The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s (DEQ) Flood Resiliency Blueprint today released the White Oak River Basin Action Strategy, a comprehensive framework to support flood resilience planning and decision-making across the basin. Developed with local input and informed by existing flood planning efforts and vulnerability assessments, the strategy identifies 95 prioritized actions to help White Oak River Basin communities reduce flood risk and strengthen resilience.
"The White Oak River Basin Action Strategy will help communities keep their residents and critical infrastructure safe in the face of more frequent and severe flooding,” said DEQ Secretary Reid Wilson. “This strategy, the first of its kind in this basin, prioritizes resilience actions so that communities can make smart investments to reduce their flooding risk.”
The actions include structural and nonstructural projects such as stormwater system improvements, transportation and roadway upgrades, critical infrastructure protection, nature-based solutions, structure-level mitigation projects, such as elevating or floodproofing buildings in flood prone areas, and policy and planning actions.
Further evaluation of the 95 identified priorities, and consultation with local leaders, identified 21 high-priority actions that are recommended for early consideration as potential first steps toward implementation, based on local buy-in, feasibility and capacity, and potential impact and benefit. These actions represent a range of approaches, including floodplain and stream restoration, drainage and culvert improvement, roadway and critical infrastructure upgrades, floodproofing and elevation of critical facilities, early flood warning systems and other stormwater and flood mitigation measures. The recommendations are intended to help guide initial investment and coordination while allowing flexibility for communities as funding, capacity and priorities evolve.
All identified resilience actions for the basin are stored and maintained in the Flood Resiliency Blueprint tool, DEQ’s online decision-making tool, which provides users with data-driven flood risk and vulnerability assessments. The Blueprint tool allows users to develop and evaluate flood resilience actions. Communities can access this tool to update localized flood plans with the support of Blueprint staff as new information and opportunities develop.
The action strategy is informed by a basin-wide vulnerability assessment, community capacity assessment and gap analysis, as well as extensive engagement with local governments, state and federal agencies, nonprofit organizations and other stakeholders within the White Oak River Basin. Local governments developed Local Action Plans, which outline locally identified flood resilience actions, and submitted them using the Flood Resiliency Blueprint Tool. The White Oak River Basin Advisory Group, which brings together subject matter experts from state agencies, local and regional governments, nongovernmental organizations and academic institutions, also provided technical input and guidance throughout the process. Together, these analyses and collaborative efforts helped identify flood risks, local capacity and resilience needs, and priorities for reducing the impacts of current and future flooding.
The White Oak River Basin Action Strategy and supporting materials are available here.
DEQ will continue collaborating with local governments and partners as they use the Flood Resiliency Blueprint Tool as a resource to support flood resilience planning and maintain up-to-date information on resiliency actions and funding opportunities. The Blueprint program currently serves six of North Carolina’s 17 river basins. DEQ previously released the Neuse, Tar-Pamlico and Lumber RBAS and will release the remaining two RBAS (Cape Fear and French Broad) in the coming months.
About the NC Flood Resiliency Blueprint
In 2021, the NC General Assembly directed the NC Department of Environmental Quality to develop a statewide Flood Resiliency Blueprint. The Blueprint serves as the backbone of North Carolina’s flood resiliency planning and is based on the best available science, stakeholder engagement and sound decision-making to develop actionable projects. At the heart of the Blueprint is an online decision support tool to help local governments, agencies and nongovernmental partners develop, evaluate and prioritize resilience actions as well as plan and marshal funding to implement those priorities. The Blueprint is currently funded and authorized to work in six of North Carolina’s 17 river basins. River Basin Action Strategies are being developed for the six initial basins. The Blueprint will make North Carolina more resilient to flooding by funding projects that limit flood extent and severity, allowing communities to recover more quickly and limit future risk as storms become more frequent and severe. DEQ has awarded funding to 86 Blueprint projects in six river basins totaling $45 million.