Informational Order - Natural Hazard Mitigation Plan Public Review Draft

Transcript (~27 min @ 7:13)

▶ 7:13 Mitigation Plan Public Review Draft. And joining us tonight, we have DPW Director, Alina Prolikis-Ellis, as well as a consultant from Weston & Sampson. So, welcome, and I understand that you have your presentation all cued up. So, we are very interested to hear about the hazard mitigation plan update. Thank you for having us. This is Jenny Moon from Weston & Sampson. So I will kick this off, and then I'll turn it over to Jenny to give you the more detailed explanation. So the hazard mitigation plan is a document that FEMA requires of cities and towns in order to qualify for FEMA grant funding, and for certain other federal and state programs, we have to have an up-to-date hazard mitigation plan. We are slightly out of compliance. Our last plan was in 2019.

▶ 8:08 But we initiated our plan at the tail end of the five-year period, and MEMA and FEMA have given us a little bit of grace in getting the plan finished up. We've been working on this with a grant from MEMA and FEMA that's funding the actual development of the plan, and we are very close to the finish line. So, next slide. So our hazard mitigation plan, it focuses on natural hazards, so some of these are flooding. We have extreme rain and storm events are likely to nearly double in the next 25 years. Next slide. Heat has been a big concern. In fact, in public comment, we just heard about heat from lack of trees. The number of days above 90 degrees is expected to reach 30 by 2030 and 60 by 2070. Next slide

▶ 9:07 Severe weather, I'm sure we all remember the winter of 2015 when we had record snowfall, 108.6 inches of snow. Next slide. So I'm going to pass it over to Jenny and she's going to talk about our plan. So the hazard mitigation is about reducing impacts from those natural hazards Elena was just talking about, as well as a number of other natural hazards by undertaking plans, implementing various projects and providing services. There's a lot of value in natural hazard mitigation planning. Elena mentioned the grant eligibility, but also public health and safety, creating equity, tying in with preparedness planning that our, other emergency managers are doing within the city, and just overall building consensus through a

▶ 9:55 stakeholder and public process. Next slide, please. The graphic that you see here shows the chapters of Melrose's hazard mitigation plan, and these are designed to match FEMA's requirements. Next slide, please. I'm just going to give you a little brief summary of what's in each chapter because as you may have seen, the plan is many, many pages to review. In chapter one, the primary focus is documenting the city's goals related to mitigation, including increasing education and awareness, building partnerships, identifying strategies for overall risk reduction, aligning with other state, tribal, and community objectives, identifying implementation approaches that really consider city resources and focus on the greatest risks and vulnerabilities to the

▶ 10:46 community, and having a document that communicates priorities to potential funders. Next slide, please. There's an extensive planning process undertaken in developing this plan that's documented in the second chapter. There were a steering committee of city representatives led by the Melrose DPW engineering division. There was also a hazard mitigation committee built of 12 stakeholders that attended two workshops to provide expanded input on the plan development. And then there was a public engagement process that included two public meetings. This is one of them, and the public was offered a chance to take a survey, and we received 64 responses with quite a bit of information that's woven throughout the plan. Next slide.

▶ 11:33 In chapter three, we document the natural hazards, and there's a lot of technical text in these. We're looking at a total of 12 hazards, and they're shown on the screen here. So beyond what Elena was talking about, we're thinking about hurricanes, tropical storms, invasive species, changes to groundwater, drought, wildfires, earthquakes, tornadoes, landslides and mudflows, and even just this general bucket of other extreme weather that's defined by the state. Next slide, please. We heard a bit from the public about what they're worried about in this process. They're most concerned with extreme temperatures, both hot and cold. They are very concerned about winter storms and nor'easters, as well as

▶ 12:17 flooding. And they're concerned that these natural hazards are going to impact them by creating power outages, damaging their homes, creating contaminated drinking water situations, and limiting access to food or supplies. Next slide, please. This chapter documents all of these natural hazards to address FEMA's requirements, so it's lengthy. It describes each natural hazard, explains the areas of Melrose that it might affect, describes the potential size of the event, and documents how often have these different storms occurred in the past, and how likely are they to occur in the future. And all of the information from this comes from the Massachusetts 2023 State Hazard Mitigation and Climate Adaptation Plan, also known

▶ 13:03 as Resilient Mass. Next slide, please. In chapter four, we document what are called assets to the community. But basically, these are what matters in terms of preparing for and responding to and recovering from natural extreme events. And they're organized into seven categories. That's consistent with FEMA's guidance. But we think about people, and not just our populations and our vulnerable populations, but also the facilities that support people, like schools, housing, shelters, food distribution. We're thinking about structures like emergency buildings, grocery stores, medical facilities, public works. We consider systems, so our network of roadways, communication lines, electrical systems, bus routes,

