20 Managing Houston Flooding: Floodplain Expert Bob Freitag and Environmental Advocate Susan Chadwick

Today we are joined by Susan Chadwick, environmental advocate and Executive Director of Save Buffalo Bayou, and Bob Freitag, expert on hazard mitigation and floodplain management, to discuss
-Houston flooding
-the USACE Interim Report (2020) on trying to manage flooding by altering Buffalo Bayou and Cypress Creek
-floodplain management
-modern science vs. old thinking about streams and floodplains
-the nature of streams
-how streams interact with geology, tides, flora, ecology, and climate
-strategies for managing flooding
-cost-benefit analyses of different strategies
-benefits of modern, scientific, natural strategies over those of old, constrained strategies
-what has worked elsewhere in the country and the world, and how some places are "rewilding" streams and discovering the deep, varied economic value of free "ecological services"

About Susan: Susan Chadwick, a writer and journalist who grew up on Buffalo Bayou, is the president and executive director of Save Buffalo Bayou. She was the art critic for the Houston Post from 1985 until it closed in 1995.

More about Susan, her work, and her contact info, at:
a. https://www.linkedin.com/in/susan-chadwick-66502a3b/
b. www.SaveBuffaloBayou.org
c. https://www.facebook.com/SaveBuffaloBayou/


About: Bob Freitag is Senior Instructor Part-time and Director of the Institute for Hazards Mitigation Planning and Research (IHMP). The University of Washington Institute for Hazards Mitigation is an interdisciplinary academic Institute housed in the Department of Urban Design and Planning within the College of Built Environments at the University of Washington. http://mitigate.be.uw.edu) He is the past Executive Director of the Cascadia Region Earthquake Workgroup (http://www.crew.org/) and past member of the Association of State Floodplain Managers’ Board of Directors. (http://www.floods.org/) Bob is also a Certified Floodplain Manager. He has published many articles and written courses for FEMA and others concerning hazards mitigation and floodplain management, and was lead author of “Floodplain Management: a new approach for a new era” (Island Press 2009).

Before coming to the University, he had a 25-year career with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) serving as Federal Coordinating Officer (FCO); Public Assistance, Mitigation and Education Officer. Prior to FEMA he was employed by several private architectural and engineering consultant firms in Hawaii and Australia, and taught science as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Philippines. Freitag received his Master of Urban Planning degree from the University of Washington.

Contact Bob here: http://urbdp.be.washington.edu/people/robert-freitag/

His book Floodplain Management: A New Approach for a New Era
by Bob Freitag, Susan Bolton, Frank Westerlund, Julie Clark: https://www.amazon.com/Floodplain-Management-New-Approach-Era/dp/1597266353


Contact Michael:
1. [e-mail]
2. http://www.goldams.com
3. https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-gold-2883921/
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