🗣️ "Navigating the Flood"

Host: Travis Loop
Guests: Erica DePalma | Program Coordinator | The Water Center at Penn
Caroline Koch | Water Policy Director | WaterNow Alliance
Category: 🗣️ Opinion

Podcast’s Essential Bites:

[2:47] EDP: “We found across the nation that the provision of basic stormwater and flood management services is increasingly at risk. And we know this to be true despite the fact that there are few public services more fundamental to public health and safety and community social and economic sustainability and climate resilience. […] The impacts of flooding and stormwater on communities across the country are vast, and they're often regionally and locally dependent. […] From a regional perspective, one of the biggest considerations is climatic variation.”

[3:19] EDP: “As storms are lasting shorter durations, yet with increased intensities, stormwater and flood systems are historically not designed to manage these kinds of storm events, […] therefore causing less water to infiltrate into the ground or conveyed to a water body and causing more water to end up in the streets and even in people's homes and basements.”

[4:02] EDP:“That stormwater runoff […] travels through […] urban streets, […] across agricultural land, and even suburban lawns, [and] it picks up all these anthropogenic and non anthropogenic pollutants on the ground, yielding poor water quality that ends up in our streams, lakes and oceans, and sometimes even back into our drinking water plants that causes costly challenges.”

[6:32] CK: “Urban flooding, which is already the most common natural disaster in the US, is expected to increase by an additional 45% by the end of the century due to climate change. […] And that's really why the Water Center and WaterNow developed, Navigate the Flood, to try to provide and surface those resources for these communities.”

[10:43] EDP: “The guide itself […] is an online guide that offers local decision makers, and city and utility staff, a curated and intentional list of technical guidance and funding resources for stormwater and flood planning and management. And also to tackle those flooding and stormwater impacts […] that greatly impact communities across the country. So the new guide features five process oriented steps to navigate the flood, each with user friendly explanations and customized resources. These steps are intended to serve the decision makers who want a bit more information on how to strategically approach stormwater and flooding management in order to provide the most effective, and the most equitable plan.”

[17:18] EDP: “The first step is to define the condition of your community system. […] The second step is to identify your community's challenges. […] The third step is to set your community’s visions and goals now that we understand the current state and the challenges […]. Then the fourth step is to choose your community solutions […] and [five is to] put your community’s plan into action.”

Rating: 💧💧💧

🎙️ Full Episode: Apple | Spotify
🕰️ 23 min | 🗓️ 07/26/2021
✅ Time saved: 21 min

Additional Links:
Navigate the Flood