Villa Marina, January 06

Project Background
In 2003, the City of Redmond received a Community Assistance Visit from the Department of Ecology to evaluate the effectiveness of the City’s flood hazard management program. With completion of the audit came several recommendations that led to some immediate updates to City procedures and also led to updates to the City’s Critical Areas Ordinance that were adopted in 2005. The City’s review of its own policies and procedures led to recognition of the need for a document that describes the program, evaluates the program’s effectiveness, and identifies projects or programmatic improvements that will reduce flood hazards in Redmond.

This project is for the development of a Comprehensive Flood Hazard Management Plan for the City of Redmond. This comprehensive approach to flood hazard management planning will provide for a better understanding of the streams and floodplain systems and ensure that flooding problems are not simply transferred to another location within the watershed, but are addressed in a comprehensive, watershed-wide manner. This approach will direct future flood hazard management expenditures in the most efficient and cost effective manner.

This Comprehensive Flood Hazard Management Plan (CFHMP) will be developed with input from the general public, neighboring jurisdictions, the City’s Planning Department, the Natural Resources Division of the Public Works Department, and the City’s Stormwater Maintenance Division. Tasks will include data collection, limited hydraulic modeling, identification of flood-impacted properties, alternatives analysis, and recommendations for managing flood hazard risk. The end result of this planning process will be a plan that will reduce future flood damages and is supported by both the impacted community and agencies involved in floodplain issues.

The Potential for Public Benefit
Current hazards will be identified and mitigated. One of the goals of the City’s Stormwater Utility is to implement projects that will reduce future flood damages and public expenditures to repair damaged areas. These planning efforts will identify projects to be implemented under the City’s Capital Improvement Program. The planning process involves: characterization of flood problems, evaluation of alternatives to solve the problems, and identification of an overall plan identifying specific projects to reduce future flood damages and expenditures.

Future hazards may be prevented. The City’s policies for development are based on the best available science and information regarding the locations of flood hazard areas. Improvements to the City’s flood maps will result in greater protection of new development. Evaluation of the City’s ordinances and policies may result in identification of programmatic improvements that will provide additional protection for the public.

Problem Statement and Analysis
The City of Redmond has identified 39 flood-related capital improvement projects and 575 acres of chronically flooding areas. Nearly 20% of Redmond, including much of its downtown core, lies within the 100-year flood plain (Figure 1). In 2005, the City updated its Comprehensive Plan and Critical Areas Ordinance to reduce flood-related damage to structures and prevent injury or illness to people while preventing loss of structure, value, and functions of natural systems within frequently flooded areas.

Now that those documents are completed, the City of Redmond intends to take these efforts to the next step. A single document will be prepared to

• document the myriad policies and procedures related to frequently flooded areas;
• identify problems in chronically flooding areas and develop alternative structural and non-structural solutions to those problems; and
• develop an action plan for addressing those problems.