— by Linda Blackford, Herald-Leader —
A flood is an act of God, as we say for insurance purposes and general conversation.
There’s no other way to describe a mass of water so dense and fast moving that creeks and rivers literally wash cars, people, homes and buildings away.
But while we cannot control the amount of water that falls from the sky in our hilly regions, there’s a lot we — our government and ourselves — could do to help the Eastern Kentuckians devastated by the third major flooding event since 2021.
It’s very lucky the General Assembly is meeting during this last round of flooding. Senate President Robert Stivers and House Speaker David Osborne pledged this week to make “every available resource available” to people in flooded areas.
Stivers, the Manchester Republican, said they could create funds similar to the ones set up after 2021’s tornadoes and the 2022 floods, funds that got $200 million a piece. That money can be used for just about anything, and apparently was a real stopgap for folks hampered by the bureaucracy of FEMA applications.
Here are some other ideas for them:
➤ Don’t pass Senate Bill 89, which would change the definition of which Kentucky waterways can be polluted. In addition to poisoning our most precious resource from high in the hills to down in the cities, the bill would allow coal companies to dump their extra fill onto ephemeral streams, the tiny waterways that pop up with rain water and can help prevent flooding.
“Ephemeral streams are very protective of flooding,” said Lesley Sneed, a senior scientist with the Kentucky Resources Council. “They don’t look like much but they are a very practical harness in slowing down the velocity of water.”
SB 89 is being supported by the Kentucky Coal Association. It’s amazing that in this day, when coal makes up such a tiny sector of our economy, that our lawmakers still kowtow to the industry in this way.
According to the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet, Kentucky coal mines now only employ about 6,612 people, down 30 percent since 2015. And guess what? Polluting our water is very, very bad for tourism and economic development.
➤ They could use some of the state’s now massive rainy day fund, now at about $3.5 billion, by giving some to the Housing Can’t Wait nonprofit consortium that is building affordable housing on “high-ground” communities in Eastern Kentucky, mostly former strip mine sites.
They could give a big chunk and still have plenty to continue with income tax cuts. This would be one time money, not recurring, that could cycle in a great deal more economic and every other kind of stability in the region.
“I think what this event shows why what we’re trying to do is so important — get people out of harm’s way permanently,” said Scott McReynolds, executive director of the Housing Development Alliance in Hazard.
It is an inconvenient fact for the GOP that the high-ground communities were started and supported by the Beshear administration, but the work is being done by non-profits. This is the kind of non-partisan action that voters really support.
So far, the consortium has built 393 homes since the 2021 and 2022 floods. There are now seven high-ground communities for flood survivors in Letcher, Breathitt, Floyd, Knott and Perry Counties.
➤ They could support good legislation that’s already been produced to increase our housing supply. House Bill 237, for example, would curb real-estate investors from buying too many homes in any one community, which hurts the housing supply and raises prices.
Even better is Sen. Jimmy Higdon’s Senate Bill 59, which would allow religious institutions to develop affordable housing on their property without local zoning and planning restrictions. We are seeing such a project here in Lexington at Woodland Christian Church, which will build 38 units of affordable senior housing on its historic property.
What could we as citizens do?
➤ We can give generously to all the organizations that are supporting our flood-weary friends, places like the Foundation for Appalachian Kentucky or EKY Mutual Aid.
➤ We also can pressure our elected leaders to acknowledge the climate change that has brought roughly three 100-year flooding events to Kentucky in five years. You might not like it, but our weather is changing, and the most vulnerable populations are always its victims. There’s a lot more we could be doing to slow it down.
➤ Plant more trees. Trees have so many benefits no matter where you live, but they are particularly important in places that used to be forest, like former mine lands. University of Kentucky forest hydrology and watershed management professor Chris Barton has been a long-time prophet for planting trees on former mine lands because they help everything in a decimated landscape, but most of all, they help hold onto water.
“We’ve done a lot of research that showed if you planted these sites back to forest it would help with flooding, by reducing runoff,” said Barton, who started a nonprofit called Green Forest Works. Since 2009, it has planted nearly 7 million trees across more than 11,000 acres.
But Barton also stressed we have to concentrate on the larger issues of these incredibly destructive weather events.
“The flooding we’re seeing is due to a changing climate,” he said, and we’re seeing these effects in areas that haven’t been disturbed in hundreds of years.”
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Written by Linda Blackford. Cross-posted from the Herald-Leader.
