Post-Katrina, Mississippi identifies the development of water and wastewater systems as critical to achieving the state’s housing and economic development goals.
In this year’s July/August issue of
Water Efficiency, we examined challenges associated with development along the nation’s coasts, which in some areas is outstripping existing infrastructure to the point of causing habitat loss and degradation of coastal water resources. Based in part on a report from the National Oceanic Service of the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), this initial article identified the need for organized planning in coastal areas, particularly in regard to long-term water, wastewater, and stormwater management. As of 2003, 153 million Americans called the coast home, 33 million more than in 1980. Fifty-three percent of us are settled on only 17% of the nation’s land; of our 25 most populated counties, 23 are on a coastal range. The trend toward waterfront living is expected to continue with the addition of another 7 million newcomers by 2008, and 12 million more by 2015. The issue, say the NOAA researchers, is density: too many people living in too confined a space.
With an eye toward evaluating the type of coordinated long-term planning the NOAA report says is necessary to safeguard our coasts, we visited the post–Hurricane Katrina redevelopment effort under way along Mississippi’s Gulf Coast. Katrina destroyed 70,000 homes, dislocated 125,000 residents, and destroyed or damaged the state’s highways and water and wastewater infrastructure. Although battered by wind and Katrina’s storm surge, Mississippi residents are committed not only to rebuilding but also to aggressively pursuing the growth spurt Mississippi was enjoying before the hurricane struck.
The Mississippi Governor’s Commission on Recovery, Rebuilding, and Renewal identified housing and economic development as the state’s redevelopment priorities and water and wastewater capacity as critical to achieving those goals. With the mandate from the governor, the Gulf Region Water and Wastewater Plan identified 300 water and wastewater projects in a short four months and from these selected 62 for funding. Wastewater projects received priority over water supply projects at a ratio of 2:1, and although the original goal had been to consider an integrated approach to water, wastewater, and stormwater management, the magnitude of the demand for water delivery and wastewater treatment was such that only two stormwater projects were recommended for funding. (Both are demonstration projects that explore innovative ways of handling discharge from beach outfalls.)
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Visual: provided by NOAA |
| Bay St. Louis, MS, a coastal community forever changed |
Is such an effort reproducible elsewhere? “We were building the prototype as we were flying it,” says Carol Mann of Mann & Associates LLC in Jackson, MS, which handled the public outreach for the infrastructure planning process. One factor Mann acknowledges as critical to the success of the Mississippi project was the magnitude of the disaster, which was critical in focusing stakeholders throughout the planning process—and to the ability to obtain consensus.
Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Mississippi Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005, as a Category 3 storm, resulting in what has been subsequently characterized as the most destructive and costly natural disaster in US history. Estimates are that 51% of existing homes were damaged, approximately 20,000 businesses destroyed, and public buildings such as libraries, courthouses, police stations, and community centers damaged, some severely. Although most of the coast was buffeted by winds of over 100 mph and experienced torrential rainfall, the majority of the damage was caused by the hurricane’s storm surge.
What NOAA researchers identified as the Gulf Region extends from the Florida Keys to the southern tip of Texas and includes the coastline of six states. The Gulf is the country’s fourth most populated coastal area, with 19.1 million residents who account for 13% of the nation’s coastal total. In Mississippi, however, the on-the-ground picture is much less dense than the 164 persons per square mile NOAA has attributed to the region as a whole. Prior to Katrina, the population in Mississippi’s six Gulf counties totaled only 465,000 residents. Given a high birth rate and the influence of interstate migration, however, the region had been gradually developing, and projections had been for Florida-style growth.
Katrina forced many coastal residents inland into areas that were not equipped to handle this instantaneous population influx. Austin-based Angelou Economics, a subcontractor in coastal redevelopment planning, estimates that among the six coastal counties, Hancock County, next door to Louisiana, lost 16% of its population to Katrina, and Jackson County at the opposite end of the state, 3%. Conversely, Pearl River County, immediately north of Hancock County, and George County, north of Jackson, both largely rural, experienced a 14% increase in their populations post-Katrina. Historically, the three lower coastal counties have been more urbanized. Jackson County is the most highly industrialized of the three, with a petroleum refinery and chemical, port, and shipping facilities. Immediately west, the economy in Harrison County, home to the population centers of Gulfport and Biloxi, is primarily gaming and tourism, as it is in neighboring Hancock County.
