Missouri

New Projects for 2019!

In late September 2018, USACE Institute for Water Resources announced the following projects for Missouri:

• -Historic Flood Signs. Raises flood awareness by forming a past flood story and high water marks with photos on to a durable 18"x24" sign where the community has plenty of foot traffic. Apply using link in the next section, below the big sign graphic.
• -Harrisonville Nonstructural Assessment and Public Outreach. Aides the community in assessing several solutions for managing floods and includes assistance with public involvement.
• -Devil's Elbow Nonstructural Assessment and Public Outreach. Just off historic Route 66 is a low floodplain that sees recurring flood damages, and this project will look closely at aiding Pulaski County with buyouts and restoration of the beneficial functions of the rich floodplain on the Big Piney River.
• -Flood Master Training. This project will assist SEMA and the State Risk Management Team in educating partnering communities and agencies doing flood mitigation. Four webinars will be scheduled (see calendar above right) in 2019. The webinars will be recorded and slides permanently posted on this web page for continuous use by our next generation of flood risk managers, floodplain & emergency managers, elected officials, and basically, our floodplain leaders!

Historic Flood Signs - A New Opportunity for Communities 

As part of the common interagency efforts, like the March 4th Severe Weather and Flood Awareness Week, the State Risk Management Team and SEMA invite communities in Missouri to apply for FREE historic flooding signs. These durable signs will be made for free for interested communities using this application (pdf, 372 KB). Apply now while supplies last! The signs will capture past events using a photo, historic high water marks, flood depths, loss of life, and historic flood damages that the community has experienced. Communities can apply for as many locations as they want, while the project budget lasts. Some communities are even setting up a flood tour. Updated deadline: Apply by September 30, 2019.

2018 Interagency Nonstructural Projects

For the Fiscal Year beginning in October (FY 2018), a record amount of funding has come to the Missouri team: Over $770,000. Kansas City District has four new projects, and St Louis District has two, in Missouri (listed below respectively).

• Flood Buyout Strategy. On this project, a partnership of state agencies and nongovernmental organizations will develop a set of criteria to become a strategy that Missouri SEMA and other state agencies can use to prioritize a list of structure buyouts, as a result of 2017 and other recent flood events across the state.
• Roadway Flooding Assessment. This project identifies and develops a prioritization strategy for roadways across Missouri, partnering with Missouri SEMA and MoDOT. 
• Nonstructural Workshops. This project conducted an eight-hour workshop for floodplain managers and city officials in Waynesville, MO on January 17, 2018. Over 20 people registered for the training and received professional development hours, too.
• MLDDA Newsletters. This project develops six newsletters for Missouri SEMA and the Missouri Levee & Drainage District Association (MLDDA). 
• Upper Joachim Creek Floodplain Management Plan. The project will establish a floodplain management plan for the the community of Desoto, MO. A trifold explaining floodplain management plans is here (pdf, 763 KB).
• Lower Meramec Basin Multi-jurisdictional Floodplain Management Plan. The project will establish a regional floodplain management plan. A trifold explaining floodplain management plans is here (pdf, 763 KB).

Missouri River Flood Inundation Mapping

This inundation mapping project brought together the State Risk Management Team in Missouri and the Kansas Hazard Mitigation Team to develop inundation maps for the Missouri River from River Miles 377 to 398. The project included developing a prototype inundation map for discrete elevation levels to convey flood risks to communities between Parkville, Missouri and Leavenworth, Kansas and establishing the prototype process for making such inundation maps. The maps were developed with input from stakeholders from Ponca City, Nebraska to the river's mouth in St. Louis, Missouri, including Silver Jackets teams, state agencies, counties, cities, and levee owners, and incorporated lessons from the 2011 flood. Map development took into account how local communities would use the information and is intended to become a standard for doing Missouri maps so data will be communicated in a consistent manner for the whole river system. The flood forecast inundation maps are hosted by the National Weather Service, where inundation mapping coincides with a National Weather Service forecast point that can issue flood warnings. This project was supported with Silver Jackets Pilot (pdf, 913 KB) funding from the Army Corps of Engineers.  

