As Floods Keep Coming, Cities Pay

Residents to Move
Jonna Laidlaw’s old home in Nashville has been boarded up since the city bought it last
year, part of a program to move people out of flood prone areas.CreditWilliam DeShazer
for The New York Times

Image
Jonna Laidlaw’s old home in Nashville has been boarded up since the city bought it last
year, part of a program to move people out of flood prone areas.CreditCreditWilliam
DeShazer for The New York Times

NASHVILLE — Jonna Laidlaw was terrorized by rain. Her house, with its lovely
screened-in back porch, had flooded some 20 times since 2001, from a few inches to six
feet. She and her husband would do their repairs with help from their flood insurance,
but before long it would flood again.

“Every time it sprinkled I got terrified,” she said.

When city officials offered to buy the house last year, she and her husband gladly said
yes. They have since moved to higher ground.

Nashville is trying to move people like the Laidlaws away from flood-prone areas. The
voluntary program uses a combination of federal, state and local funds to offer market
value for their homes. If the owners accept the offer, they move out, the city razes the
house and prohibits future development. The acquired land becomes an absorbent
creekside buffer, much of it serving as parks with playgrounds and walking paths.

Climate change is increasing the program’s urgency. While a number of cities around
the country have similar relocation projects to address increased flooding, disaster
mitigation experts consider Nashville’s a model that other communities would be wise
to learn from: The United States spends far more on helping people rebuild after
disasters than preventing problems.
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David Maurstad, who heads the National Flood Insurance Program, said buyouts were
the most permanent way to mitigate against future flood hazards. “Rebuilding out of
harm’s way can help avoid future devastation in a way that flood insurance cannot,” he
said.
Richland Creek in Nashville flows near England Park, named after Andrew and Martha
England who died in the city’s 2010 flood. The park is built on land recovered by the city
by purchasing homes and demolishing them.CreditWilliam DeShazer for The New York
Times
Image
Richland Creek in Nashville flows near England Park, named after Andrew and Martha
England who died in the city’s 2010 flood. The park is built on land recovered by the city
by purchasing homes and demolishing them.CreditWilliam DeShazer for The New York
Times

Flooding is a complex phenomenon with many causes, including land development and
ground conditions. Climate change, which is already causing heavier rainfall in many
storms, is an important part of the mix. Warmer atmosphere holds, and releases, more
water.

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“We’re starting to see evidence that the number of extreme events will increase,” said
Barbara Mayes Boustead, a climate scientist and an author of the latest installment of
the National Climate Assessment, a report written by 13 federal agencies that explores
both the current and future impacts of climate change. An area’s average annual rainfall
might increase by what seems to be a relatively small amount — from 40 inches a year to
42, for example — and “in your head, you might say ‘big whoop,’” she said. “But how it
falls is the critical piece of the story,” with the extra amount concentrated in extreme
events.

And while Nashville hasn’t seen the kind of repeated, extreme flooding that a city like
Houston has, the effect is being felt, said G. Dodd Galbreath, the founding director of
Lipscomb University’s Institute for Sustainable Practice and a member of the city’s
storm water management committee. “It’s a new weather pattern,” he said. “You can no
longer rely on statistical reliability and statistical measurement as your sole
measurements of risk.”
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The costs of flooding continue to climb, but only 20 percent of the money that the
Federal Emergency Management Agency distributes in disaster grants is earmarked for
pre-disaster work, even though research shows that a dollar spent on mitigation before a
disaster strikes results in at least six dollars in savings.

There are many reasons more people end up rebuilding in place than moving away.
Reimbursement is relatively quick, while FEMA’s buyout programs tend to be slow and
difficult to navigate. “A lot of people give up midway through the process,” said Craig
Fugate, a former FEMA head.

Around the nation, relocations are showing results. Despite this year’s floods that
inundated many communities in Nebraska and the upper Midwest, in Beatrice, Neb.,
the waters filled a park that included 40 acres of cleared lots and no homes or
businesses in town were damaged. FEMA has estimated the town’s program prevented
$13 million in damage in 2015 alone. “People got tired of rebuilding all the time,” said
Tobias J. Tempelmeyer, the city administrator.