Local projections have the Gulf Region growing by approximately 2.7% annually, considerably faster than the national average of 1.7% annual growth. Typically 10,000 homes are built every year in Mississippi, but as a result of Katrina, Harrison County alone will need some 5,000 housing units a year for the next five years. [New housing construction along Mississippi’s coast is complicated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA’s) remapping of special flood hazard areas. The new flood insurance rate maps will ultimately affect decisions on where and how to rebuild, and in the interim FEMA has issued Advisory Base Flood Elevations (ABFEs) for communities to guide new construction.]
Additional opportunities associated with coastal redevelopment include correcting inadequacies in Mississippi’s pre-Katrina water and wastewater infrastructure and addressing environmental issues related to wastewater and stormwater management. Three major drainage basins drain the Gulf Region: the Coastal Streams Basin, which encompasses the Wolf and Biloxi rivers; the Pascagoula River Basin, which includes the Escatawpa and Pascagoula rivers and Red and Black creeks; and the Pearl River Basin. To facilitate planning by way of matching projects with the region’s natural typography and hydrology, these regional basins were separated into 27 watersheds, a planning approach favored by NOAA’s researchers.
Although FEMA addressed itself to challenges associated with immediate disaster relief, state leaders realized that if the coast were to come back, long-term planning and investment would be critical. The state’s Congressional delegation secured approximately $5.1 billion in long-term recovery assistance from a total of $11.5 billion allocated through the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Texas, and Louisiana. Based on recommendations from his recovery and redevelopment commission, Governor Haley Barbour mandated that a portion of the HUD money be used to fund water, wastewater, and stormwater infrastructure improvements that would accommodate future growth as well as contemporary needs. And to ensure the HUD money would be invested equitably and systematically, the governor also called for a comprehensive plan to identify and prioritize the region’s most critical infrastructure requirements.
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Visual: provided by NOAA |
| Devastation spread along Mississippi’s coastal counties after Hurricane Katrina. |
The resulting Mississippi Gulf Region Water and Wastewater Plan was undertaken through a private and public sector partnership between the Mississippi Engineering Group Inc. (whose membership included Jackson-based Waggoner Engineering Inc., Camp Dresser & McKee in Gulfport, and Engineering Associates in Jackson, along with individual county-based firms) and the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ), which acted as the lead agency for the state.
According to Steve Spengler, the MDEQ’s project lead, a significant amount of post-hurricane growth has occurred in unincorporated areas of the state where wells and onsite systems are being used to handle water and wastewater demand, in part because initially there was no centralized authority to coordinate infrastructure development. “Systems have been installed where the soils aren’t conducive or the water table is too high,” says Spengler, “so in addition to providing for future growth, the post-Katrina effort is going to provide the opportunity to connect people who don’t now have access to centralized systems.”
Prior to Katrina, utility districts existed in the three more densely populated lower counties where a number of publicly operated wastewater treatment plants had been established. As part of the recovery effort, the Mississippi legislature created utility authorities in all six counties and added responsibility for water supply and stormwater to existing authorities that had originally been formed primarily to handle wastewater. The legislation gives the county authorities broad powers to regulate infrastructure design, construction, operation, maintenance, and performance standards within their service areas as well as the authority to set rates and charges for services, issue revenue bonds, and borrow money for the provision of services and facilities. The legislation also created a Gulf Region Utility Board to provide management support and encourage long-term economic development and infrastructure planning.
According to Barry Royals, director of planning and special programs for Waggoner Engineering Inc., the initial objective of the planning effort was to inventory existing facilities, develop projections for future population growth and then match these to critical water, wastewater, and stormwater needs region-wide. The next step was to prioritize projects as the basis for allocating the HUD funds—all of this in the context of the governor’s mandate that infrastructure improvements had to accommodate future growth, and promote economic development.
“The idea,” says Royals, “was to coordinate regional development, consolidate and centralize infrastructure, and support development of facilities in locations that were less vulnerable to hurricane impacts. Usually when you’re planning, you’re focused on one or two cities or maybe a county, but here we were looking at six counties. And we were not only looking at getting the immediate population back home but also what would be best for the area 10 to 20 years out.”
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Visual: provided by NOAA |
| Pre-Katrina wastewater management was at 7.3 million gallons per day. |
Pre-Katrina, 185 individual service providers, including municipalities, utility service districts, non-profit rural water associations, and independent private entities supplied potable water to customers within the six-county region under the watchful eye of the Mississippi Department of Health. Pre-Katrina, 481 different facilities were permitted for wastewater discharge, and in addition, over 85,000 individual, onsite sewage systems were reported to be handling wastewater from approximately 195,000 housing units, accounting for a volume of approximately 7.3 million gallons per day.
