Vernon County awarded $300,000 Pre-Disaster Flood Resilience Grant for flood mitigation work

Vernon County recently applied for, and was awarded, a $300,000 Pre-Disaster Flood Resilience Grant, which is administered by Wisconsin Emergency Management (WEM), a division of the Department of Military Affairs. This grant was created from legislation introduced by former 96th Assembly Representative Loren Oldenburg and is intended to help identify flood vulnerabilities, options to improve flood resilience, and restoring hydrology to reduce flood risk and damages in flood-prone communities. The grants have two tracks: Assessment Projects and Implementation Projects.

According to Vernon County Community Development Director Amy Oliver there was $2 million in total funds available to award across the state. Vernon County applied for an assessment project. A total of 16 applications were submitted for assessment projects and we were one of eight selected. The maximum award amount in this track was $300,000 in State funds. Vernon County applied for a total estimated project cost of $398,719.76 and was awarded $299,039.82 in State funds. Vernon County will cover the remaining $99,679.94 (25 % match requirement).

Oliver said the application was put together with satff from multiple county departments drawing on expertise in a number of areas. The grant project team consisted of staff in Community Development, Land & Water Conservation, Land Information, Zoning, Highway, and Emergency Management.

“I wrote the grant,” said Oliver. “But staff from these departments provided the information I needed for the content. I’m not well versed in H & H studies and culvert inventory so their input was key. Therefore,it was a collaborative effort to write the grant and execute the grant project.”

Information provided by Vernon County staff shows we have had four presidentially declared disasters for flooding since 2016, and Vernon County was identified as the most flood-prone county in Wisconsin with 180 flooding events over the past 41 years (Beyond Disaster Response: Planning for the Future  Through Mitigation, Katie Rousonelos, August 22, 2023).

Oliver said the grant will allow Vernon County to take a proactive approach in identifying areas of high flood risk and determine priority projects to improve flood resiliency and all the county to :

• Contracting an engineering firm to conduct twenty-two H & H Studies in the West Fork of the Kickapoo and Coon Creek Watersheds. These hydrologic models will help predict how the watershed and stream system will react to future heavy rainfall events in the anticipated absence of the PL-566 dam structures. These studies will also help identify infrastructure incapable of handling these events, that are prone to causing erosion and flooding to nearby communities.

• Utilizing the Great Lakes Stream Crossing Inventory to gather the locations and condition assessments of culverts (less than six feet in diameter) along all roads and highways within the county border. This inventory will give us a baseline understanding of the location and condition of county culverts, allow us to develop an annual maintenance schedule to more efficiently track which culverts are damaged or causing damaging during future heavy rainfall events, prioritize which culverts need to be repaired or replaced, and improve accuracy of hydro-conditioning.

• Collaborating with twenty landowners within these watersheds to identify nature-based solutions to help retain water, reduce runoff, and reduce erosion. In 2020, Vernon County received a FEMA Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) grant. One key deliverable of that grant project was to obtain the needed Hydro Enforced DEM data in the West Fork of the Kickapoo and Coon Creek Watersheds to utilize the ACPF Modeling Tool. With this tool, our Watershed Planner can work with these targeted landowners to identify areas on their property that are more susceptible to runoff and erosion and where certain nature-based solutions can be implemented to help retain water, reduce runoff, and reduce erosion.

Oliver said the county will have two years to complete these project initiatives. The result will provide the information we need to identify priority projects to improve flood resiliency, develop cost-effective mitigation strategies whether that be implementing nature-based solutions such as stream restoration, replacing the current infrastructure with structures capable of handling the predicted water flow at various rainfall levels, or a combination of both. Once the county has a mitigation plan in place, they will seek future grant opportunities to help offset the cost of implementing the priority projects.