▶ 13:53 MWRA facilities. The plan also considers natural resource assets, cultural and historic resources. Economic assets that are so important to keeping this community living and breathing. And even community assets, which are festivals, events, or basically activities that strengthen social capital and resilience. Next slide. In chapter five, we take our information about our assets and our information about our hazards, and we think about what assets are vulnerable to being impacted by a natural hazard, and how will that impact the community. What's the consequence of that vulnerability? And here are some examples on the slide. I'm going to just read a few examples so you can get the idea. But thinking about senior aging populations that might have impaired mobility,

▶ 14:48 power outages could cause inadequate indoor heating or air conditioning, loss of medical technologies and life support communication, or even loss of communication with public safety personnel. And so the vulnerability is in the first piece of the statement, and the impact is sort of that second piece of the statement. They're very tied together, if that makes sense to everyone. Thinking about transportation infrastructure, public transit, evacuation routes, ways to distribute relief resources, and mobilize people to shelters and hospitals. So that's a vulnerability that our infrastructure has. And you guys, I'm sure, remember last winter with the back-to-back winter storms and how hard snow removal was and how impassable roadways were.

▶ 15:31 Well, that impact can be really damaging to blocking routes to hospitals. It can hurt utility infrastructure and impact emergency response. And even thinking about the environment. Drainage systems and flood management measures are designed to convey stormwater runoff to waterways and flood plains to minimize flooding. When you have four inches of rain in half a day, you may have backups and blockages of stormwater, and that could flood buildings, damage public property, and really impact public safety. Next slide. We heard a lot of examples of this from the public in the process. They talked about the recent drought bringing fires to the Breakheart Reservation, concerns about the city center being low-lying and high groundwater neighborhoods

▶ 16:20 that ultimately can mesh and lead to flooding. And even a lot of notes about just how many more extremely hot days there are, how critical central air conditioning is becoming for people's health. Next slide. In chapter six, we assessed the city's capabilities to carry out the hazard mitigation plan and overall increase resilience. And so this is an assessment looking at a variety of factors, including laws, policies, programs, staffing, funding, and all the other resources the city has. And it not only documents all the things the city is doing well, but gaps in capabilities that could be filled. On the next slide, we heard some things from the public. We heard there's a lot of things the city does well to prepare.

▶ 17:07 Great winter road deicing and snow removal, notifying the public of extreme weather events, planting trees, and creating green space. But there were some things that the public noted the city could improve on, including overall climate resilience planning, flood protection and response, implementing renewable energy. They also noted tree planting as an improvement, we heard earlier in this meeting, and prioritizing vulnerable populations in planning and implementation. Next slide, please. And so chapter seven is everything we've been building to. This is the list of what are called mitigation actions. These are the projects, the plans, the activities that the city wants to take and be eligible for funding to reduce overall risk.

▶ 17:55 So it's swirling everything together that I've talked about. It's how are we fulfilling the goals in the first chapter, protecting those assets we listed in chapter four, understanding that vulnerability to natural hazards, confirming what the public has heard and reflecting their input, and addressing the gaps that we identified in that capabilities assessment. And ultimately, the goal is to really create resilience and support adaptation to climate change. Next slide. There are over 140 fantastic mitigation actions identified in this plan, and the team has thought very carefully about them. There's just some examples on here, so you can get a sense of what they might include. Updating the emergency management plan, upgrading

▶ 18:42 communication systems, developing utility lifeline support, contact lists to communicate with seniors or the aging population. Thinking about infrastructure and structures, providing shelter locations when needed, confirming evacuation routes, not just in Melrose but with neighboring communities, creating multilingual evacuation route signage, working with the transportation sector to upgrade emergency communications, elevating critical infrastructure at water and wastewater pump stations. Thinking about our natural systems by expanding green infrastructure, upgrading drainage systems, and studying drainage capacity, even cleaning out stormwater outfalls in critical areas. And many education and awareness programs, such as

▶ 19:26 internal, coordinating and cross-training emergency management staff, and external, like promoting individual and family emergency plans. And chapter eight, the second to last chapter, is a document documenting how the city is going to monitor the plan and evaluate the plan annually, including integrating the plan with any other city initiatives that are ongoing and having a continued public participation process throughout the five years until the next plan is prepared. So with that, we will take any questions or comments that you have. We are wrapping up the comment period through Monday, and the plan will then get submitted to the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency and then reviewed by the

▶ 20:14 federal government. And at the end, city council will need to vote to adopt the plan. That will be the final chapter that I didn't talk about, plan adoption. Thank you. Thank you. Are there questions and comments from my colleagues? President Freeman. Thank you very much for being here tonight. I really appreciate all the work that went into this report. And I think one item that I really like being noted heavily in this report is the concerns about flash flooding and stormwater backup. A number of our neighborhoods in Melrose do get hit during storms, so I'm really looking at what we can dredge and be proactive about, I think is a great mitigation measure. So I really appreciate you looking at that.

