How are you, Elijah?
I'm good, how are you?
I'm doing well, thank you.
Thank you so much for joining us
today.
Absolutely.
Absolutely. I loved, loved, enjoyed,
enjoyed doing these kinds of things.
So, and especially being able to
talk a little bit, brag about our
home state, Wisconsin, at least for,
for ASFPM.
So.
All right. That's wonderful.
So to start us off, just like a
quick overview of what kind of the
story is.
And the other person in the chat
today is Rachel.
She's our media production
specialist. She just recording the
whole thing.
So the story's going to be in light
of all the stuff that's happening in
Milwaukee, we want to do an update
on flood management in Wisconsin,
right?
And just to start us off,
real quick question.
Your name is Tad Virginis,
right? And you are the executive
director of association state club
play managers. So you're okay with
being referred to all of that.
Yes.
All right, perfect.
And just to make
sure I have everything in order,
ASFPM is you guys work with
policymakers to help manage
policy for flooding, and
also you certified and trained
flood managers, right?
That's correct, yes.
Yeah, they work with policymakers
primarily at the federal and state
level.
And then we also,
one aspect of ASFPM is we also
do applied research and tool
development as well.
Okay, got it.
So research and tool development.
Okay, so my first question for you
is how is Wisconsin doing in
terms of managing floods compared to
other states?
Wisconsin actually
has had a history of
proactive flood management,
and in fact,
it isn't by pure
happenstance that Wisconsin
is also the home of ASFPM
headquarters, because there
has been a
long time.
A strong ethic when it comes
to making sure that we're
dealing with flood risks
appropriately.
When you look at flood management,
historically speaking, the upper
Midwest, including Wisconsin,
Minnesota, Illinois, Iowa,
some of those states have had long
histories of proactive flood
management.
So I would say comparatively,
Compared to other states,
Wisconsin I think is doing
quite well, and
I think that's also a big reason
that you don't see
as many headlines about
the flood damages occurring in
Wisconsin that you might see
elsewhere in terms of the scope and
magnitude of those damages.
Right, right.
And in terms of the flooding
that happened in Milwaukee last
month, how good
is Milwaukee and managing floods is
sort of the largest city in the
state.
Yeah. Yeah. So I know a
little bit about Milwaukee's
approach. And again, much
like the state of Wisconsin, I would
say that it is quite proactive.
The the Milwaukee Metropolitan
Sewage District, I believe, is kind
of oversees a lot of those
activities.
And I know that for
a number of decades,
MMSD has been
looking to make sure
that flood prone areas.
Are cleared to
the extent possible of human
habitation and things
so that you give
rivers and streams appropriate
places to flood being their
floodplains.
And so overall, I think Milwaukee's
done a really good job at doing
that.
However, I think what happened this
summer is something that we're
seeing also across the nation,
and that is the, um,
the rapid increase.
Of this flood
threat that we would call pluvial
flooding or stormwater flooding.
And it was something that probably
25 years ago you'd see it
on occasion, but
I think that in
trending also with
kind of a warming climate and
some of those climate change
factors, we're also seeing the
increase of very heavy
rainfall events.
And unfortunately, the
Milwaukee area had to endure that
over the summer.
And can you just explain to me a
little bit more what alluvial
flooding is?
Sure.
One of the things that we
know is happening
across the country, and it's
been measured and studied,
is that we are seeing an increase
overall in very heavy
rainfall events.
Now, this can even happen in
areas that over the course of
the year may be getting drier.
But the problem is the rainfall is
not being distributed as it
used to be.
And so you might have fewer,
but more intense storms.
And of course, in an urbanized
area, how do we
manage stormwater?
We have engineered approaches
to managing stormwater with
our storm sewers and things like
that.
But if the intensity
of those invents is getting worse.
Then at some point, those events
exceed the capacity of our
engineered systems to handle it.
And as a result,
you get the stormwater or pleudial
flooding.
So because this was like,
I've seen the headline like a
thousand year flood that happened in
Milwaukee. Is there anything like,
can you build systems to sustain a
thousand-year flood, or is it just
too grand and there's something
else that we might need?
You know, I was thinking about
this very topic quite
a bit over the last week, as
you may be aware, last Friday
was the 20th
anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.
And I remember at the time people
saying, like, oh, you know, Katrina,
this is a once in a lifetime, a
biblical event.
You know you could throw whatever
superlative out there, a thousand
year, you know, just huge event.
The problem is...
Is since that time, we've just seen
more and more and more of these
really large events.
And so even when we use a term
like the thousand year event, that
sounds really big, but
I might argue
that as these events become
more frequent than what was a
thousand year becomes a 500 year,
becomes a hundred year event
eventually.
