State of the Rockies Kicks off with ICS Keynote

State of the Rockies Kicks off with ICS Keynote

ICS Principal Scott Campbell kicked off the 2015-2016 Colorado College State of the Rockies Project, The Scales of Western Water, as its keynote speaker. Campbell christened the thematic undertaking by examining landscape-scale approaches local, state, and national conservation groups are taking with respect to river management—approaches that attempt to holistically address the needs of cities, agriculture, and nature.

His talk, Surface Tensions: Large Landscape Conservation and the Future of America’s Rivers, shows how these approaches embody a radical change in thinking about rivers—from the 20th century belief that harnessing and controlling flow was in the best interest of society (an idea that emerged following the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and the subsequent national Flood Control Act of 1928) to our 21st century scientific understanding of the importance of natural flow variability in river systems.

Campbell shows how flood control in the Mississippi River and its tributaries reversed sedimentation regimes that, over thousands of years, helped build the Mississippi Delta. With that reversal came the loss of delta lands—more than 2,000 square miles sinking into the Gulf of Mexico since the 1930s—and the greater susceptibility of cities like New Orleans to storm surges precipitated by tropical storms and hurricanes.

Underscoring how ill-equipped we are to fully understand and appreciate the economic value of river ecosystem services such as sedimentation processes, Campbell highlights how the 500 lives and 130,000 homes lost to the Flood of 1927 pale in comparison to the 800,000 housing units and 1,833 lives lost in Hurricane Katrina—a hurricane whose devastating effects were in part due to the disappearance of the Mississippi Delta as a natural storm surge barrier.

He then goes on to examine how the increasing effectiveness of land and water conservation groups—combined with better scientific understanding, the ability to voluntarily bank water in storage facilities to create pulse flows, and new technical tools such as engineered sediment diversions—offers promise to restoring America’s rivers…not at a localized scale that has no systemic impact, but at a basin-wide, watershed scale.

Rockefeller Tags ICS for Resiliency Planning Expertise

Rockefeller Tags ICS for Resiliency Planning Expertise

Homes in the wildland-urban interface facing catastrophic fire. Commercial districts in flood zones. Coastal cities confronted by rising sea levels and increasingly devastating storm surge effects. Between 2011 and 2013, there were 67 presidentially declared disaster areas in the United States. The federal government spent $136 billion on disaster response. But how well spent are recovery dollars when recovery focuses on rebuilding communities and infrastructure that are just as prone to subsequent disaster?

With extreme weather events and flood risks escalating, the Rockefeller Foundation and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) partnered to change the paradigm of disaster response and recovery to one of planning, preparation, and returns. The result was the National Disaster Resilience Competition (NDRC)—which awarded $1 billion to communities affected by disaster who could demonstrate an ability to not just rebuild, but to design and rebuild in ways that ensured future resiliency. The 67 disaster areas declared by President Barack Obama were eligible for the funds. Rockefeller ran nine nationwide trainings for eligible jurisdictions, bringing together 350 experts from around the globe to initiate the needed paradigm shift. ICS was one of them.

At the Denver training, ICS provided presentation examples of fire and flood resiliency projects in its home state of Colorado (to see a presentation summary, click here) and served as a technical advisor to the New Orleans applicant team. ICS Principal Scott Campbell spent time in the city studying post-Hurricane-Katrina recovery efforts and the effects 20th century engineering projects on the Mississippi River and its tributaries have had in lessening the city’s ability to withstand storm surges produced by tropical storms and hurricanes. (For more information about ICS’s thinking on river management and restoration activities, including a video lecture—and to learn more about the issues faced by the City of New Orleans and other Mississippi Delta coastal communities—click here.)

New Orleans was one of thirteen fund recipients, receiving over $141 million in NDRC funds to establish its first-ever Resilience District. Investments will support several integrated initiatives that include coastal restoration, workforce development, and creating parks and green streets that will create a national model for retrofitting post-war suburban neighborhoods into resilient, safe, and equitable communities of opportunity. For more about the NRCD competition and the award winners, click here.