▶ 20:54 And one question that just came to mind, and this is less of a Melrose specific, but more of a, are any Massachusetts cities and towns moving in this direction is, we've noticed a lot of times after severe storms, trees coming down, knocking down power, and talking about loss of heat, loss of electricity, loss of air conditioning. Are there any cities that are taking steps to bury their lines and try to get ahead of that problem? Or work in concert when lines come down to try to bury some of them rather than putting them back up again? I have an answer to that question. I don't know if you can start. Okay. So I used to work in the town of Concord, who has a municipal light plant, and they were embarking on a project to put the entirety of their electrical system

▶ 21:33 underground. It is an extraordinarily costly program. We have a lot of underground infrastructure in Melrose already, and there's very limited space, so it's very challenging to find the space to put them. We have MWRA transmission and distribution lines that run through the city. So in addition to, say, our own water and sewer mains, we also have the MWRA lines that are running to other communities. We have major Eversource duct banks that run from the substation on Howard Street down toward Malden, toward Boston. There's just very limited space. I'm not sure we would ever be able to successfully do that. And then the other big challenge is that if you convince one utility to put their infrastructure underground,

▶ 22:22 from what I saw in Concord, there's not really a mandate for the communications companies to put their infrastructure underground. And so there can be a many year lag between when the electrical infrastructure goes underground and when the poles can actually come down because the other infrastructure's been moved. Wonderful. So not a simple solution. Yeah. And the poles also house most of our streetlights in the city. So yeah, it's not as simple as one might think it might be. Wonderful. Thank you. And I appreciate all the work that went into this. Councilor Park. Thank you for being here and presenting this report. I think it's great, and I think it shows foresight for our community to do this.

▶ 23:02 I have a few questions. One is, and I want to make sure I phrase this properly. So we're getting input from the public about what their priorities are, which is great. And I assume that we have the Weston and Samson engineers also providing their input. And are the priorities aligned? And if not, in terms of what they would like to see addressed first, and along with the costs associated with these specific issues, and how do you reconcile these things when they're at cross-purposes? Ideally, both the engineers at Weston & Samson and the public are in alignment with what they think are important for the city and they would be relatively low budget. But if they're not, what are the steps?

▶ 23:53 Can you walk me through the steps in terms of what the mitigation plan would look like, and how do you determine that? If you could, go ahead. I'll start with this one. So, we with this plan, we made an extensive list of mitigation actions. So we pulled those from the previous HMP. There were items that maybe weren't completed that were still of interest to city staff and stakeholders that were in that working group. And we take information from the public as part of the survey and the public meetings, as well as any written comments we receive during this process through Monday, and make sure that they align with the mitigation actions. Because there are so many mitigation actions, we've been able to reflect a whole

▶ 24:40 range of people's input. So, Public Works, the various departments that worked with us. And so there isn't a misalignment from my perspective. There's a long list that continues to keep all of these projects in consideration. There is a prioritization process, but you ultimately end up with basically a high, medium, and low. And you don't necessarily start from the top and work through it in that order. So the buckets are intended to show these are generally a higher priority, but anything on the list at any point could be eligible for funding. So it doesn't preclude funding. If you had a low priority project that was a smaller project and I saw an opportunity to fund it, and that was something perhaps

▶ 25:26 the public had listed, that would be eligible. I feel like I'm not answering this completely. No. I think you have. Yeah. I just want to mention the cost piece. We don't prepare cost estimates for this. We do look at a cost range. Think of it in, like, a $1 to $5 sort of reflection, and we worked with the city to come up with what those buckets are based on the whole range of the mitigation list. Yeah, and I think that the thing with this plan is that it's kind of a catchall. You put everything that the community wants and that the city wants, and that the consultants recommend. You assemble it all into the plan, and you're best suited for the future for grant opportunities and such to have as much in the

▶ 26:16 plan as you can because a lot of the grant opportunities like to see that it's reflected in your hazard mitigation plan. This was a recommended action. So, we really were able to put in basically all the feedback from the public. There's really no limit. And when it comes to the prioritization, a lot of it depends on when funding opportunities present themselves. So it's not, as Jenny said, it's not necessarily like there's one, two, three, four, five and we're going to work our way down the list. It's more, what do we happen to have the funding available for either local or grant. And for instance, right now we have the Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness 2.0 process from the state, and we were able to fund a $50,000 seed project from

▶ 27:03 that process. And the project that was selected through extensive community involvement with these community liaisons that we hired- Is to do a shelter plan for the city, and then to help socialize that shelter plan with the public, working with different public entities or private entities, neighborhood groups, faith-based groups, whoever can help spread the word about these preparedness actions that we're recommending through the shelter plan. So, that's just one item out of 140 something items in this plan, but it is one that we now have a funding source to move forward. So, if I understand you correctly, and Elena, you and I have worked on this together. I liken this to the CIP, the capital improvements-

