And Here We Flood Again

Its been two days now that schools have been closed in Whatcom County, not for snow, but for rain and flooding. This unusual event coincides with record flooding throughout Western Washington, just a year after record flooding closed I5 for three days and Lewis County businesses experienced what they then called an unprecedented 500 year flood. I guess not.

There are many strange things about flood risk notation, and this idea that a 500 year flood often trips people up. They often believe a flood of that size will happen only once in 500 years. On a probabilistic level, this is inaccurate. A 500 year flood simply has a .2% probability of happening each year. A more useful analogy might be to tell people they are rolling a 500 sided die every year and hoping that it doesn’t come up with a 1. Next year they’ll be forced to roll again.

But, this focus on misunderstandings of probability often hides an even larger societal misunderstanding . Flood risk changes when we change the environment in which it occurs. If a flood map tells you that you are not in the flood plain, better check the date of the map. Most maps are utterly out of date and many vastly underestimate present flood risk. There are several reasons this happens. Urban development, especially development with a lot of parking lots and buildings that don’t let water seep into the ground, will cause rainwater to move quickly into rivers rather than seep into the ground and slowly release. Developers might complain that they are required to create runoff catchment wetlands when they do build. They do, but these requirements may very well be based upon outdated data on flood risk. Thus, each new development never fully compensates for its runoff, a small problem for each site but a mammoth problem when compounded downstream.

Deforesting can have the same effect, with the added potential for house-crushing and river-clogging mudslides. Timber harvesting is certainly an important industry in our neck of the woods. Not only is commercial logging an important source of jobs for many rural and small towns, logging on state Department of Natural Resource land is the major source of funding for K-12 education. Yet, commercial logging, like other industries, suffers from a problem of cost externalization. When massive mudslides occurred during last year’s storm, Weyerhaeuser complained that it wasn’t it’s logging practices, but the fact that it was an unprecedented, out of the blue, 500 year storm that caused it. While it is doubtful the slides would have occurred uncut land, that isn’t the only fallacy. When the slide did occur, the costs of repairing roads, treatment plants, and bridges went to the county and often was passed on to the nation’s tax payers through state and federal recovery grants. Thus, what should have been paid by Weyerhaeuser, 500 year probability or not, was paid by someone else.

Finally, there is local government. Various folks within local governments set regulations for zoning, deciding what will be built and where. Here is the real crux of the problem. Local government also gets an increase in revenue in the form of property, sales, and business income taxes. Suppress the updating of flood plain maps, and you get a short term profit and often, a steady supply of happy voters. You might think these local governments will have to pay when the next big flood comes, but often that can be avoided. Certainly, they must comply with federal regulations on flood plain management to be part of the National Flood Insurance program, but that plan has significant leeway and little monitoring. Like the commercial logging, disaster-stricken local governments can often push the recovery costs off to individual homeowners through the FEMA homeowner’s assistance program, and off to state and federal agencies by receiving disaster recovery and community development grants and loans. Certainly, some communities are so regularly devastated, and are so few resources, that disasters simply knock them down before they can given stand up again. But others have found loopholes and can profit by continuing to use old food maps and failing to aggressively control flood plain development.

What is it going to take to really change this system and make it unprofitable to profit from bad land use management?


Here’s a good in-depth article on last year’s landslides in Lewis County. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008048848_logging13m.html

An interesting article on the failure of best management practices in development catchment basins can be found here: Hur, J. et al (2008) Does current management of storm water runoff adequately protect water resources in developing catchments? Journal of Soil and Water Conservation, 63 (2) pp. 77-90.

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Everyday Farming is Food Security

So many books, so little time. Having just returned from a visit at UC Santa Cruz and the 8th annual Wise Traditions conference in San Francisco, and lunched with raw milk activist, Michael Schmidt (see the Harper’s story, http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/04/0081992), I am even more enthused about our Everyday Farming project.

This includes works entitled:

Making Piece with Local.
Building Resilient Food Systems: Culture, Choice Change, Context.
A Food Sabbatical: One year. One summer. One month. One week. One day. One life.

Our Everyday Farming project is similarly titled to work in South Australia (see Gendered Bodies, Gendered Knowledge: Information Technology in Everyday Farming by Lia Bryant, which looks at gendered interactions, understandings, and communications in everyday work practices), but includes study of the production and consumption of all aspects of sustenance – food, clothing, housing, arts. Food, however, figures most prominently in the mix.

A top priority in the research is to look at entry points into everyday farming and the common barriers: land acquisition, start up costs, seed affordability and procurement, knowledge barriers in practices, markets and marketing, sustainable incomes. Some of the work relates to our newest grant at the Institute for Global and Community Resilience, which I’m hoping will take the form of a Food and Farm project: Everyday Farming for Resilient Community Living. One meal at a time.

