fort Bend County Office of Emergency Management (FBC OEM), the City is developing Emergency Management Guidelines describing how the jurisdiction wants to meet its emergency management responsibilities.  

Doug Barnes, FBC OEM’s GIS Planning Coordinator, has worked with the Boudreaux to develop a set of maps which can be used by local officials and trained citizens to map damage that may occur following a disaster, like a hurricane.  Other preparedness efforts that the City has completed include developing memorandums of understanding with the neighboring City of Weston Lakes and Fort Bend County; procuring equipment to outfit a small Emergency Operations Center; working to identify necessary hazard mitigation efforts designed to prevent future damage; and, as noted below, procuring the necessary equipment to pump water from areas that might flood during an emergency.

As reported by FortBendNow staff on Monday, May 9, 2011, please read the article below which will tell you more about the substantial preparedness efforts being made by this small community located in Fort Bend County.

With hurricane season looming and bad weather always a threat, the City of Simonton recently held a preparedness exercise to ensure the community was prepared to handle a flood event.

The exercise, which lasted several hours, involved training 15 community volunteers to effectively and efficiently pick up, deliver, deploy, operate, take down and return the city’s trailer-mounted flood pumps.

The city recently agreed to coordinate flood pump operations with the Valley Lodge Property Owners Association, which is located wholly within the city limits. The agreement gave the association the responsibility for maintaining, staffing and operating the pumps. The effort will be led by board member Stephan Sear.

According to Simonton Emergency Management Coordinator Louis Boudreaux, the exercise showed the pumps could be removed from storage, set up on-site and operational in less than 50 minutes.

“A quick response is very important when it comes to dealing with an emergency,” said Boudreaux. “The volunteers did an excellent job in this exercise and showed a significant commitment to protect their community.”

Simonton Mayor Daniel McJunkin said the city was working with local organizations such as VLPOA to help protect the community.

“It’s not easy being a small city in Texas because the public’s expectation for emergency preparedness is high,” McJunkin said. “We have limited financial resources and no paid city staff to set up and run emergency equipment, but, what we lack in resources, we make up for with community spirit and preparedness.”

The mayor added the city had achieved an important preparedness milestone by partnering with community groups to take on important tasks.

“I am pleased with the turnout and with the outcome of the exercise. The volunteers learned about pump operations and the city has learned from the exercise as well,” he said.

Boudreaux said in addition to this exercise, the city intends to hold regular training events to prepare for other types of emergencies.

“Our primary concerns are the potential for hurricanes and river flooding. We are also preparing for how to deal with tornados, wild fires, chemical spills and other general emergencies,” Boudreaux said.

Boudreaux also praised the leadership Fort Bend County Emergency Management Coordinator Jeff Braun in helping the city partner with the other communities in the area to achieve better emergency preparedness. Simonton has also developed its own emergency action plan, which was created with the help of Alderwoman Sandy Bohannon. 

Simonton City Council Members, as well as a number of local volunteers, have also completed numerous online training courses provided by FEMA covering the “National Incident Management System,” which is a standardized nationwide approach to manage emergency events. The city has also become active in Citizen’s Emergency Response Teams and the Medical Reserve Corps program.  Simonton residents interested in volunteering can contact city hall at 281-533-9809.


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University of Houston Professor Developing Flood-Mapping System to Help EMS Navigate Houston Streets

1 10 2010

In a recent University of Houston News Release, Laura Tolley writes of work being done to assist first responders in Houston cope with street flooding.  As published on September 22, 2010:

Navigating rain-soaked streets is a familiar experience for Harris County residents. And while street flooding generally is a temporary nuisance for most drivers, it can be a serious obstacle for emergency responders.

However fleeting, flooding can cause traffic delays for EMS crews that are trying to reach and transport people in need of medical assistance. Minutes, even seconds, can count.

University of Houston Professor Gino Lim is trying to ease this traffic problem by developing a computer-based real-time flood-mapping system that will help emergency responders better navigate roads in bad weather.

Lim recently received a $400,700 grant from the city of Houston to build a computer program that will instantaneously classify the level of flooding on roads near major highways within the Sam Houston Parkway (State Highway Beltway 8). Similar in concept to Houston TranStar’s online real-time traffic map, Lim’s Real-Time Flood Mapping System will use a color-coded computer map to indicate the severity of flooding on major road segments. Red will mean that segment of road is severely flooded, while green will mean it’s safe to travel the road. This technology could eventually be helpful for any large metropolitan area that frequently has to deal with flash-flooding.

