St. Lucie County presents draft regional resilience plan; Fort Pierce asks for asset maps and grant pathways

St. Lucie County resilience staff on Monday presented a draft Regional Resilience Plan to the Fort Pierce City Commission, outlining modeling and adaptation strategies intended to help jurisdictions prioritize flood, storm and other hazard work.

Sandra Bogan, St. Lucie County’s resilience navigator, said the plan — funded by a CDBG‑Mitigation grant with support from the state’s Resilient Florida program — combines technical vulnerability assessments, mapping and community input and is meant as a roadmap, not a mandate. “The plan is … broad strategies. Essentially, it doesn't commit any jurisdiction to any adaptation strategy, but instead just shows our commitment to work together toward resilience planning,” Bogan said.

Erin Dady, a consultant with Tetra Tech, walked the commission through model results that show more days of tidal flooding and greater inland inundation in 2040 and 2070 under NOAA intermediate‑high sea level projections. She also described compound flooding scenarios — for example, a late‑season storm coinciding with a king tide and a heavy rainfall event — that push water farther inland than single events. Dady said the team pulled data from the South Florida Water Management District, USGS and the Army Corps to produce a map series and a GIS viewer that will be turned over to municipal GIS staff.

The plan recommends a menu of adaptations — gray infrastructure such as pumps or elevating facilities, green infrastructure for shorelines and parks, early‑warning systems, stronger community education and a capacity assessment to identify staffing and policy gaps. Dady said the county developed model comprehensive‑plan policies and jurisdiction‑specific policy analyses to help local governments integrate adaptation into routine planning processes.

Commissioners pressed staff on costs and near‑term utility: "The cost factor of this stuff is massively prohibitive," said Commissioner Broderick, noting the city’s roughly $67 million annual budget. County staff urged that the vulnerability mapping and prioritization make jurisdictions more competitive for state and federal funding; they said the Resilient Florida program can contribute up to a 50% cost share for certain infrastructure projects.

Bogan told the commission the consultants plan to return a final draft after incorporating local input and to deliver a map viewer and the city‑specific sensitivity analysis in the next month. The county indicated it expects to bring the revised plan back to municipal meetings for further public comment in January.

The commission did not take formal action on the plan at the meeting; staff said they will integrate commissioners’ feedback and return with updated materials and a public hearing date.