Hazard Mitigation Measures for Levee Owners

In collaboration with the county and the levee owners, the Buchanan County Levee Districts' Hazard Mitigation Measures project established a useful template for levee owners seeking to establish an emergency action plan (EAP).  The interagency project also used hydraulic modeling to inform evacuation routes in three levees in the county on the east overbank of the Missouri River.  The Halls Levee District will get a developed EAP under this effort.  EAPs are considered an important part of interim risk reduction measures, where larger and long term issues have been identified during the USACE Levee Safety Action Classifications (LSACs), and these are short term actions that reduce risks.  The work is being done in coordination with the USACE Levee Safety Program, and was supported with Silver Jackets Pilot (pdf, 913 KB) funding from the Army Corps of Engineers.

What is the one thing you would do to improve on your emergency action plan? See the updated (as of June 21, 2018) USACE guidance on EAPs here. Find specific answers on how to improve your EAP in the USACE St. Paul District Silver Jackets project's EAP guide book and template here (pdf, 4.6 MB).

Little Blue River Actions for Flood Risk Management

Several cities are striving to keep pace with managing development in the floodplain downstream from Blue Springs Lake and Longview Lake in the Kansas City Metro-area.  Independence, MO, requested an interagency effort to help communicate the flood risks to the public, specifically along the river below the dams at these lakes.  The project proposes the creation of two flood forecast inundation maps on the NOAA National Weather Service Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service (similar to the first project, above).  In addition, the USACE will help the communities with a floodplain management plan. 

Little Blue poster for USACE Flood Risk Management Conference  (pdf, 590 KB)

Roubidoux Creek Flood Forecast Inundation Map

The project proposes the creation of a flood forecast inundation map on the NOAA National Weather Sevice Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service (again, similar to the first project, above) for the Waynesville, MO.  This will better prepare the community for severe flooding, similar to the 2013 event, which saw Interstate-44 overtop by three feet and, unfortunately, resulted in loss of life nearby in the city.

Roudiboux Creek poster for USACE Flood Risk Management Conference (pdf, 892 KB)

Missouri River Flood Event Simulation Mapping

The team in Missouri has long been a proponent of communicating flood risks to stakeholders along the Missouri River with inundation maps.  This new project, Missouri River Flood Event Simulation Mapping (FESM) finally presents a continuous inundation map, but the project also establishes a process for use during changing circumstances.  The project enables a mapping process between the Corps of Engineers and the NOAA National Weather Service that during a flood event can account for levee breaches and overtopping and update maps of expected flooding in less than eight hours.

MO River FESM poster for USACE Flood Risk Management Conference  (pdf, 1.02 MB)

Levees and The River Crest

The objective of this project is to assist in developing six editions of a newsletter, encouraging a partnership between the state, levee sponsors, and the Corps of Engineers. The primary partner is the Missouri Levee & Drainage District Association (MLDDA). The newsletter, called The River Crest, will raise awareness and understanding of the risks and benefits associated with levee systems along the Missouri River valley. The target audience is the levee sponsors, community officials, businesses, local, state and federal agencies, political representatives and the public, who benefit from the levees. The newsletter will provide federal, state and local community officials, as well as the public, with information they may not have received before, or which they may not have remembered receiving. The raised awareness will help to manage flood risks better but prompting actions is another goal.

This project will promote actions to reduce and manage levee associated flood risk and shared responsibility through the dissemination of this newsletter by MLDDA to the levee sponsors, community officials and their public. The newsletters will highlight actions taken by USACE, MLDDA, SEMA, FEMA, levee sponsors and community officials to reduce risk through levee inspections, operation and maintenance, addressing risk drivers and recommendations from the risk assessments on the non-fed program levees and other related levee safety activities. In addition, these newsletters will help to provide a better explanation of USACE Levee Safety Program activities, including risk assessments and related information. The newsletters developed through this project will build a foundation for shared responsibility by providing information for developing and implementing flood risk management solutions for levee systems, including examples in the spotlight section of each newsletter. 

Below are the editions, which will be posted here as they become available:

The River Crest, Issue No.1 (5.82 MB)

The River Crest, Issue No.2 (11.2 MB)

 The River Crest, Issue No.3 (4.5 MB)

The River Crest, Issue No.4 (5.5 MB)

The River Crest, Issue No.5 (2.9 MB)

The roles-responsibility matrix for levees is tool that helps to understand who does what and when. Issue 5 discusses mitigation and risk communication efforts. Read more about how the roles-responsibility matrix helps in Issue 5.

The River Crest project team, including SEMA, MLDDA, and MDNR met August 24, 2018 and had a dialogue about roles and responsibilities. The team agreed that emergency mangers and floodplain managers have important overlaps that involve communicating with levee sponsors.