Silver Jackets: Many Partners, One team

SILVER JACKETS

Many Partners, One Team

 

For More Information Contact

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), Seattle District, Email, 206-764-3277

Washington Silver Jackets

The Washington Silver Jackets team formed in 2010 as a group of Federal and State agencies working together to address state flood risk priorities. The current makeup and operation of the team, however, has been intact since late 2014.

VISION STATEMENT

Serve as a catalyst to increase efficiency and coordination between State and Federal agencies in developing comprehensive and sustainable solutions to flood risk management issues including response, recovery, preparedness, and mitigation.

MISSION STATEMENT

The core member agencies will establish a continuous inter-governmental collaborative team working with the Federal, State, Tribal, and local governments to:

  1. Facilitate strategic planning and implementation of life cycle flood-risk management, including response, recovery, preparedness, and mitigation actions to reduce the threat, vulnerability, and consequences of flooding in the state of Washington;
  2. Create or supplement a process to collaboratively identify and prioritize issues and implement or recommend solutions;
  3. Identify and implement ways to leverage available resources and information between agencies;
  4. Increase and improve flood-risk communication and outreach;
  5. Promote wise stewardship of the taxpayers’ investments; and
  6. Promote comprehensive state flood-risk management policies and strategies and consistent regulatory standards.

Team Activities

Washington Silver Jackets Team Explores Climate Resilience in Flood Risk Management Webinar Series

The WA Silver Jackets team developed an outreach strategy in 2017 to assist state and federal agencies with articulating climate change impacts to local officials and to create a learning network around climate and flood risk to build knowledge, relationships, and resources. This effort was the result of a Silver Jackets workplan developed in partnership with the UW-Climate Impacts Group to incorporate climate considerations into flood risk management.

The effort is ongoing with two key products taking shape: a five-part webinar series, with topics ranging from climate science to case studies to funding programs; and a climate resilience resource inventory - an easy-to-navigate Excel database with flowcharts and web links to direct users toward helpful information. The resource inventory is intended to be a living document. Please contact the Washington Silver Jackets team for a copy.

The team is partnering with the Northwest Floodplain Managers Association (NORFMA) to offer wide distribution of the webinars and other materials. A top priority is to foster a network of floodplain managers at all levels of government and the private sector to share knowledge, resources, and expertise when it comes to climate resilience and flood risk management. NORFMA offers the framework for such an endeavor and have been a key partner.

Post-Wildfire Flooding Committee Takes Shape under Washington Silver Jackets

The Washington Post-Wildfire Flood Committee (PWFC) formed in 2016 in response to changing flood risks posed by the 2014/2015 wildfires. The committee’s vision is to reduce post-wildfire flood threat, vulnerability, and consequences through a continuous and collaborative focus on policy, projects, and awareness. The PWFC is facilitated by the Washington Silver Jackets team. The committee is intergovernmental by nature and at any given time includes 15-20 agencies representing Federal, State, and Local Governments, plus universities, non-governmental organizations, and the private sector. The PWFC has worked with long-term wildfire recovery groups to educate communities about flood risk, collaborated with federal agencies to build post-fire planning level flood maps and other risk communication tools, and coordinated with state partners on technical analysis for post-fire flood risk management. An After the Wildfire website has been developed to help Washington individuals and communities recover after wildfire.

Blue Creek Watershed Post-wildfire Runoff Impact Study

The Blue Creek drainage, a tributary of Mill Creek, flows through the community of Walla Walla and includes a USACE-owned off-stream storage flood control dam, reservoir and concrete-lined channel. In 2015, a fire in the Blue Creek drainage burned 10 percent or 6,500 acres of a parent watershed. A hydrologic and hydraulic assessment was conducted to quantify post-wildfire changes to runoff and sediment.  

The analysis estimated flow increases in Blue Creek and to Mill Creek downstream, the anticipated sediment impacts, and some possible mitigation actions. Dozens of people residing alongside Blue Creek were determined to be subject to the greatest risk for flash flooding. The higher channel capacity of Mill Creek and the USACE flood control project reduced the risk and impacts to people who live downstream of the USACE flood control project. The analysis provided vital information raising the flood risk awareness of community officials and emergency planners. The coordination among federal, state, and local partners ensured local decision makers had a watershed-wide understanding of the increased flood risks to better inform their actions and allowed the State to update the Washington Hazard Mitigation Plan.

