Hazard mitigation is a disaster management function ideally preceding, and lessening the impacts of, disasters. FEMA defines hazard mitigation as “sustained action taken to reduce or eliminate long-term risk to people and their property from hazards.” Mitigation speaks to interrupting the expensive and often repetitive cycle of disaster losses and reconstruction.
(http://www.fema.gov/plan/mitplanning/).
According to the State of California Multi-Hazard Mitigation Plan, mitigation generally involves reducing long-term risk from hazards to acceptable levels through measures modifying physical development to be more resilient. Examples include strengthening structures to withstand earthquake shaking, minimizing development in flood-prone areas, clearing defensible space around residences in wildland-urban interface (WUI) areas, or steering development away from geologically unstable hillsides.
Mitigation reflects governmental and private sector expenditure of varying sums of money.
Mitigation has been shown to be a sound investment with the Multi-Hazard Mitigation Council (MMC) study revealing a 4:1 overall loss avoidance ratio obtained from FEMA grants from 1993-2003 ( Multi-Hazard Mitigation Council, 2005; Rose and others, 2007). In short, every dollar invested in mitigation saved four dollars of potential losses; greater savings were estimated for the subset of grants that dealt with flooding. These findings can be stated simply through the principle
“pay now to mitigate, or pay a lot more later on for recovery.”
Mitigation policy issues are found at all geographic levels and in multiple sectors. National mitigation laws and authorities generally authorize financial support to state and local
governments and, in the case of flood insurance, to the private market supporting mitigation actions geared to preventing or minimizing disaster losses in advance of disasters (pre-event mitigation), or reducing repetitive future losses after disasters (post-event mitigation). Primary federal legislation fostering mitigation includes the National Flood Insurance Act (1968), the Stafford Act (1988), and the Disaster Mitigation Act (2000). In turn, these federal laws tend to be mirrored in state laws, and in many states, in local mitigation laws and policies leading to
strengthening community resiliency.
Mitigation policy issues tend to be rooted in the specifics of federal-state mitigation laws.
However, key overarching mitigation policy issues include the following: (1) insufficient mitigation funding, (2) levee failure impacts,( 3) variable mitigation performance, (4) poor community
impacts, and (5) landslide, mudslide, and debris flow issues.
There is insufficient funding to effectively mitigate the potential impacts and losses associated with the ARkStorm scenario. The ARkStorm scenario suggests a long-range mitigation requirement in the tens of billions of dollars or more that would take at least many decades to mitigate at current funding levels. The general policy question raised is whether funds should be authorized to close that funding gap in fewer years?
How can pre-event mitigation funding be increased to more adequate levels? The primary pre-event policy question raised by this scenario is what level of mitigation funding would be sufficient to help prevent or substantially reduce a loss of this magnitude? Presently (2010), federal, state and local mitigation actions are under-funded in relation to potential aggregate loss exposure. For example, the Pre-Disaster Mitigation (PDM) grant funds, an innovation introduced under the Disaster Mitigation Act, are usually funded at an annual level of only $100 million for the entire nation, an infinitesimally small amount in relation to the entire need.
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How can post-event mitigation funding be enlarged and better focused? A post-event recovery policy question would be how to fund mitigation in order to reduce or minimize repetitive losses in the future, while absorbing the post-disaster costs of the losses incurred? Linking this to recovery, a corollary policy question would be how to reconcile losses of such magnitudes with standard Stafford Act relief funding levels ($28,800 maximum per household), and other sources, such as USDA, Small Business Administration, and NFIP assistance that would most likely become available after the scenario event?
Levee system vulnerability to potential failures and escalated losses from an ARkStorm scenario needs to be substantially reduced. The ARkStorm scenario includes multiple levee failures that would flood large areas in Flood Insurance Rate Map (FIRM) map Zone X previously thought to be protected from 100-year storms by levee systems. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina demonstrated the vulnerability of communities living behind levees built over time without sufficient attention to engineering standards assuring adequate performance under extreme
conditions.
Extensive levee failure in New Orleans led to a nationwide reexamination of levees by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. In 2006, California it led to California voters’ approval of $4.9 billion in bonds primarily for strengthening levees in the San Francisco Bay – San Joaquin Delta (Bay Delta) area. New Orleans levee failure also led, among other things, to legislation promoting: state 200-year floodplain mapping in the Central Valley; requirements for local governments to include floodplain mapping in general plans; and requirements that Central Valley communities deny subdivisions in unprotected flood hazard zones.
According to the California Multi-Hazard Mitigation Plan, substantial parts of the Bay Delta area are below sea level and currently reliant for flood protection on public and private levees built out of dredged sand for the purpose of protecting agricultural activities in the early 20th century, and are, therefore, susceptible to failure from earthquakes and other factors (California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, 2007).
