Objective 19.3 - Examine and discuss the Case Study of Napa, CA Requirements: The instructor will lead a review of the actions taken in Napa, CA to reduce flooding in the community and discuss what factors made this effort successful. The basis of this case study is a chapter authored by Dave Dickson, who managed Napa valley’s “Living River” Flood Management Plan, and is included in the 2009 book entitled, “Global Warming, Natural Hazards, and Emergency Management.” A short biography of Ann Patton is included in the following Supplemental Considerations.
Supplemental Considerations: Dave Dickson Biography
David Dickson most recently was a Senior Consultant to MIG, Inc., a California-based planning and design firm. Mr. Dickson consulted with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Army Corps of Engineers, the University of California, and George Washington University in the areas of watershed management, restoration, disaster management, and financial planning. His public agency work included positions as Chief Financial Officer of the Napa County Flood Control and Water Conservation District and Community Development Director for the Napa County Administrator’s Office. He was Project Manager for the Napa Valley’s “Living River’” Flood Management Plan-a comprehensive watershed-wide Plan for flood damage reduction, river and watershed restoration, and economic revitalization in the City of Napa. He was the architect and manager of the Community Coalition planning process and the financing plan of this countywide effort that now totals over $500 million in public investment. He holds a B.A., Political Science, San Diego State University and has completed Masters Level Course Work, Public Finance Institute, University of California, Davis. Dave Dickson died unexpectedly in June 2011.
Remarks
Introduction (Slide 19-16)
The Napa River project is a story about how a community came to terms with its river and associated flooding problems.
The project included a community consensus building process that resulted in the crafting of a 20-year plan to address the flooding problems that is turn resulted in over $500 million in investments inthe community.
The Napa River runs the length of the county and has flooded 27 times since 1862 including the largest recorded flood event in 1986 and other major flood events in 1995 and 2005.
Over time the river has been polluted by various industries and community residents and groups have worked for years to clean-up the river and to help control flooding through restoring wetlands.
The US Army Corps of Engineers proposed structural flood control solutions on four different occasions in the 1960s and 1970s and again in 1995. The residents rejected these proposals each time because of the negative environmental impacts associated with these proposed projects.
Ask the Students how the Napa and Tulsa situations are similar leading up to the efforts to build effective flood control systems?
Community Coalition Process (Slide 19-17)
Surveys showed that flood control was the number one issue in Napa.
A 30-month Community Coalition consensus building process was begun in which the community’s business leaders, environmentalists, government officials, mobile home owners, neighborhoods, fishermen, canoers, Red Cross workers, gadflies, and others participated.
The Corps of Engineers changed the way they did their business and provided funding to support the Community Coalition.
A Steering Committee was formed composed of local elected officials and the presidents of the Friends of the Napa River, the Napa Valley Economic Development Corporation, and the Wine Institute.
The first thing the Committee did was develop a set of goals:
Protection form the 100-year flood
A living, vital Napa River
Economic revitalization
A cost that the citizens could support
Retaining our valuable federal project authorization (50% funding)
Watershed wide planning and a solutions-integrated “system.”
A coalition of 27 local stakeholder organizations reviewed the goals and joined 27 government agencies with jurisdiction over the Napa River at the table. (Slide 19-17)
Over 24 months a total of 8 town-hall style meetings were held with 200-250 people participating.
Living River concept was identified in the first six months and several technical experts were brought in to advise four technical committees in four different focus areas including:
Living River
Up-Valley watershed management
Urban design
Finance and regulatory issues
Ask the Students if they had experience with consensus building projects and what were their impressions of this type of decision-making process.
“Living River” Plan (Slide 19-19)
After two years of relentless and intense research and negotiations, the Corps, 27 other governmental agencies, and 25 local non-governmental organizations hammered out a revolutionary “Living River” plan.
The plan had stiff requirements:
Reconnect the river to its natural floodplain and maintain the natural depth-to-width ratio of the river.
Restore historical tidal wetlands and implement watershed management practices to maintain the natural riparian corridors along the river and tributaries.
Clean up contaminated river-adjacent properties
Replace eight bridges that now act as dams during high flows
Relocate, purchase, or elevate 38 homes, businesses and mobile homes that were in the floodplain.
Original estimates for the plan totaled $250 million. About $100 million was to come from the federal government and state environmental restoration grants and highway bridge funding. $150 million was to come from local taxpayers and the tourists who visit Napa Valley.
A half-percent increase in the local sales tax taps the tourists, who pay about one-third of the local sales tax. This was a very appealing feature of the finance plan to the citizens. Other tax increase proposals were soundly rejected in community surveys conducted under the direction of the Community Coalition.
The Coalition said the tax must expire after 20 years, and two citizen oversight committees were required in the tax measure to scrutinize expenditures and to oversee the technical aspects of project implementation.
Campaign conducted to get super majority voter approval of sales tax increase succeeded in passing the measure with a 300-vote margin.
Ask the Students to discuss how the final “Living River” plan had something for everyone in it.
Project Update (Slide 19-20)
After ten years, the Napa River Living River Flood Protection and Estuary Restoration Project is about 75% complete. It has ushered in a new era for the city of Napa and a major transformation of the city’s southern entrance and downtown.
Old levees have been removed or breached, creating more than 1,000 acres of new wetlands.
