PUBLIC HEARING-for Hazard Mitigation Plan

Post date: Feb 3, 2016 7:18:04 PM

The Vader City Council is holding a PUBLIC HEARING to hear comments on the 2015 Lewis County Multi-Jurisdictional Hazard Mitigation Plan Update (LCMJHMP) on February 11th, 2016 during the regularly scheduled City Council Meeting which begins at 6:00 p.m. 

In 2010 Lewis County and 9 municipalities (including Vader) as well as 40 other agencies adopted the LCMJHMP. It is a countywide plan that identifies risks and ways to minimize damages by natural and manmade disasters. The purpose of the plan is to:

• Enhance public awareness 

• Create a plan and decision making tool for management (a plan for Council to follow to improve the City's readiness for emergency events)

• Promote complinace with State and Federal program requirements (allows the City to be eligible for grant funds when implementing the plan)

• Enhance local policies for hazard mitigation capability (improving our local and county wide plan and processes in an emergency event)

• Provide inter-jurisdictional coordination (sharing of information and knowledge about other jurisdictions in the case of an emergency)

The plan is a pre-disaster planning document, it takes a pro-active approach to reduce damages from disasters, it is a public guided document that has an emphasis on strong and integrated State and local planning and it identifies sound mitigation projects developed by the participating agencies.

THE PLAN

The plan is organized into different sections including and introduction, plan adoption, planning process, risk assessment, mitigation strategies, plan maintenance and individual participants sections. an appendix is also attached with supporting documentation. The "meat" of the plan consistes of two main sections. The first section identifies the natural hazard risks within Lewis County and for each participating agency and outlines each of the major hazards. The second section focuses on mitigation strategies. The plan evaluates the strategies from the 2010 Plan and then addresses the strategies for the updated plan which were developed by each participating agency.

According to regulations, a local jurisdiction must review and revise its plan to reflect changes in development, progess in local mitigation efforts, changes in priorities and resubmit these revisions for approval within five (5) years in order to continue to be eligible fro mitigation project grant funding. As you might not be aware our current plan expired in October of 2015 and Lewi County and staff from the City of Centralia  recieved input from local jurisdictions and worked together to update the plan. The Plan has recently been approved by the Washington State Emergency Management Division and FEMA. All costs for the Plan update were absorbed by Lewis County and there was NO CHARGE to the particpating jurisdictions.

Under 44 CFR section 201.3, local governments must have a FEMA-approved Mitigation Plan in order to apply for and/or receive project grants under the following hazard mitigation assistance programs:

• • Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP)

  • Pre-Disaster Mitigation (PDM)

  • Flood Mitigation Assistance (FMA)

  • Severe Repetetive Loss (SRL)

An online version of the LCMJHMP can be found at www.cityofcentralia.com and scroll down to: LC Multi-Jurisdictional Hazard Mitigation Plan.

If you have any questions about the LCMJHMP, please contact:

Emil Pierson - Cemtralia Community Development Director at epierson@cityofcentralia.com (email) or call (360) 330-7662.