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VHB presents flood-vulnerability assessment funded by $75,000 grant; report recommends priorities for town-owned assets
Summary
VHB consultants presented a flood vulnerability assessment for Town of Wayne assets under a $75,000 Community Resilience Partnership grant; the report maps FEMA flood elevations to high-resolution terrain, ranks about 20 town assets by vulnerability and flags roughly 11 culverts for additional modeling.
Consultants from VHB presented the final product of a Community Resilience Partnership grant that the town applied for and won. The grant originally was $50,000 and was later increased to $75,000, a steering-committee member told the board. Paula (steering committee) said the project followed community input and that VHB, with subcontractor Ecological Instincts, focused the analysis on town-owned assets.
Garrison, lead consultant for VHB, summarized the method: the team mapped FEMA flood-elevation benchmarks against higher-resolution NOAA terrain data to produce more precise planning-level flood extents and then scored town-owned assets (roads, culverts, buildings, community facilities) for exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity. He said the team also used available historical-record high-water events to create a planning "plus-1" (orplus-3 for Androscoggin Lake) elevation to capture higher-than-100-year historic floods.
Garrison told the board the consultants assessed roughly 20 assets across town and conducted additional modeling for 11 culverts that were identified as higher priority. He said the report includes a vulnerability ranking (page 26) and priority grading (page 29) and suggested the select board read the report and place follow-up actions on a future agenda. "We have the hundred-year flood ... and then a kind of plus-1 planning level estimate based on that historic flood data," Garrison said, explaining the caveats on modeling precision.
Board members thanked the consultants and agreed to have staff post PDF copies of the report and larger map figures on the town website so members of the public and committees can review findings before the board decides on next steps.
The board did not take immediate policy action; Hazel Stevenson said staff would place the report on a future agenda and members would read it individually before deciding on priorities or grant applications to fund any recommended projects.