Five new bridges that use to act as dams during flood flows have been re-constructed.
Costs have almost doubled over the original estimates for the project, but fortunately higher-than-expected proceeds from the half cent sales tax and State of California bonds for flood control have managed to keep the local expenditure side of the equation in balance.
The Federal Corps of Engineers’ funding, however, has lagged, therefore postponing flood protection.
Funding has come from multiple sources – see Supplemental Considerations.
Total Project Cost (includes Maintenance Trust Fund)
$520 million
Economic development – nearly a billion dollars in public and private investment in Napa and up county since the inception of the project resulting in new hotels, new tourist attractions, new restaurants, and new jobs.
Ask the Students to discuss what ahs been the greatest benefit derived from the “Living River” project -0 flood control, economic development, environmental restoration and protection, quality of life improvement or something else.
Key Elements for a Successful Project
Even so, the Community Coalition model of a “Living River” planning and consensus development process does not work in every situation. At least seven key elements must be present to achieve the sort of success seen in Napa. (These lessons were taken directly from the book text): (Slide 19-21)
An emerging mission born from a crisis or mandate
Common knowledge resulting in shared meaning
A champion willing to take risks
A community of place
No better deals elsewhere
Primary parties participate in good faith
Multiple issues for trade-off resulting in multiple community benefits
“In order for the process to get started, there must be a deep and shared sense among the populace that something must be done. In the case of Napa, it was major floods in 1986 and 1995, combined with the unveiling of the third unacceptable Army Corps of Engineers design proposal. When natural disasters are the basis of a community crisis, you need to move quickly while the urgency is still in the minds of the locals.”
Common Knowledge Resulting in Shared Meaning
“The consensus action planning process must invest in education and create a common understanding of the issues, science, and key dynamics together, so that everyone starts the process with common knowledge. This then evolves into shared meaning among the stakeholders. So often, government engineers and consultants do not adequately invest in educating the public and non-professionals about the underlying reasons behind design recommendations.
“Visualization of complex principals helps in this area, as do professional facilitators. All ideas must be seriously considered, even if many of the stakeholders already know why. Everyone at the table needs to start with the same baseline information. Sometimes I refer to this success element as the need to “love every idea – to death.”
A Local Champion Willing to Take Risks
“Generally, established bureaucracies and organizations are threatened by truly open, participatory democracy planning processes. In every successful community consensus process I have participated in there has been a key elected official who leads the charge to convince the government entity and community stakeholders to take a risk in how the design and decision process needs to occur.
“In the Napa experience, the “normal process” had failed three times and, given that an acceptable plan would only be implemented if two-thirds of the voters agreed to a tax increase, the Flood Control District agreed to resource a community-based planning process. In doing so, it had to give up some power to the Friends of the Napa River, the Napa Valley Economic Development Corporation, and the Napa Chamber of Commerce and change the composition of its own governing body to add representation from the five cities in the County.
“Additionally, there is usually at least one professional staff member who commits his or her full time and more to achieving the agreements necessary, meeting with all constituencies behind the scenes in order to identify deal-breaking positions before they come out in public planning sessions.”
A “Community of Place”
“It is essential that the geographic scope of the consensus planning effort is appropriate. It is not realistic to conduct a participatory process on a State or national level. Stakeholders in Florida and California are too far apart to identify with a “place” of a scale that lends itself to consensus-based planning. A watershed is an ideal geographic scope for the purpose of agreeing on a flood protection plan. Even though the upper watershed stakeholders have different interests than the downstream residents, the Napa Valley as a whole is a “Community of Place.”
Primary Stakeholders Participate In Good Faith: No “Better Deals” Elsewhere
“To be successful, a consensus-based community planning process cannot allow key stakeholders to participate in an environment that allows for a better deal to be obtained elsewhere. Agreement needs to be obtained “up front” that participants will truly play by the rules of the process outlined by the sponsors. “
Multiple Issues for Trade-Off Resulting in Multiple Community Benefits
“Consensus-driven community planning processes tend to succeed if there is more than one issue on the table. Multi-objective flood protection projects meet this element of success because they usually involve a multitude of issues, including flood protection, environmental restoration, transportation system improvements, land use planning, provision for river trails and passive recreation, community health and safety, and taxation. If success on the ground is dependent on all of the stakeholders getting something from the process, then the more community benefits included in a project, the easier it is to achieve compromise and consensus.”
Adequate Resources
“Having adequate resources to tap into is crucial for a project’s success. Professional planning process management, design assistance, visualization, photo simulations, adequate budget for engineering and hydrologic and hydraulic modeling (at least at the feasibility level), and community polling are all critical in achieving effective community consensus planning for large-scale projects. No one will sustain his or her participation if the process just rehashes the same limited information, meeting after meeting. A significant investment must be made by the sponsors to assure that the process will produce answers to hard questions and won’t simply rely on the network of informed or uninformed opinion. It helps tremendously if there is a process to involve stakeholders in the selection of the professional support resources.”
“The Napa River project offers a great example of how a community of diverse and even contradictory interests can band together and bring together all of these elements to achieve protection from nature while at the same time protecting nature. As we move into the reality of climate change and experience more and more its unpredictable, devastating effect on our communities, the need to develop successful consensus-based planning processes like the one in Napa will only become more urgent.”
Ask the Students if they believe that the Napa model is replicable in their community?