This month, Lim and his team have started to develop a database that connects to three major flood-monitoring database systems. Once the system is developed, it will undergo six months of testing, and it’s expected to be in place for first responders to use by the beginning of the hurricane season in June 2013.

“This will be a major advancement,” said Lim, Hari and Anjali Agrawal Faculty Fellow and an associate professor of industrial engineering at UH. “In Harris County, street flooding and the resulting traffic problems are still unresolved problems. But the inability to effectively inform and navigate emergency vehicles through flooded streets is not caused by a lack of technology but by the lack of proper integration of available technologies.”

“This tool will substantially improve first responders’ decision-making abilities and their response times. Information like this is priceless and could mean the difference between life and death,” Lim said.

Lim’s system will merge city and flood databases into one comprehensive resource that will be hosted on TransStar’s website. Algorithms devised by Lim will turn this data into color-coded, visual representations of flooding on a map that can be accessed by emergency responders via the Internet on their laptops.

“During Hurricane Ike two years ago, we did a lot of testing on data transfer,” Lim said. “What we found is there can be problems with wireless connections because they are reaching the maximum capacity of some towers, which makes this communication difficult.”

To overcome that issue, Lim is partnering with Houston PBS to transmit a static image of the flood map via a television signal that would refresh every 10 minutes, or less, depending on demand. This program will allow responders to download the most up-to-date image on their laptops.

Lim is being assisted by Tom Chen, a UH engineering professor, and graduate students and researchers from UH’s Systems Optimization and Computing Laboratory (SOCL) in the industrial engineering department, and the Southwest Public Safety Technology Center (STWC). 

Lim founded SOCL, where researchers explore mathematical programming techniques to solve various optimization problems. SWTC is led by Steven Pei, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at UH. SWTC is a grant-supported project dedicated to research and education in the area of public safety technology and homeland security.


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National Flood Insurance Program

1 10 2010

On September 30, 2010, the President signed the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) Reextension Act of 2010, which Congress passed on September 24, 2010.

This extends the National Flood Insurance Program until September 30, 2011.


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National Flood Workshop and Forum Scheduled for October 24-26, 2010

24 09 2010

Did you know that flooding claims more lives than any other weather phenomenon and is in the top four killers in the United States after heart disease, automobiles, and fire? While we cannot stop a flood, we can plan for it and learn from past flooding events in order to better mitigate damage. The first National Flood Workshop and Forum, to be held in Houston October 24-26, will bring together disparate professions and businesses that have an association with flooding.

There will be speakers from around the country and workshop sessions training professionals in topics ranging from forecasting to emergency preparedness.

The program and registration information is located at www.nationalfloodworkshop.net


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Fort Bend Flood Management Association holds symposium on reducing flood risk

15 06 2010

The Fort Bend Independent reported on the recently held Flood Risk Reduction Symposium held in Fort Bend County on June 4, 2010.

The evolving Federal regulatory environment associated with flood risks, as well as emergency management challenges created by Hurricane Ike, played a major role in the recent creation of the Fort Bend Flood Management Association (FBFMA).   FBFMA members represent most Fort Bend County government agencies with flood management responsibilities.  The main focus of the group is protecting Fort Bend residents from flood risks as well as providing effective emergency management resources when necessary.

FBFMA sponsored its first annual “Flood Risk Reduction Symposium” on June 4 in Sugar Land, with over 100 local officials and consultants in the audience.   Among the featured speakers were Peter Rabbon, Director, National Flood Risk Management Program of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), George Grugett, Executive Vice President of the Mississippi Valley Flood Control Association (MVFCA), and Susan Gilson, Executive Director of the National Association of Flood and Stormwater Management Agencies (NAFSMA).

Elected officials also presented, including keynote speaker U.S. Rep. Pete Olson, State Sen. Glenn Hegar, State Rep. Charlie Howard, and Fort Bend County Judge Bob Hebert. They discussed issues such as pending regulations, the National Flood Insurance Program, and the need for coordinated activity by Fort Bend flood management entities to address future crises associated with hurricanes or other emergencies.

Olson cautioned the audience about the potential impact to Fort Bend County residents of President Obama’s draft Executive Order 11988, which affects implementation of the National Flood Insurance Program.

Hebert addressed the influence of the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), initially created years ago as a minor agency, now playing a far greater role in the operation of other Federal agencies such as the EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Levee Improvement District (LID) boards in Fort Bend County must ensure that they are proactively meeting and addressing the standards required by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and FEMA to avoid any non-compliance consequences that could cost residents millions of dollars in mandatory flood insurance premiums, he said.

Hebert said, “Levee Districts can no longer afford to be passive agencies. We must understand the issues, debate our options, establish consensus opinions, and, most importantly, let our elected officials hear those opinions as they debate future flood plain or flood insurance legislation.”

