The second meeting of the Floodplain Management Public Steering Committee was held on April 9, 2026 from 12:00 to 1:17 PM. Led by the Center for Planning Excellence (CPEX) and St. Charles Parish staff, the meeting focused on Step 5 of FEMA's floodplain management planning process: identifying risk and vulnerability. Key topics included results from a March public meeting, social vulnerability mapping, historical flood claims data, repetitive loss properties, and an interactive map exercise to identify high-risk areas.
Thanks to everybody for uh joining us for our second meeting of the floodplain management public uh steering committee meeting uh group public steering committee. Um today we are going to be yeah um so again my name is Kim Marisek and I'm here with Melody Chang, both from the Center for Planning Excellence. We're supporting uh St. Charles Parish in helping to develop the floodplain management plan and helping to facilitate these conversations with the steering committee. I also have another colleague here with me today, Gina Gomez, who um is recently joined our team and has uh background in floodplain uh management as well, and so she'll be uh supporting us from the from the bench, so to speak, as we move through this process with y'all. So if you'll remember at the last meeting, um we were going through uh the process uh that's been laid out by FEMA to develop the floodplain management plan. They have uh specific steps that we need to work through. Last meeting we worked through step four, which was assessing the hazards in the parish. Um today we're moving into step five, which is um uh identifying risk and vulnerability. Um, and so today during this meeting, we're going to uh let you know what we heard at the public meeting that happened um in March. Um we are going to talk through what it means to quantify risk in the parish through the lens of um vulnerability, exposure, and hazard. So to kind of really kind of ground that conversation and risk across different factors that we consider when we're thinking about where are the places at most risk in the parish. Um we're gonna take a look at some historical damage and loss data through the FEMA claims data and talk about where in the parish we have repetitive loss properties, which are properties that have seen multiple flooding events over time and are the ones that are really carrying the cost burden for um for the insurance cost and payout claims. Um and then we have uh a spot for public comment. Um and as we exit today's conversation, um, I want to leave about 10 minutes at the end for us to look at some maps that we're going to put across the table here for you all to provide some comments to us. So, based on your job today, as we're going through this uh presentation is to be thinking about all the things that we're talking about because at the end of the conversation on these maps, we want you to tell us where you think the highest risk locations are in the parish for flooding based on all the factors that we talk about today. So it's gonna be fun. Yep. So thank you for the free upcoming meeting, but I'd like to call it. Oh, sorry. Yep, thanks, Wendy. No, that's I think we finished. Yep, no, you know me, I'll just keep going. So welcome to the light plane management planning committee today, April 9th, 2026, between uh time 12 to 1 at the St. Charles and the lead as chair and vice chair. All in favor? Okay, thank you. Um do you want to go through this, Mike? Yeah, sure. Um so after last uh well, actually February's meeting, um, we sent out by email a survey. We're hoping to do that after every meeting just to make sure that we're hitting the marks that you all want us to hit. Sorry. And um that we're getting um feedback from you to make sure that we're going in the right direction the next time around. Um this next couple of months I'll probably be reaching out very often to very many of you by other means, telephone and other things. But after our first meeting, um we did receive nine responses from uh steering committee members. Um our first question was um who else should be in the room? Uh and uh we got a got a recommendation for uh risk management. We have been working with risk management as a technical advisor. Uh the GIS department. We do work with Leah uh Louis Martinez really handy. He is a technical advisor to this committee and actually sits on the committee, but uh you know, in other capacities. Um and somebody recommended an entergy representative. We are um looking into that um as we go forward. Uh the next question was how much of the information was surprising to you. Kind of seemed like we were um hitting the mark. Um the answers were mostly new information. One person thought um pretty much everything was new. Um, a little bit of new information was one other person. Most people thought there was a little bit of new information, but not overwhelming. Um, and uh a couple of folks up there are seasoned professionals and didn't, you know, we're we're working on uh making sure that we have zero of the it was all familiars going forward.