We’re certainly fortunate to be living in a community and region that has such favorable resources (energy and water issue notwithstanding), know-how, and interest in supporting agriculture and fishing. From Sustainable Connections to the Food Bank Farm, Uprising Organics to Twin Brook Creamery, Boxx Berry Farm to Edaleen Dairy, Ciao Thyme to the Whatcom County-Bellingham City Peak Oil Task Force, growers, farm suppliers, and community members are united on the need to protect farmland. The question is how. Fortunately, Whatcom farm friends weighs in heavily here; advisory boards to various non profits counsel as well. Protecting the land base is a first step in achieving system resiliency in food production (see “urban-rural encroachment” working paper from the IGCR website, forthcoming).

Our new grant, hopefully, will help us tease out/identify factors of resilience that reduce social vulnerability. A goal of the work is to focus on what policies can reduce vulnerabilities and what economic accounting systems can validate the worth of resilient practices and systems. We also are working on case studies, and invite community members to offer stories related to how everyday farming – focused on what and where food is coming from as a part of increased community resilience – should be promoted.

Dedicated to the Tuba
Guy…
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/jamieson/386267_robert04xx.html
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/jamieson/387025_Robertweb.html

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School Vulnerability in OR & WA

Been a bit too busy to catch lots of the good stuff in the NYT. I was reading along today and read the name of a friend, Yumei Wang, who wrote the NYT about seismic safety of school in the US and in particular Oregon. She answered this question for us:

I hope that the problem with seismically unsafe schools in the U.S. does not get overlooked. Although California has had school safety laws since 1933, other states have not. As you know, I work in Oregon. Last year, we conducted “screenings” on 3,300 public schools and emergency buildings. Our results, which are available online, indicate that 1,300 have high to very high probability of collapse. We will apply another screening “filter” to reduce that number; however, in the end, Oregon will need to mitigate about 1,000 school buildings.

And on the topic of Washington and their schools? She wrote, "They are still sleeping (except the city of Seattle has done stuff)."

Considering that Washington State's constitution states that "[i]t is the paramount duty of the state to make ample provision for the education of all children residing within its borders, without distinction or preference on account of race, color, caste, or sex" it would seem like seismic safety of all public schools, regardless of location, is also of "paramount duty."

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School Vulnerability... Not In Our Backyard!?

The New York Times has a good side-bar article about the vulnerability of schools around the world. They interview disaster luminaries Brian Tucker and Ben Wisner -- probably the most knowledgeable folks out there. (Part of the email interview of Dr. Wisner is in this NYT blog post.)

(Dr. Tucker won the MacArthur Award because of work he did related to earthquake risk reduction for schools, particularly in Katmandu in association with his organization GeoHazards International. Dr. Wisner has written volumes on disaster risk reduction, most notably on this topic is this report [pdf].)

The NYT article observes that...

[e]xperts on earthquake dangers have warned for years that tens of millions of students in thousands of schools, from Asia to the Americas, face similar risks, yet programs to reinforce existing schools or require that new ones be built to extra-sturdy standards are inconsistent, slow and inadequately financed.

Well, of course. That sounds obvious -- schools are vulnerable in places around the world that we associate with being most vulnerable. When the experts says schools are vulnerable in "the Americas," they mean Central and South America.

Right?

Yes.

Well, and North America...

... the risks are not limited to poor or emerging countries. In Vancouver, British Columbia, parents’ groups have been agitating to accelerate a decades-long program aimed at bringing schools up to modern earthquake standards.

Because of the Sichuan earthquake, the Seattle PI is reporting on building vulnerability in Seattle, citing a report for the City of Seattle [big pdf] on unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings that was published in December 2007. The report notes that some of the URMs in Seattle are schools -- not surprising given the age of construction:

Among the more notable buildings on the list are West Seattle High School, John Marshall School in the Roosevelt area, First United Methodist Church downtown, and the Merchants Cafe and the Union Gospel Mission in Pioneer Square.

To my knowledge, the State of Washington has not publicly disclosed schools in the state that are seismically vulnerable, particularly URMs. I'm not even certain if they have them inventoried. Obviously, this is a first step in mobilizing political will to retrofit or replace these schools.

Anyone know about a school seismic-safety inventory in WA?

Other states?

UPDATE

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No Federal Funding for Flood Works

So... if there isn't money to repair and retrofit levees, like say on the Chehalis River in Lewis County, what should be done?

From the Bellingham Herald:

Sen. Patty Murray sharply criticized the Bush administration Thursday for failing to include any money in its budget request for flood-control projects along the Chehalis River and summoned U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officials to explain why.