Primary mitigation policy questions associated with levee failures include the following:
Who pays the bill for levee strengthening? A primary pre-event policy question related to added levee protection is availability of additional funding. The $4.9 billion authorized by the 2006 bond election is said to represent about 1/10th of the overall amount needed to help create a more stable levee system in the Delta. The question of additional sources of funding for levee
strengthening so far has been addressed on a regional and local level through promotion in recent years of benefit-assessments placing additional fees on property for local levee improvements. The major policy question remaining is whether a California statewide fund for levee strengthening will be established.
What are the limits to development behind weak levees? An equally important policy question related to levee protection is whether development should be allowed to proceed behind levees that are susceptible to failure. This land use question is partially addressed by the new state-mandated requirements for inclusion of floodplain mapping in general plans and the assumption of partial liability where state flood control projects fail. However, suburbanization behind weak levees is likely to continue through local financial mechanisms such as Mello-Roos district formation for new development to levee strengthening costs. The policy question is whether development should happen before levees are strengthened or after?
The ARkStorm scenario would severely impact communities that have made
sustained mitigation efforts, and those that have not. All communities in California are required to adopt general plan safety elements, and are subject to the requirement for consistency with the
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general plan of zoning, subdivision, and capital improvements decisions. All communities must include floodplain mapping with the general plan (Assembly Bill 162 – 2006). Though local governments are equally subject to such state laws, their mitigation performances tend to vary. A review of 436 FEMA-approved Local Hazard Mitigation Plans (LHMPs) to qualify for federal hazard mitigation grant project funds showed variable degrees of conformance with Disaster Mitigation Act criteria (California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, 2007). Policy issues regarding local mitigation performance revolve around the question of what to do about under-performing communities.
Should only good performers be rewarded? The current (2010) competitive mitigation grant funding systems under the Stafford Act and Disaster Mitigation Act tend to reward good mitigation performance through additional funding. However, the ARkStorm scenario suggests that flooding and other damages would affect homeowners and businesses both in communities that have performed well and those that have performed poorly in hazard mitigation. The policy question is to what extent should grant funds be awarded to localities that have made sustained mitigation efforts over time versus those that have made unwise development decisions or acted carelessly in areas susceptible to substantial flooding or storm-related hazards?
Should hazardous areas in under-performing communities be bought out? It may be cheaper in the long run to buy out flood or landslide prone land in under-performing communities to avoid greater recovery costs later. In either case, policy solutions should be devised by which such differences between well-performing and under-performing communities can be reconciled in advance of an ARkStorm event. An examination of Severe Repetitive Loss Communities under the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) may provide some clues. From another perspective, a community may want to undertake significant mitigation activities, but lack financial means to do so. This is definitely the case with a potentially large number of rural, Central Valley communities.
This issue of disproportionate impacts on poorer communities is further addressed below.
How should local financial liabilities be shifted? In the ARkStorm scenario many cities and special districts may fail financially as there will be little or no license or sales tax revenue or other normal revenue flows. In an event of this magnitude, the federal and state governments may find it necessary to support local functions and services in many communities. Although the state would still have substantial capacity to provide support to localities, resources would be seriously stretched. Traditional local-to-local assistance normally deployed in emergencies through mutual aid agreements may help buttress and sustain certain shared local services. Such arrangements would probably survive and be operable to some degree. The costs of such actions would be far reaching. Some thought needs to be given to how to underwrite combined large-scale local
government financial failure. One area of enhanced federal support might be the FEMA Community Disaster Loan Program, designed to provide assistance for local government revenue losses. This program has been used infrequently in California. One challenge is how to make local governments more aware of this program so they can use it in an effective manner.
Like other disasters, the ARkStorm scenario would have a harsher impact on poor communities than those that are better off. The effects of ARkStorm would be more devastating for poor communities, making it harder for those communities to recover. The 2007 review of 436 FEMA-approved LHMPs indicated that communities that had not prepared an LHMP tended to be smaller and have higher percentages of households below the poverty line than those that had prepared one (California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, 2007). Yet Stafford Act and Disaster Mitigation Act offer no subsidies to assist poorer communities with pre-disaster mitigation or with post-disaster mitigation or recovery funds. With a long-range mitigation need under this scenario representing tens of billions of dollars or more, poor communities are less likely to be successful in securing post-disaster mitigation funds and preparing LHMPs during the pre-disaster
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period. During the post-disaster period poor communities would have to struggle harder to prepare LHMPs to qualify for both mitigation and certain recovery project grants.
The primary policy issue regarding mitigation in poor communities centers on the question of whether to create explicit new efforts to help bring those communities along.
Should special consideration be given to poor communities? The policy issue raised would be whether poor communities should be provided special consideration in competing for pre- and post-event mitigation planning and project grants because of their economic circumstances?
Should poor communities be provided subsidies? Another policy issue raised is whether poor communities should be financially assisted to help prepare LHMPs before a disaster, thereby, equipping those communities with the means by which to more readily secure post-disaster mitigation grant funding with less delay.