Kelly Smith: <\/strong>They have better technology for mapping, as the years go on, and the engineers found that the Jefferson River would come out of its banks about two miles south of a bridge we have here. This new map puts most of the west side of our town into the floodway, which means no building. If your house floods or burns down you can rebuild, but you can\u2019t enlarge it or build anything new. Coming up the Madison, it showed that we\u2019d have greater flooding there also, raising the base flood levels by about 2 feet. <\/p>\n\n\n\nWith climate change \u2014 it\u2019s hard to predict, but if we do have drought conditions and then we get a big ice jam, the ground won\u2019t be able to soak up the water, and the river could spill further over into town. But they\u2019re modeling these maps on historical data, because no one knows what will happen in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When we first found out about these new maps, the city council said doing nothing is not an option. That\u2019s when we got help from Headwaters Economics and Great West Engineering. There\u2019s some farmland a couple of miles outside of town where the engineers have found that they could build a shallow, wide channel to capture almost all of the quantity of water that would come in from the Jefferson River in a 100-year flood event. There are two landowners of this farmland that we\u2019re working with \u2014 we don\u2019t have anything signed yet, but they are being helpful. There could still be cattle grazing in the channels. The ground wouldn\u2019t need to be unusable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Two years ago we applied for a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) grant. We didn\u2019t get any money \u2014 the coastline communities got all the money last year. We felt pretty defeated, because we put a lot of time and energy into it and Headwaters paid for the engineering. We got some pointers on how to reapply, and so we reapplied in December for two FEMA grants. One or the other would work. If we get that, the new maps go into the place, but we hope to get the channel in before a major flood would happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We sent notices and postcards to everyone who would be affected by the map. We\u2019ve had newspaper articles, Facebook posts, website information \u2014 we\u2019re trying to push this out because it will have a huge effect on people in the floodplain. But we have had very few in the community even contact us. So I\u2019m concerned when the new maps become effective and people start being told about them by their mortgage companies, that\u2019s when we\u2019ll have the outcry, because I feel they\u2019re not paying attention. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We have realtors from Bozeman listing houses in Three Forks, and I send messages to the realtors: This is in the floodplain, it\u2019ll be in the floodway, make sure they disclose it. And they\u2019re still not disclosing it! People have no idea they bought a house that is going to be remapped. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
New people coming in probably aren\u2019t aware of the floodplain or what that means. We have had a large number of people moving in because we\u2019re cheaper than Bozeman, but it\u2019s still the highest prices people have ever seen in Three Forks that I know of. With working online and COVID, you don\u2019t have to be in an office anymore, so you can live in a rural area and not have to worry about getting to your job as much. And we have had a lot of longer term residents that have sold and left town, cashing out on high property prices. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kristin Smith:<\/strong> In Three Forks, there\u2019s significant flood risk but actually the community has not flooded seriously in a very long time. They\u2019re not really worried because it hasn\u2019t happened in living memory. But they are very concerned about keeping their community affordable, and of course the flood risk regulations. If they don\u2019t figure out a solution, housing prices will go up. We often emphasize: This project has to occur, not only to reduce flood risk, but also to keep the community affordable.<\/p>\n\n\n\nPeople keep talking about the risk from a natural hazard or hazard point of view, and the problem isn\u2019t the flood, the flood is natural. But the problem is the people impacted by it. In my work, I keep coming back to: \u201cWhy does this matter for the community?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A lot of our climate adaptation is presented in terms of: \u201cThis is how it should be,\u201d versus, \u201cHow can we meet communities where they\u2019re at?\u201d And that is a huge barrier for all of rural America. <\/p>\n
This story was originally published by Grist<\/a> with the headline How inland America is adapting to high water<\/a> on Jun 8, 2022.<\/p>\nThis post was originally published on Grist<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We spoke with community leaders, government officials, and residents all across \u201cflyover country\u201d about how they\u2019re protecting their hometowns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":125,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[395,8923],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690772"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/125"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=690772"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690772\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":699532,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690772\/revisions\/699532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=690772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=690772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=690772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}