Driving Resiliency: Evaluating Flood Protection for a Wastewater Treatment Facility in Pinellas County, FL

While NFIP requirements and CRS improvement represent typical municipal flood resilience drivers, a new driver gaining momentum comes from the municipal property insurance industry. Pinellas County recently selected their insurance provider for the South Cross Bayou WWTP. To reign in premiums and identify continuity of operations opportunities should the facility flood, the County completed a study covering both priorities & and then had the study's conclusions put to the test in back-to-back hurricanes in 2024. Drivers for flood resilience typically stem from specific regulatory requirements for National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) participation at the municipal level or additional NFIP programs, such as efforts to improve a Community Rating System point total. These drivers prioritize flood protection primarily for habitable, insured structures. However, communities across the nation also now recognize the value of flood resilience for critical community infrastructure. Depending on how communities insure that infrastructure, yet another flood resilience driver emerges - municipal property insurance. This presentation will walk participants through the flood resilience planning process undertaken by Pinellas County at the request of its insurance provider for the South Cross Bayou wastewater treatment plant (WWTP). Both as an effort to maximize insurance premium efficiency and improve the WWTP's continuity of operations in a flood event, the plant engaged in its own flood resilience planning study. In this case study, we will discuss how the County's insurer evaluated the facility's flood risk and required the County to identify protection opportunities for its South Cross Bayou WWTP against the FEMA 500-year design storm. We will walk through insurer discussions and floodproofing requirements leading up to the study, the data collection and criticality analysis, the outcomes and best practices for this type of a study, along with grant funding opportunities to support resiliency improvements. The presenters will share a variety of identified flood risk reduction practices, both permanent and temporary. Notably, after the study was completed in spring of 2024, Pinellas County was directly impacted by both Hurricanes Helene and Milton. With the two hurricanes just having hit in recent weeks after the study's completion, the County had not yet implemented any of the recommendations from the study, needing to incorporate the highest priorities into upcoming Capital Improvement Program (CIP) cycles. While Pinellas County assessed the widespread damage brought by each hurricane, fortunately no apparent flood damage occurred at the South Cross Bayou facility. However, the presenters will also include a brief synopsis of how the recommended flood resilience practices and efforts might have fared if either of the storms had caused the characterized flooding the study sought to assess and provide recommendations to mitigate.