The primary source of potable water region-wide continues to be groundwater pumped as needed. Post-Katrina potable water infrastructure challenges included building new wells and storage tanks as well as expanding the potable water distribution system. Although sufficient capacity appeared to exist for meeting projected demands for water supply and wastewater treatment within each of the coastal counties, the geographic location of some of the existing facilities meant that they weren’t able to accommodate new growth in the most cost-effective manner. Additionally, the location of a majority of these facilities near the coastline made them vulnerable to major storm events. Centralized wastewater treatment facilities in the region generally treat to tertiary levels, due in part to recreational use of receiving waters as well as fish and shellfish harvesting. Sludge from centralized sewage treatment goes into landfills. Stormwater management in the Gulf counties has typically been a matter of controlling floods.
Fundamental to Mississippi’s coastal recovery plan was the decision to use the HUD funds to provide the backbone water and wastewater infrastructure that locally financed water distribution and sewer collection networks could tie into as needed. Royals points out, however, that during the planning process, it became obvious that not all of the damaged communities would have the wherewithal to establish localized systems.
“Hancock County, which took the brunt of the storm, was so devastated and lost so many people that it didn’t have the customers to develop a local system. For them the backbone structure would have been useless because they didn’t have the funds to provide the complementary systems. We reported this to the governor, who added approximately $133 million to the HUD funds. This allowed us to add more projects in these municipalities and provide some of this complimentary infrastructure in Hancock County. In addition, we were able to add approximately $27 million in additional projects in unincorporated areas.”
Teams from the Mississippi Engineering contractors and the MDEQ began moving south in April 2006 with the goal of submitting a finalized plan to HUD by the end of the year. The process began, says Royals, with “talking to folks,” the goal to identify local stakeholders who would eventually develop the projects needed to get the coastal counties back on their feet. “In some cases,” says Royals, “it was difficult to find the folks to communicate with because people’s lives had been so disrupted. So we began a public outreach campaign to explain why we were there and what we were doing.
“People would tell us they thought they would recover faster than what we were projecting, and we would work through with them why they thought this way. It was a process of matching this kind of information with whatever data we could get from planning and development agencies.
“Our goal was to consider the economics of scale. People are generally parochial, in that each municipality wants to manage its own system and doesn’t want to be bothered with anyone else. But we were under the governor’s mandate to take a broader view, so instead of building two 200,000-gallon storage tanks for two different communities, our goal would be to build one 400,000-gallon tank that could be used for both. It was a way to make the money go further.”
“The regional approach, especially in regard to utilities, just makes a lot of sense,” says Brad Bradford, who serves on the utility authority in Jackson County and on the Mississippi Gulf Coast Region Utility Board. “When you look at it from a regional standpoint, maybe one community doesn’t get the well and elevated water tank it thinks it needs, but instead it gets a water trunk line that belongs to the county utility authority, which provides a wholesale connection to address your water needs.”
Potential infrastructure improvements were divided into two categories, near- and long-term. Near-term projects were those considered critical to regional recovery. They enjoyed high levels of stakeholder support and were subject to limited permitting requirements. Implementation had to be straightforward, and the project had to have the potential for shared funding. All the near-term projects were to be completed within four years (by 2010), whereas the deadline for long-term projects was 2025 or beyond (depending on the availability of funding). Near-term projects also had to comply with HUD criteria for Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery grants, meaning the problem they were to address had to be either directly or indirectly the result of the hurricane and had to support disaster relief, long-term recovery, and infrastructure restoration. Near-term projects also had to comply with economic recovery criteria—namely, to provide infrastructure in areas currently underserved or completely without service as well as supporting economic development. To increase the possibility that a near-term project could be implemented in four years, local stakeholders had to demonstrate the willingness to invest in project implementation and long-term maintenance and operation.
Even with a consolidated, regional approach, and the mandate that HUD funds would be committed to developing backbone infrastructure, it was necessary to develop a priority system stakeholders could buy into. “The governor wanted projects that would expeditiously enhance recovery,” says Royals, “such as putting people in housing. This meant infrastructure that would get the most homes built the quickest had the higher priority. Projects that would provide a public health benefit or that facilitated economic development or environmental protection also had high priority.”