I think in the flood management
world, we need to be starting to
think about those large
kind of events.
And in fact, one of the newest
national standards for
flood management came out in January
called ASCE 2424.
And that is the first
standard nationally that
we have that asks us
to start looking at the
one in a thousand year event
as a protection level.
So actually I'm
gonna argue that we've got to be
very careful not to write off a
thousand-year event as something
that's just gonna happen once every
thousand years and be done with it.
We're seeing a lot more of those
events and we need to start
making sure our built environment is
resilient against those events.
And what does that look like,
being more resilient toward these
grand events?
Yeah, so I think it happens
in multiple ways.
You know, first of all,
facilities.
Let's say those really essential
facilities in your community, like a
wastewater treatment plant, a
hospital, those facilities
probably should be designed
to make sure that they're open,
functional, and not impacted during
a thousand-year event.
And that's what actually ASCE 2424
recommends.
But even things like our homes
and our residences, I mean, look,
flood losses now in the nation
average $46 billion
a year.
We've had a flood standard in
the country tied to the 100-year
flood frequency for
over 50 years.
Clearly, that standard is
not working.
And so, again, and I go back to ASCE
2424 because I.
It says for residential,
for commercial, for industrial
properties, why not protect those to
the 500 year flood event?
Now, designing storm sewers
and such to a thousand year may
be a little bit high, but
again, in Houston we know,
for instance, they use the streets
as conveyance areas for those
flood waters.
So they're intentionally meant
to flood. That way.
So I think it, I think what it
requires though, is us to look at
it holistically and how we can
update our stormwater standards, how
we can upgrade our floodplain
management standards and our
building and land use standards.
And going back to Milwaukee
a little bit you did
say that they were you know really
well prepared for these kind of
things compared to the rest of
the nation.
There was a letter that came out
um from Tony Evers
last week um
about you know kind of what the
results of were that flood.
I take the notes where there's
about one confirmed death, two
possibly related, and three people
missing, and then about 76 million
dollars in damages.
Um had Milwaukee not been so Do you
think this flood would have been
worse?
Absolutely without question.
Yes.
You know, again, the state
itself has had flood standards
that every community in Wisconsin
have to adhere to that
include a protection level above the
100 year flood.
It has a flood mapping standard
that makes sure our floodplains
largely are free of
any newer residential
commercial industrial development.
And so While those
damages are a lot and
it is painful to hear
injury and death happening with a
flood, I can guarantee those
numbers would have been far higher
had the state not been practicing
good floodplain management for
decades.
And another question I had about
this report was that it said that
about 90% of homes that
were damaged were located outside of
the FEMA 100-year floodplain.
Why is that?
Well, the fact is that the
floodplain was
Yeah, so the hundred-year
FEMA floodplain, if we go back in
history, and if we were in the room
in 1968 when the National
Flood Insurance Program was
conceived, we would
probably hear a debate using
different flood standards,
but really nobody knowing
exactly what our standards
should be. You know, at that time,
the Corps of Engineers was using
regional floods that probably we're
about.
250-Year level.
But there was debate on what
that standard was.
Ultimately, the NFIP's
100-year standard was a political
compromise, nothing more, nothing
less.
And we needed to have a
standard that we at least tried this
big experiment called the Flood
Insurance Program.
But what we have not done in
the 50 years since is, we have paid
attention to the lessons learned
after every flood.
There are lessons that can be
learned. And we need to incorporate
that information back and make our
programs even better.
Unfortunately, with the NFIP, that
hasn't been done, especially when it
comes to the flood protection
standards.
So it is, again,
I kind of point to the flood losses
in the country, the fact that
historically around 30
to 40% of flood claims happen
outside of the FEMA 100-year
floodplain.
And that's because most
of the time, a community's
flood standards of their ordinances,
the protection standards stop
when you hit the boundary of that
100-year floodplain.
And I
was on a presentation a couple of
weeks ago where another
panelist had basically said what
we're seeing actually are
damages being higher outside
of the FEMA 100-year floodplain than
inside the floodplain.
And it's because there are no flood
standards applying to those
buildings while there are standards
in the mapped FEMA floodplains.
So again, I'll kind of go back to
this ASCE 2424,
one of the...
Really important ideas in
there is that we should actually
start looking at our regulatory
level being both the 100 year
floodplain and the 500 year flood
plain so that we catch a few more
of those outlying buildings,
giving the nature of the changing
flood risks we have.
Yeah, and about FEMA, so
with all the movement that's
happening at a federal level,
including cuts and the restructures
of floodplain standards,
how is that affecting floodplain
managers
and the way they manage floodplains?
