Nine years after the 2013 flood in Boulder, the city has an updated Comprehensive Flood and Stormwater Master Plan (CFS).
Master plans guide the city’s future planning and response to events, in this case how the city will manage stormwater and flooding. They are in place for many years, sometimes decades, so the opportunity to update old ones or build new ones doesn’t come around that often.
Rethinking Priorities
The latest CFS plan is different in that it is one of the first to be informed by both the city’s climate goals and Racial Equity Plan, which aims to improve outcomes for all by addressing systemic racial inequity
Equity in Decision-Making: “The Greatest Good, First”
Prioritizing equity helped shape how the CFS was re-envisioned to ensure people who have limited access to flood preparedness, response and recovery resources are considered first for investments in flood and stormwater measures. And as we saw in 2013, floods can have incredibly devastating human effects.
Informed by equity, the CFS provides a framework for staff to prioritize projects that protect community members who need it most. This means work will be prioritized in areas where it has the biggest impact on life safety and community need. This is a shift from using a strictly economic approach to prioritizing projects, a common industry standard and the city’s historic practice.
The city intentionally incorporated equity into the CFS by engaging communities who have historically been left out or don’t typically participate in the planning process. The team also reviewed existing policies, actions, regulations and regulatory enforcement to determine if inequitable impacts were evident. This analysis and community feedback informed equitable policies, program goals and objectives that became part of the CFS.
Specifically, the plan aims to:
- Prioritize the design and construction of major flood mitigation projects in a way that incorporates racial equity.
- Establish policies and programs that focus on equitable outcomes for minority populations.
- Create emergency preparedness resources that are culturally relevant limited-proficiency English speakers.
- Enhance outreach by maintaining and growing relationships in the Spanish-speaking community.
“The CFS shows what is possible when we put equity first,” said the city’s Equity Manager Aimee Kane. “Listening to historically excluded community members and neighborhoods vulnerable to flooding can serve as a model of how to incorporate equity in future planning.”
Original source can be found here.