As eventually developed, the priority system used to rank the gulf projects included five criteria:
1. The extent to which the project accommodated expected demographic changes, recovery, and development resulting from Hurricane Katrina
2. The project’s impact on economic development and recovery
3. The project’s cost-effectiveness, affordability, and benefits on a regional and multi-jurisdictional level
4. The time required to implement the proposed project
5. The degree to which the project was necessary to correct or minimize an imminent future public health or environmental threat
“It’s important to remember,” says Gulf Region Water and Wastewater Plan Project Director Jim Hust, “that local stakeholders identified their own needs. We were there to motivate and guide them through the application process. In the end, they had to submit their needs in writing, and we developed projects and budgets to substantiate how their needs could be meet.”
According to Mann, the key was to recognize the importance of local active participation and to acknowledge that for the plan to work, it would have to reflect local wishes. “We began with only 200 key officials in the six counties, and at the end of four months, we had over 1,000 people on our mailing list.”
Mann describes a step-by-step process of information gathering. “We began by listening to their concerns, but we made it plain that it was their responsibility to provide us with information. We also made it clear that all proposals would be evaluated using the same criteria. Most importantly, we wanted them to understand that we weren’t coming into their counties with a list of projects we had developed. To emphasize this message, we developed surveys targeted at specific groups such as city managers and county water managers.
“We also wanted all the involved counties to understand that they were all getting the same message. We invited people to attend meetings in other each other’s counties. We developed a PowerPoint presentation so that all of us on the planning team would be on the same page. We developed and distributed fact sheets and continually added to them. As the process continued, we communicated with the stakeholders with frequent meetings and through a newsletter and a Web site. We communicated among ourselves using a listserve, which was absolutely critical. Being able to post something and have everyone have immediate access to it saved a lot of time.
“Because this was on such a fast track, we tried to prioritize the issues and problem areas and pre-agree or pre-approve an issue as often as possible, so by the time we got to a meeting, we’d only have crucial issues to negotiate.” Countywide meetings were conducted throughout the process and included economic development meetings and public involvement meetings in each county. Additional meetings were held with the newly formed county utility authorities as they began the process of naming boards of directors and developing bylaws. According to meeting facilitators, typical subjects of discussion included pre- and post-Katrina service capacities and user demands, barriers to economic development, and requirements for facilitating continued growth. To evaluate the process and measure success, the project organizers also used meeting evaluation surveys and questionnaires.
The Gulf Region Water and Wastewater Plan was submitted to HUD on schedule, with a press conference held on January 8, 2007, to commemorate the event. Next up is the National Environmental Policy Act due diligence on the 62 projects the plan recommended. Subsequently the newly formed county utility authorities will begin preparing contract documents and specifications, acquire whatever easements and rights of way are necessary to make the projects work, and then bid, award, and administer contracts and keep an eye on construction.
“We’re lucky,” says the MDEQ’s Spengler. “Water supply is a driving force for economic development in much of the country, but in Mississippi, it’s something we have an abundant amount of right now.”
The critical words may be “right now.” If the Mississippi coast develops as residents and other stakeholders projected, “right now” might not be enough. By the time the long-term infrastructure projects identified by the plan are completed, everyone will have a better idea about whether this type of intense planning was effective in forecasting future effects, negative as well as positive. NOAA researchers suggest the challenge for public policy makers and coastal managers will continue to be striking a balance between the economic benefits of growth and mitigating the associated negative effects on the environment, a challenge they note is bound to require more complex and sophisticated planning than has typically been undertaken in coastal communities.
One thing Mann emphasizes as fundamental to the kind of planning undertaken along the Mississippi coast is the need to stay on message. “One of the most important functions of our newsletter and FAQs was to ensure that everyone was literally speaking off the same page—because this kind of information can be nuanced. Our strategy was to anticipate the expectations of public officials with early, frequent communications and provide and answer specific questions. Everyone on the team was either personally affected or had friends and relatives who had been affected by the storm. We knew that the Water and Wastewater Plan was a positive step in getting the coast back on its feet. And we always tried to go beyond what was required.”
If planners and managers in rapidly developing coastal regions throughout the country could take a page from Mississippi’s post-Katrina book, it may well be the advice to develop a clear vision and stick with it. Nor did it hurt, as Brad Bradford notes, that most stakeholders benefited from the process. Although what they got may have differed from what they initially wanted, the regional approach appears to have allowed for more cost-effective and functional solutions than might not otherwise have been considered.