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Disaster Caused Increased Food Stamp Participation in Washington?

In this New York Times article about the near-record rise in food stamp recipients over the past year, a graphic is included with a map showing that Washington State participants in the USDA's Food Stamp Program (FSP) has risen by about 25% -- unfortunately, the highest enrollment increase in the country.

Clark Williams-Derry over at Sightline, who I recently linked to on the related issue of public health and the wealth gap, read the NYT's article and took note of one cited reason for increased FSP participation: natural disasters. The NYT article was specifically referring to the effect of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita on FSP enrollment, not Washington State. However, Clark suggested that the December 2007 flood disaster in Western Washington (Lewis, Thurston, and Grays Harbor County) might be associated with Washington State's FSP statistics for last year.

Typically, rising food stamp enrollment is a clear sign of a slowing economy. But Washington's worst-in-nation food stamp surge likely had another cause: the flooding in west-central Washington late last fall that put many folks in shelters, and still more in dire financial straits.

He uses this supposition to support two claims: 1) That disaster's aren't natural and 2) that this provides even more reason for "stopping global climate change."

I had three reactions to Clark's interesting post:

1) Right on! The idea (fact!?) that disasters are not "natural" is a major theme that we teach here at WWU. It's great to see people who are not in disaster studies making this link and putting it out there.

2) Sightline really likes to use flooding in Washington as evidence for global climate change. I worry about over-selling this point. Flood disasters as the result of unsustainable residential, commercial, and economic development practices are a major issue we need to contend with regardless of climate change. And I would argue that development practices are ultimately more important (and easier) to focus on than the vague notion of "stopping climate change."

3) So what's the deal with the FSP and the Western Washington flood disaster anyway? Did the flooding increase FSP enrollment? And, if so, does this explain the 25% increase in FSP recipients in Washington State?

To answer these questions I did a bit of data compilation and crunching. For those who just want the answers without the explanation: Yes, the flooding likely increased participation in the FSP, but not for the reason you'd probably think. And no; it's unlikely that the flood disaster in Lewis, Thurston, and Grays Harbor Counties accounted for the 25% FSP increase in Washington State from 2006 to 2007.

The upshot is that Washington State lawmakers (and other concerned folks) should not brush of this 25% increase in FSP participants as the result of the December 2007 flood disaster. It's a signal, but not a big one, not even big enough to bump Washington State out of the top spot in terms of FSP participant increase compared to other states. It's important that we do figure out what the bigger signal is. (Anyone?) We need policies and plans to increase our resilience to flooding, but more importantly we need to first increase the resilience of folks to economic disaster who don't experience a natural hazard.

If you're interested in the lengthy details of what I found and how I found it, keep reading.



Before I get into things, let me say that this should be considered a "back of the envelope" analysis. I've done several hours of synthesis and analysis on this, but much more could be done and I wasn't able to find all the data I want.

So like what kind of data couldn't I find? Data on how many FSP participants enrolled as a result of the December 2007 disaster declaration in the three counties.

A minor issue.

So I did what any geographer geek would do: construct a census data spreadsheet to in order evaluate my two questions.

Question 1: Did enrollment in the FSP increase as a result of the December 2007 flooding?

To lighten the analytical load, I only looked at Lewis County for this question. After compiling the household and family income data from 2006 (the most current available), I realized that I didn't even need to compile the data to determine that more Lewis County residents were eligible (if not enrolled) for the FSP than normal.

The USDA has different eligibility requirements [pdf file] in the case of disaster declarations. In many instances, the income level (minus deductions or, in the case of disasters, losses) required to be eligible is higher. That is, it's easier for people to qualify for the disaster FSP.

Well, some people.

The maximum one-month income for a single person to qualify for the FSP goes from $1107 to $1416 -- a 28% increase -- in the event of a disaster declaration.

This appears to make sense -- in the case of disaster more money is available to assist more people in need. However...

The maximum one-month income for a family of four goes from $2238 to $2295 -- a measly 2.5% increase.

Does this make sense? It's significantly easier for an individual to be eligible for food stamps in the event of a disaster, but for a family of four it's negligibly easier.

Perhaps someone with more knowledge about this policy could tell us why the difference.

Regardless of the apparent disparity in disaster FSP eligibility, the fact remains that more people are eligible as the result of the higher income thresholds and thus more people are likely to be participants. In addition to the easier income requirements, of course one would assume that the disaster losses would increase the number of eligible people even without a change in the income requirement. That is, those people who would not qualify for the basic FSP based on income would qualify after the disaster because they can deduct their losses from their gross income.