Paul Osman, the chief of statewide floodplain programs for the Illinois office of water
resources, said his state’s program, which has bought some 6,000 structures and
properties, made all the difference in this year’s floods. Instead of working out of an
emergency operations center, dealing with sandbagging, community shelters, debris
cleanup, policing and more, he said, “It’s a nonevent.”
Some residents across the street from England Park in Nashville who have not relocated
have elevated their flood-prone homes. CreditWilliam DeShazer for The New York
Times

Image

Some residents across the street from England Park in Nashville who have not relocated
have elevated their flood-prone homes. CreditWilliam DeShazer for The New York
Times

How did Nashville create its own successful program? The city had gained some
experience even before the 2010 flood, which caused $2 billion in damage. Starting in
1998, it bought 93 homes in hazardous areas, which helped city officials navigate the
complex jumble of programs involved.
They understood that the FEMA programs didn’t put money up front, and that the
federal government will reimburse 75 percent of the money in most cases, with the rest
split between state and local sources. That meant the city ultimately spends $12,500 of
its money for every $100,000 it uses to buy a house. It has used this leverage to build
funding, bit by bit, to buy more than 400 homes and vacant lots, spending more than
$43 million in total so far.
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If people don’t sell after a flood, they are likelier to sell after the next one, said Tom
Palko, assistant director of the city’s storm water division. “You have to be patient,” he
said, “not go in guns blazing and say, ‘we’re going to solve everybody’s problems! We’re
going to save the world!’”

One topic officials do not bring up in the public meetings about buyouts: the possible
role of global warming. “I don’t want to get to a public meeting and debate climate
change,” Mr. Palko said. Instead, they cite the numbers: “We have had four of these
events in 10 years, when in the past 25 years there may have been only one of those
events of that magnitude.”

Ms. Laidlaw said she was pleased with the program, and with canceling flood insurance
that had climbed from $300 a year to $700 each month. When they first bought the
house, “they were talking like 500-year floodplain — what chance was there that we’d be
there in 500 years? But it happened.” (““500-year floodplain” is shorthand for a 0.2
percent chance of flooding in any given year. )

“The idea of not having to clean, not having to show the house” was also attractive. Ms.
Laidlaw said. And besides, “I didn’t really think with the flood history we’d be able to
sell it.” She said she still gets anxious when it rains, but “I can calm down pretty well
now.”
Image
Mold and debris in the basement of Ms. Laidlaw’s old home.CreditWilliam DeShazer for
The New York Times
Image
Faye Sesler, of Hendersonville, standing where her former home once stood. “A lot of
people are just scared of moving,” she said.CreditWilliam DeShazer for The New York
Times

Faye Sesler is another happy seller. A realtor, it had been her idea to purchase a home in
2012 as a rental unit. She and her husband soon discovered that the lovely creek behind
the house could end up in the house. And while her husband, a contractor, could handle
repairs, neither of them was happy about it.

“My husband, every time it rained, he’d say, ‘You better hope it won’t flood.” The city’s
program, she said, “was a marriage saver.”
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They sold in 2016 after attending a community meeting, where “I was amazed that so
many people didn’t want to sell. What I wanted to do was get them and shake them and
say ‘listen to this — it’s going to flood again.” Carol Mayes has tried to stay. She moved
back to Nashville from Washington, D.C., in 2008 to take care of her mother, who died
four years later. She now lives in her home, which flooded in 2010. She refused the city’s
offer, but many neighbors took it.

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Mr. Osman, the Illinois floodplain manager, said it could also be hard to get older
people to accept buyouts, as well as people in poorer neighborhoods. “Nobody wants to
start a mortgage again when they’re retired,” Mr. Osman said. In poorer Illinois
communities, fair market value for a home might turn out to be just $10,000, and “you
can’t buy a mobile home for that,” he said. “It’s a struggle, and I don’t have a good
answer.”

Nicholas Pinter, the associate director of the center for watershed sciences at the
University of California, Davis, said the challenges to “overcoming social inertia” are so
high because of “the intense sense of place that people have.”

Still, even though moving people can be expensive and contentious, he said, “it looks
like we’re going to have to look at a lot more flood relocations in the future.”
Native flora planted by the Tennessee Department of Agriculture to create a water
runoff buffer from Middle Fork Browns Creek in Nashville.CreditWilliam DeShazer for
The New York Times
Image
Native flora planted by the Tennessee Department of Agriculture to create a water
runoff buffer from Middle Fork Browns Creek in Nashville.CreditWilliam DeShazer for
The New York Times
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John Schwartz is part of the climate team. Since joining The Times in 2000, he has
covered science, law, technology, the space program and more, and has written for
almost every section. @jswatz • Facebook
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