Board launches long-term flood-mitigation planning for special flood hazard areas; Mountain Del example cited

Coconino County’s Flood Control District opened a multi‑month planning process on May 27 to set multi‑year priorities for flood-mitigation investments in FEMA-designated special flood hazard areas inside the district. Staff and the consultant team briefed supervisors on a process that will inventory flood risk, revisit projects identified in prior initial-engineering assessments (IEAs), expand scoring criteria and produce a prioritized pipeline of projects to pursue with county funds and external grants.

Flood District Director Lucinda Andreani and the consultant team told the board the planning exercise will incorporate updated project criteria—hazard level, population and property exposed, cost, coordination opportunities, and less‑quantifiable benefits such as water quality and recreation—and additional feasibility factors such as land-rights complexity and the strength of possible grant benefit‑cost analyses. The county expects to include Sedona and Tusayan in the updated planning work; both areas were not fully included in the prior 2015–2016 IEAs.

Consultants reviewed the Mountain Del channel project, built with a rectangular concrete channel, as an example of an earlier IEA proceeding that advanced to construction. Engineers described how earlier project choices can carry downstream impacts; Munns Park was mentioned as a project that initially scored high but was later shelved after no‑adverse‑impact analysis indicated downstream harms. The Mountain Del work was cited as a successful example of moving an IEA into construction, including coordination with a concurrent sewer main project and later FEMA mapping steps to remove properties from the floodplain.

Staff emphasized the evolving funding landscape for federal grants and the increasing centrality of strong economic benefit‑cost ratios for national competitive grant programs. Supervisors pressed consultants on the schedule and on community outreach plans; staff said the county expects to produce a prioritized project list within several months and will hold additional work sessions to select weights and finalize priorities. Consultants and staff also asked for board guidance on the degree to which project partners should be expected to share costs and on whether small, targeted fixes or larger multi‑benefit projects should generally be favored.

The Flood Control District is aiming for a transparent, data-driven prioritization method that can be used to package competitive grant applications and to guide county capital spending. No formal board vote was taken; the session served to launch the planning process and solicit supervisor input on evaluation criteria.