André McDonald, President of FBFMA, said, “The FBFMA membership consists of most of the local Fort Bend governmental agencies with the combined responsibility of protecting over 130,000 people and $10 billion of assessed property value from flooding.

FBFMA recognized that there was a need to create a higher level of awareness about what is happening at the Federal level in regulations on flood management.

The purpose of this program was to provide critical information and education to officials, consultants, and public sector policy makers who are tasked with flood management responsibilities.

McDonald said FBFMA will continue to monitor all activity at both the Federal and state level related to floodplain and flood risk issues and will also sponsor future events.


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FEMA Welcomes The City Of Sugar Land, Texas To The Community Rating System

13 06 2010

From a June 11, 2010 FEMA News Release:

Residents and business owners in the City of Sugar Land can now enjoy a reduction in flood insurance premiums because of the city’s active participation in the National Flood Insurance Program’s (NFIP) Community Rating System (CRS). In addition to lower premiums, the CRS program helps to reduce the threat of damage due to flooding.

“The flood insurance program rewards communities for implementing programs and policies that protect their residents from flooding,” said Tony Russell, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) regional administrator.  “City of Sugar Land’s higher regulatory standards, public education outreach, and other initiatives, have earned the city lower premiums as a CRS Class 7 Community.”

The City of Sugar Land’s flood insurance policyholders who reside in Special Flood Hazard Areas will receive a 15 percent reduction on flood insurance premiums and policyholders located outside Special Flood Hazard Areas will enjoy a 5 percent discount. The reduction in flood insurance premiums represents an annual savings in premium costs for Sugar Land policy holders and will take effect at the time a new policy is written or an effective policy is renewed.

New to CRS, the City of Sugar Land’s participation in the CRS has been beneficial in many respects.  In addition to the reduction in insurance premiums, the City of Sugar Land officials are more knowledgeable about floodplain management and its residents are more knowledgeable about mitigation and flood insurance.  

The program helped make the City of Sugar Land a safer place to live, reduced the economic impact of flood hazards and saved their citizens money on their flood policy premiums.

The community rating system (CRS) is a voluntary program for NFIP- participating communities.  The intended goals of the CRS are to reduce flood losses; facilitate accurate insurance ratings; and to promote the awareness of flood insurance.  For more information on the NFIP’s CRS program, go to www.fema.gov/business/nfip/crs.shtm.

FEMA’s mission is to support our citizens and first responders to ensure that as a nation we work together to build, sustain, and improve our capability to prepare for, protect against, respond to, recover from, and mitigate all hazards.


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TCEQ Holds Dam Safety Workshops

11 01 2010

During 2009, the Fort Bend County Office of Emergency Management (OEM) worked with the US Army Corps of Engineers, Harris County OEM, Harris County Flood Control District, and the City of Houston OEM to hold a Workshop and a Tabletop Exercise involving the possibility of a dam break related to the Addicks and/or Barker Reservoirs.  The Workshop was held at the Bear Creek Community Center in June 2009.  This was a prelude to the Tabletop Exercise that was held in July 2009 at Seven Lakes High School in the Katy area. 

The study group that has worked for well over a year will continue to meet in 2010; and tentatively is planning to hold another emergency management exercise sometime later in the year.  For those of you who attended the above events last year, you may have interest in a couple of upcoming events hosted by TCEQ.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is scheduling two dam safety workshops in February.

Thursday, February 11—New Braunfels 

Courtyard New Braunfels River Village, 750 IH 35 North

Thursday, February 25—Decatur

Decatur Civic Center, 2010 W U.S. 380

The one day sessions will educate dam owners about topics including state dam safety laws and regulations, dam failure modes and case histories, owner responsibilities/liabilities and security issues, dam operations, maintenance, inspections, and developing and implementing emergency action plans.

Cost of each workshop is $65. Walk-in and on-site registrations will be accepted. Workshop hours are from 9:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., with registration sign-in beginning at 8:30 a.m.

Lunch and refreshment breaks are included in the registration fee. Participants will also receive a copy of the workshop manual, and the opportunity to talk one-on-one with TCEQ dam safety personnel.

Registration deadline for the New Braunfels event is Feb. 4.  Registration deadline for the Decatur event is Feb. 18.  For registration and workshop information, visit the Dam Safety Workshop for Owners and Operators page on the TCEQ Web site: http://www.tceq.state.tx.us/assistance/events/dam-safety.html or, contact Warren Samuelson, 512-239-5195, wsamuels@tceq.state.tx.us


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