By: COLE WHITE, Lake Voice Three years after the devastating flood that swept Duluth, one a presidentially declared disaster, Duluth nonprofit Ecolibrium3 is making plans to prevent such a flood from happening again.
Ecolibrium3 has recently submitted the application to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), for a piece of the unallocated funds left after Hurricane Sandy.
Jodi Slick, founder and CEO of Ecolibrium3, along with her staff, have spent months tirelessly building the case for the $76 million application.
“Let’s say for over a month I was at 14-16 hours a day, seven days a week,” Slick said.
Minnesota is one of 67 applicants for financial aid through HUD, which were determined by looking at states and communities in the most need of assistance.
“Congress had dictated when they did the initial Hurricane Sandy allocation it had to go to communities that were the most impacted, most distressed and had unmet recovery needs,” Slick said.
Following the floods in 2012, Duluth met the criteria. A part of the application looks to fix the waterway systems in Duluth to allow better flow of water. A contributing factor to the damage done in the flood was an outdated and poorly designed drainage system that was overwhelmed by the amount of water.
The primary area of focus is on the top of the hill, where development has replaced most of the original wetlands that served as a buffer to floods, and now puts that burden on the 47 creeks that run through Duluth.
“No one thinks about our creeks,” Slick said.
Most of the development done on the top of the hill, where wetlands were filled and paved over, wouldn’t be allowed today. To build such places now, you’d have to allow for 125 percent water retention.
“You have to be better than nature,” Slick said.
By “remeandering” creeks, such as Chester and Miller Creek, they can increase water retention on the top of the hill. When the hilltop was initially developed, the creeks and wetlands were paved over and channeled straight down the hill rather than maintaining the water where they sat atop the hill. That channeling drew the majority of the water into the neighborhoods at the bottom of the hill.
“If we reduce the amount of water that flows, cascades into our neighborhood, we’re more resilient,” Slick said. “We’ve learned a lot about water management in the last 50 years.”
The project aims to do more than just increase resilience. Slick identified that the best plans are ones that offer co-benefits, or additional aspects that serve to better the community.
“We’re giving a neighborhood better parks. We’re helping to build social cohesion,” Slick said.
She added that the social cohesion comes from people seeing each other more often in more available public spaces, and that a key part to recovering from disaster is that sense of community.
Ultimately, community resilience is the fundamental aspect of the application. Slick used her favorite metaphor to describe the importance of community resilience.
“We all know if you lose your job you’re better off if you had your house paid off and $20,000 in the bank compared to if you lose your job and you’re already one month behind on your mortgage,” Slick said.