CHARLESTON — West Virginia might be in a drought, but flood mitigation and resiliency against future natural threats remain on the mind of state planners while working on next-to-no funding.

Bob Martin, director of the State Resiliency Office, gave a quarterly report to members of the Joint Legislative Committee on Flooding Sunday afternoon on the first day of three-day November interim meetings at the State Capitol Building.

The State Resiliency Office (SRO) presented a flood resiliency plan to members of the SRO Board during its quarterly meeting in June ahead of a June 30 deadline required by the passage of Senate Bill 677 during the 2023 legislative session.

The state’s earlier flood protection plan, first begun under Gov. Cecil Underwood in 1998 and completed under Gov. Bob Wise in 2004, was never implemented. The SRO conducted a review of the 2004 plan in 2022, but SB 677 – which made several reforms to the State Resiliency Office – required a new flood protection plan.

“That was a monumental hurdle we had to get through,” Martin said. “We got that put in and submitted to our board in June. From that point, it was posted once we got it up to our website. It is now on there.”

The new state flood resiliency plan – available for public viewing at sro.wv.gov – is required to be reviewed on an annual basis. The SRO has a monthly working group working on the flood resiliency plan review. Planning has begun on the state’s third annual flood symposium scheduled for April 2025, which will also include a review of the flood resiliency plan.

The SRO is also working on studies with the National Science Foundation and AECOM, a company that specializes in infrastructure planning, on flood resiliency planning. Martin explained that the weekly meetings with AECOM are focused on incorporating flood resiliency into the projects of multiple state departments and agencies.

“One of the things that we’re working with (AECOM) on is a trend analysis,” Martin said. “The idea behind it is that right now, a lot of agencies do a lot of different work that has flood resiliency and flood mitigation involved in it: highways, emergency management, economic development, water resource development. They all work on different projects, but there’s no collective area right now. We bring it all together.”

“All the things that we’re doing in the state, how much money we put towards it – whether it’s educational, whether it’s community related, if it’s state related or it’s federal – it’s dollars,” Martin continued. “The number of grants that are being applied for and effectiveness of those grants, that’s all going to be calculated into this to give us a trend to see if we’re doing the right things.”

But funding is a big problem. The three-person State Resiliency Office is still operating under an unfunded mandate and is seeking grants for flood mitigation projects.

SB 677 gives SRO authority over the West Virginia Disaster Recovery Fund, which can be used to provide money for disaster recovery for people, local governments, emergency services and local organizations. The bill included $10 million for the fund, which can be replenished each year.

SB 677 also created the West Virginia Flood Resiliency Trust Fund, which could be used to encourage local governments to work on flood protection and prevention projects.

It would prioritize low-income geographic areas and prioritize nature-based solutions — using the local environment and features to protect against flood damage.

However, the Legislature has never appropriated money for the Flood Resiliency Trust Fund. During his eighth and final State of the State address on the first day of the 2024 legislative session, Gov. Jim Justice called for a one-time $100 million appropriation, with $50 million set aside for congressional earmarks and $50 million for flood mitigation.

The funding was included in his version of the budget bill – Senate Bill 200 – setting the general revenue budget for fiscal year 2025 beginning Monday, but the funding was stripped out by lawmakers in the version of the budget that passed on March 9.

In 2020, the Legislature passed Senate Bill 586, which reorganized the former Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety into the Department of Homeland Security, creating the State Resiliency Office. The office was created to work with state agencies to ensure that parts of the state hit with natural disasters and man-made emergencies can bounce back quickly. It also manages non-federal disaster and hazard mitigation grant funding.

According to the Bridge Initiative for Science and Technology Policy, Leadership, and Communications at West Virginia University, the state experienced more than 1,600 flood events between 2010 and 2021. West Virginia leads other states in flood insurance payouts, with in-state flood risk rising by 18% by 2050 under current conditions. The Bridge Initiative estimates that for every $1 spent on flood mitigation, it can save up to $6 in flood recovery costs.