Getting The Water Out

CCM hires Fuss & O’Neill to study municipal flooding risk

With Long Island Sound and the Connecticut River, our state is rich with aquatic beauty. But in an era of rising ocean levels and more intense storms, the risk of these natural features flooding our towns and cities have never been greater. CCM is partnering with Fuss & O’Neill to study and help municipalities address the impacts of local flooding.

The partnership will combine the expertise of Fuss & O’Neill’s team with the lived experience of CCM’s member municipalities.

Fuss & O’Neill will not be “reinventing the wheel,” but building on prior assessments that have taken place on the municipal and COG levels, as well as information from the Connecticut Institute for Resilience & Climate Adaptation (CIR- CA). They note that by the end of their study, “virtually every municipality in the State of Connecticut will have been asked to document flooding in their communities.”

While their approach will identify partners on the state-level, they acknowledge that municipal stakeholders are the key to developing recommendations that will work. They have formulated a workshop approach in which their team and municipal officials can interact, brainstorm, and “ultimately refine and select final actionable, shortand long-term study plans.”

They will be asking municipal officials about their experiences with flooding, and this includes documenting floods over the past year or so, starting with the named storms in the summer of 2021.

Much of the first phase of this study will take place this year, while many of the recommendations will begin rolling out in 2023.

Although it appears that pre-season forecasts predicted a slower year for major Hurricanes, the likelihood that these kinds of storms will increase over time with rising sea levels and temperatures is almost assured.

With the study underway, municipalities can work towards a resilient future and address the causes and effects of local flooding.