Well, where it's
had its most immediate impact right
now is on the
hazard mitigation grant side
of things.
So I always look at
floodplain management as needing
to address two problems, the
built environment and the
yet-to-be-built environment.
The built environment has
a lot of older at-risk buildings
that we've got to address.
Probably not through codes and
standards, because you need to do
something more immediate.
And that's where hazard mitigation
comes in, where you
can apply for grants to elevate
or relocate or flood-proof
buildings that way.
And so when the, you
know, when this administration came
in.
And one of the
first actions, I have to say,
to me, was a bit of a
head-scratcher, which was curtailing
the BRIC
program, the Pre-Disaster
Mitigation Program, because that was
a program that President Trump in
his first term actually signed into
law.
And then the administration
now has also not
granted any governor's
request for hazard mitigation since
February.
And usually if there's a major
disaster declaration,
a governor can request individual
assistance, public assistance and
mitigation.
There's been no mitigation granted
across the country
through the Hazard Mitigation Grant
program that way.
And then more recently, I think,
due to some of the
administrative decisions of
FEMA, including...
You know, every expenditure over
$100,000 basically
going through more bureaucratic red
tape at the
FEMA administrators level and
the DHS secretary level.
We're seeing delays in mapping
projects.
We have not seen the
funding grant mechanism
for cooperating mapping
partners called the CTP
program.
And again, flood mapping is
foundational to all of these
efforts.
You can't manage flood risk if you
don't know where it is.
So going a little bit into flood
mapping very quickly, do
you have any concerns with that
about the way that we currently map
floodplains?
Well, my primary
concern at this point is
getting, making sure that we have
mapping funds out the door
that Congress has appropriated.
And, again, this is where I'm
scratching my head a little bit.
And this is even a
little bit more puzzling, because,
on one hand, it seems like President
Trump is supporting
flood mapping in
the president's budget for FY26.
There was stronger language about
the necessity of flood mapping, as
well as an increase
compared to the previous
administration requests for flood
mapping.
But then only to see
things not being implemented at
the FEMA level.
And I have to wonder what the
heck is going on at FEMA or DHS?
Are they not implementing the
president's priorities that way?
So again,
we have not...
Even completed mapping in the
country. So that's why I go back to
this is about Congress
authorizing money and the
administration executing on that.
But beyond that, again,
I think with flood mapping, one of
the other concerns I have is
kind of the brain drain at FEMA
had been.
Had been piloting
a new prototype approach
to doing flood mapping called the
Future of Flood Risk Data.
It's been about six or seven years
in the making in terms
of this approach.
There were some pilots that were to
wrap up and now with over a
third of FEMA's workforce gone,
including many in the mapping
program,
we don't know what
the outcome is at
this point.
And it's too bad because Future
of Flood Risk Data initiative
is the right way
the mapping program should be going,
taking advantage of the latest
technologies, the latest approaches,
and giving us much
more broad
set of flood data, including
the stormwater mapping data
so that we can better identify those
kinds of flood risks that hit
Milwaukee.
And just to wrap this up,
final question for you.
What would you like to see happen
going forward for better
flood management? And why do you
think that people should care about
it?
Well, what I'd like to see going
forward first, I think, would be
FEMA to simply
get both the
grant funds out the door
as well as their programs working
again.
FEMA is also not talking to any of
their partners, so we don't know
what is actually happening there.
So that'd be the first step.
Then the second is I think that we
have got to get real as a nation
when it comes to our flood
standards.
The ASCE 2424
standard, I think, represents
something that we need to get
to.
And even if that's something
where FEMA or Congress says,
you know what, yes, the base
standard for the NFIP needs to be
ASCE-2424,
I think that would push us
ahead to where we need to be in
terms of the standards
that are meeting the hazard out
there.
Right. Is there anything else you
feel like we didn't cover that you
wanted to say today?
You know, I'll just reiterate that
the state of Wisconsin,
because it's done proactive flood
plain management for decades,
is reaping those rewards.
And I know it sounds funny to say
this in the aftermath of 70-plus
million dollars in damage in
Milwaukee, but it
would have absolutely been far
worse than it was.
And so, you know, hopefully,
flood will be a reminder to
policymakers in the state, as
well as even local floodplain
managers that we have to be vigilant
because flood
risk is increasing in the country
and we've got to meet it head on.
Well, thank you so much for your
time today, Chad.
It was lovely meeting you.
When this story comes out, I'll
absolutely send it to you guys.
Okay.
But yeah, thank so much.
You have a good day.
All right, thank you.
You too, take care.
Thank you. Take care.
Bye-bye.
Thank you, Rachel, by the way,
I'm going to go ahead and end this
meeting, but you have a
good rest of your day.