I was curious which would have the bigger effect on eligibility: the easier income requirements or the increased deductions from flood loss.

Based on the little "what if" analysis I did with the census data, it appears the change in income level has a much greater effect on eligibility than direct disaster losses, in the case of Lewis County specifically. I estimate there was about a 40% more people eligible for the FSP just based on the income requirement difference. Conversely, the eligibility numbers were not very sensitive to losses, which I modeled as proportional to one month of home ownership cost -- data available in the census. In fact, I had to assume that every household incurred over 80% damage to their house to include the next income bracket, resulting in 92% more people being eligible for the FSP. (If anyone wants to look at the spreadsheet, just email me.)

Now obviously, this is as an estimate based on several assumptions, but I'm confident of the relative upshot: there was increased participation due to expanded eligibility, but that eligibility is more related to a policy decision (income threshold increase) than from direct losses from the flooding.

I don't have actual numbers on flood-related participants from the December disaster, but the USDA certainly keeps track of these numbers for all disasters [word document]. The USDA's data for past disasters, including Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, clearly shows an increase in FSP participation.

The first question that came to mind when I looked through their data from Katrina and Rita is why didn't the NYT (or whoever they interviewed) actually crunch the numbers to see IF those disasters contributed to the increase of participants in the Gulf Coast states? Because, honestly, it's rather unintuitive that a disaster that started in 2005 resulted in a bigger FSP enrollment spike between 2006 and 2007, then it did between 2005 and 2006. The disaster FSP benefit period after Katrina and Rita was, as far as I can tell, less than a year in all cases. So the NYT (or their source) is arguing that Katrina and Rita had knock on effects that lead to folks enrolling in the basic (non-diaster) FSP in 2007, but not in 2006. Disasters unfold. It certainly is possible that there are folks who live(d) in the Gulf Coast states who have fallen on worse times in the past year than in 2005 and 2006. But I'm not sure the numbers would be that large.

And this brings us to my second question....

Question 2: Did the December 2007 flood disaster in Western Washington result in the 25% increase in FSP participants in Washington State?

First of all, I'm not even sure if the USDA would consider the disaster enrollees from the December 2007 flood disaster part of 2007 reporting. The application period was December 10-14th, 2007. I'm guessing that all disaster FSP enrollees were authorized before 2008, but it's not unimaginable that they weren't.

Second, and most importantly, it doesn't appear to me that there were even enough eligible people in Lewis, Thurston, and Grays Harbor County to represent a dominant portion of the 25% increase of Washington State FSP participants. I estimate that in 2006 there were about 540,000 FSP participants in Washington State. A Washington State press release from 2007 say there are 500,000 participants in the state. The 2002 (the most recently available) Washington State Department of Social and Health Services "Blue Book" says there were 527,000.

The entire population in the three counties represents about 70% of the number of FSP participants in Washington State (depending on which of the above numbers you use!). In other words, about 35% of the population of the three counties would need to be new FSP participants as a result of the disaster to comprise the full 25% FSP participant increase for the entire state. Based on DSHS's "Blue Book," this represents over 100 times more FSP participants in Region 6 (which includes the three counties and eight others) than normal. My estimate for Lewis County was that an additional 18% of the population of Lewis County were eligible for the disaster FSP. Lewis County was the hardest hit, while Thurston County has the highest population, and certainly not all 18% of eligible people enrolled in the FSP.

The take home message is that, even though these numbers are very rough and the analysis quick, it's unlikely that the December 2007 flood disaster contributed to a majority of the 25% FSP participant increase in the State of Washington. My estimate is that the disaster represents 20 to 40% of the increase. So even without out the December 2007 floods, the State of Washington still had the greatest increase in FSP enrollment in the country between 2006 and 2007.

Now let's start talking about what we should do about this....

UPDATE: In response to Rebekah's comment, I looked a little harder at what counties were eligible for the disaster FSP. The info I read referred to just Lewis and Grays Harbor (and I included Thurston as an assumption for larger population numbers). The confusion was from the fact that more counties were deemed eligible later [Word doc]:

Those counties approved for the food stamp assistance are Clallam, Grays Harbor, Kitsap, Lewis, Mason, Pacific, and Thurston counties.

Deadlines for processing and receiving the benefits are January 2, 2008, for Grays Harbor, Lewis, Mason, Pacific, and Thurston counties, and January 7 for Clallam and Kitsap counties.

This snippet from DSHS answers two questions for me: 1) I haven't rerun the population count, but Thurston I think is still the biggest county, so the general conclusion above would remain the same. 2) The deadline for application was in 2008. The 25% increase in FSP recipients refer to the change from 2006 to 2007. So there were participants associated with the flood who could not be in that statistic.

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