A bill to create the state’s first resilience plan made it out of a Senate subcommittee on Wednesday.
S.F. 2111 includes an assessment of threats from floods, droughts and other hazards, an inventory of “critical assets” – like schools and bridges. It is meant to identify risks to the state, prioritize projects to reduce those risks and track progress.
Sen. Art Staed, D-Cedar Rapids, said he has concerns about capacity and staffing at state agencies to work on the plan, but otherwise supports it.
“I just want to say it’s extremely important to do this and this risk management. I experienced the flood in 2008 in Cedar Rapids and a derecho, and we weren’t ready for those risks,” he said. “So, it’s important to do good planning.”
The Nature Conservancy, Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation and Iowa Environmental Council say they support the resilience plan.
Cody Smith with the Iowa Environmental Council said coordinating state resources would help fill in gaps at the local level.
“Iowa is really impacted by these weather events. We’ve had $86 billion disasters since 1980, so this is something we’re very supportive of,” Smith said.
Sen. Annette Sweeney, R-Iowa Falls, said she supports moving the bill forward, with reservations.
“We don’t want to make this blanket idea that if we put this resiliency plan, but we keep having people building buildings where they have no business doing them, that’s going to affect our flooding,” she said.
Sweeney said the committee has a lot of work to do to figure out how the resilience plan would be funded and who would be in charge.
Over a dozen states have resilience plans, according to the American Flood Coalition.