▶ 27:49 Yes ... where you have buckets, of high, medium, low, as you had mentioned. They're placed in there not necessarily in sequential order, but you have a good sense of what are the immediate needs, and then when things come up, in terms of what fits into the budget, you can then pick and choose which ones make the most sense based on that. Okay. Yeah, that's a perfect analogy. It's just like the CIP, and a lot of the items that trigger that $25,000 threshold in a plan like this end up in the CIP. For instance, we put the emergency generator here at City Hall. We have an emergency generator hookup and a portable unit for Memorial Hall now. Those were recommendations in the 2019 report. They were items on our CIP, and we were able to fund them through free cash, a few

▶ 28:37 years ago. And so, that was actually our top priority in the 2019 plan, and then we funded it. Great. Thank you very much. And one quick question. Adrienne, could you go to slide 12? Sure. Thank you. I'm just curious, on this slide, the actual figures that are being displayed, people 28, structures 20. Is this dummy data, or are they actual numbers that reflect the stats from the city? And if so, what's the key behind that and what those numbers stand for? That should be the actual counts. Elena is getting to chapter four. Scrolling through the plan, yeah. So the people number is not the number of people. Yeah, of course. That's the number of, I think, structures that were identified as supporting

▶ 29:31 people. The structures list, it's more about thinking about critical infrastructure type structures. So the police station, the fire station. Yeah, I'm looking at the people specifically right now. So the people assets, oh, we're here. Yep. Okay. So- So- No, go ahead ... so it includes schools, daycares, hospitals, elderly housing, and housing authority facilities. Okay. Well, we don't need to go into the details now- Currently ... but this is actually data reflecting Melrose? Yes. Yes. So in the plan, it literally lists each elderly housing facility, each daycare. And so that adds up to the 28 that you see up there- Okay ... from-- So yeah, you can find that all in chapter four. Would it be possible to see other municipalities and sort of comparison in terms of

▶ 30:37 assets that they have, just to sort of an idea of where we stand in terms of people, natural resources, just to give us an idea of how Melrose is in terms of some of these asset inventories? Yeah, we could do that. I can't do that live in this moment, but we can provide that- Yeah, absolutely ... in a written update. I would love to see that. Will do. I think it'd be beneficial for us to see where Melrose stands in many of these categories. Sure. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you very much. Councilor Chen. Yes. Thanks a lot for this report. And Elena and I exchanged emails today about it. I thought it was pretty well done and thorough. And the report works on two different timescales, right? You've got these long-term natural hazards that we just have to invest in and

▶ 31:24 recognize, things like global warming, which we at a municipal level can't control that much. And then we have these short-term disasters, which typically end in hundreds or thousands of people short on housing, exposed to elements, cold, running out of food, not having power. And it seems like a lot of the mitigations were around how do we, at a community level, at all levels, first responder, city, community, get them help quickly in some amount of time before we can get some outside help. So what I was looking for in the report was, show us a case study of a real natural disaster, let's say like a blizzard storm where thousands of houses in some Massachusetts city lost power, and how that actually unfolded.

▶ 32:12 And then maybe a best case of what city did it right because they had some of these plans in place. What was their communication plan? How did they train on it? What responsibilities do they have at the neighborhood level? So I was wondering, in your consultant role, helping out a lot of towns, can we find some of those best cases and then borrow those as we start to build our own plans? And the other thing that I was missing was, we're part of a larger system of emergency response at the state level and the federal level, assuming they still care about Massachusetts, but how does that play into our plan here? This was a very local-focused plan. I can answer a little bit of that if I- So if I can interject for just one minute.

▶ 32:59 We may need to gavel out and gavel in to get the next meeting officially launched and then come back to this one. Would this be an okay time to do that? Or would you like to respond and then we'll do that? Maybe we respond to this one question- Okay, great ... and then do it so we don't forget the question. So I think first off, the sort of digging in on the actual response actions, is beyond the scope of-- The hazard mitigation plan is really intended to identify the things that you want to look at. Mm-hmm. And then those individual plans, like one of the recommendations in here is to update the city's comprehensive emergency management plan, which is actually something that Chief White is doing right now with MEMA.

▶ 33:41 Mm-hmm. He's working with them to update the city's SEMP plan, as it's called. And MEMA works with all the different cities and towns to update their plans. So I think that's one of these areas where sort of the holistic look at what are other communities doing and what are the best practices. We rely heavily on agencies like MEMA to have that sort of holistic statewide data. Mm-hmm. And it would be more through that process that we would probably do tabletop exercises and case studies and that sort of thing. But on that note, this plan is the perfect place to have a mitigation action. That is, the city should conduct a tabletop exercise to run through some sample hazards and responses to those hazards.