Washington Implements Rapid Assessment Flooding Tool

The Washington Silver Jackets Team has implemented the Rapid Assessment Flooding Tool (RAFT) for the state of Washington. The Oregon Silver Jackets team built the RAFT and implemented it in Oregon as a way to prepare for and catalog flood events (See the Oregon Silver Jackets page for more details). The Washington team followed suit in 2015 with USACE interagency project funding and rebuilt the Excel-based tool to fit Washington. The RAFT incorporates statewide gage and frequency data so that floodplain managers can access on-the-fly flooding severity based on forecasts or observed data. Though the RAFT to this point has mostly been used by Silver Jackets partners, it is very user friendly and can be operated with little instruction. The Silver Jackets team intends to rollout some opportunities to become familiar with the tool, but in the meantime, contact the Washington SJ Coordinator using the link on this page to demo a beta version of the RAFT.

Expanding on an Integrated Approach to Flood Risk Management and Ecosystem Restoration

The Washington Silver Jackets Team in 2014 was given funding to follow up on a previous 2013 project: Integrating Flood Risk Management and Salmon Habitat Restoration Priorities in the Puget Sound: An Early Opportunities Analysis (Early Opps). See below for details on the 2013 pilot project. The follow-up effort - Washington State River Basin Multi-Benefit Analysis (An Early Opps Sequel) - expands on the approach by focusing on multi-benefit opportunities and priorities on the basin scale, as opposed to the previous regional Puget Sound analysis. With floodplain units sorted, scored, and ranked at the basin scale for FRM and salmon habitat opportunities, decision makers can then compare target floodplain areas against each other at a more manageable scale. Additionally, the study collected dozens of project applications in 2016 from a variety of multi-benefit programs throughout the state, like the Floodplains-by-Design Program. The projects have been added to the geospatial scoring tools developed in the initial 2013 pilot project. Though the funds for the analysis have expired, there is still work to be done by the team to connect local decision makers with Silver Jackets partners funding programs when applying limited dollars to multi-benefit floodplain projects. In its most robust form, the Early Opps Sequel work will be used by state, local, and federal floodplain program managers to maximize value of multi-purpose projects.

2013 Interagency Pilot Project Completed

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Institute for Water Resources awarded pilot project funding to the Washington Silver Jackets team in July 2013 to advance a new integrated approach to flood risk management and habitat restoration planning in the Puget Sound region of Washington. Integrating Flood Risk Management and Salmon Habitat Restoration Priorities in the Puget Sound: An Early Opportunities Analysis (Early Opps) expands on work The Nature Conservancy (TNC), Puget Sound Partnership (PSP), and Washington Department of Ecology (ECY) initiated in 2012 through the Floodplains by Design Program (FbD). Two scoring systems - one for flood risk management and one for salmon habitat restoration - were created and combined to rank Puget Sound floodplain "fragments". The methodology is not intended to identify "good" or "bad" habitat. Similarly, it also should not be used to classify flood risk alone. Rather, this is a classification exercise developed to target floodplain areas with greatest opportunity for improvement. Fragments that have the greatest potential for both a reduction in flood risk and an improvement to habitat score highly. In basins where local jurisdictions have to make tough choices of how to best use diminishing floodplain dollars, it is the hope of this study team that the analysis, ranking, and mapping done here can be another tool to support decision makers as they prioritize floodplain improvement demands. Check out the Technical Methodology Report (pdf, 3.65 MB) for more details on the study.

Integrating Flood Risk Management and Salmon Habitat Restoration Priorities in the Puget Sound – An Early Opportunities Analysis

This pilot study was completed in July 2013 to advance a new integrated approach to flood risk management and habitat restoration planning in the Puget Sound region of Washington. The effort  expanded upon work initiated in 2012 by The Nature Conservancy (TNC), Puget Sound Partnership (PSP), and Washington Department of Ecology (ECY) through the Floodplains by Design Program (FbD). Two scoring systems - one for flood risk management and one for salmon habitat restoration - were created and combined to rank Puget Sound floodplain "fragments". The methodology is not intended to identify "good" or "bad" habitat. Similarly, it also should not be used to classify flood risk alone. Rather, this is a classification exercise developed to target floodplain areas with greatest opportunity for improvement. Fragments that have the greatest potential for both a reduction in flood risk and an improvement to habitat score highly. In basins where local jurisdictions have to make tough choices of how to best use diminishing floodplain dollars, it is the hoped that the analysis, ranking, and mapping can be another tool to support decision makers as they prioritize floodplain improvement demands. The Technical Methodology Report (pdf, 3.65 MB) provide details about the study.


U.S. Army Corps of Engineers supports state-led Silver Jackets Teams through its Flood Risk Management Program.