St. Charles Parish Floodplain Management Plan Committee Meeting - May 14, 2026
St. Charles Parish Floodplain Management Plan Committee Meeting - May 14, 2026
The Floodplain Management Plan Committee held its third meeting on May 14, 2026, at the St. Charles Council Chambers. Staff and consultant team provided updates on flood prevention efforts at state and federal levels, restated the flood problem, and proposed a vision statement and goals for the plan. Committee members participated in a goal-prioritization exercise.
Public Comments & Testimony
No members of the public spoke during the public comment period.
Discussion Items
- FEMA Reopening and Data Impacts: Marnie reported that FEMA had resumed operations, releasing data that had been delayed, including claims data and information to design a flood insurance improvement plan and substantial damage management plan. The President's Council report on FEMA is open for public comment until June 8th, 2026, and the Coalition for Sustainable Flood Insurance is seeking strong parish input.
- Louisiana Watershed Initiative (LWI): The LWI is nearing completion. St. Charles Parish spans three LWI regions. The West Bank is in Region 6, whose draft plan models show the Sunset Drainage District under nine feet of water during a 10-year storm, a finding committee members disputed based on actual events like Hurricane Ida. The draft plan is open for comment until June 17th (or August 13th, as noted). The committee expressed concerns about the modeling accuracy.
- Repetitive Loss Area Analysis: Code enforcement will visit approximately 800 properties to complete a questionnaire for FEMA and the Community Rating System (CRS). Residents will receive advance notice.
- Community Rating System Outreach: The parish has completed five of six mandatory outreach activities, including a listening session, a survey (about 76 responses), a public meeting, a home elevation tour (attended by about 25 people), flood risk awareness month, and a water bill insert.
- Vision Statement Adoption: The committee unanimously adopted the vision: "St. Charles Parish is investable, insurable, and resilient." One member expressed weariness with the term "resilient" but did not object. The vision aligns with the LWI Region 6 draft plan.
- Draft Goals Presentation: Goals were presented based on the existing Hazard Mitigation Plan and other studies. Four goals were proposed: (1) Reduce flood losses to existing buildings and future development, (2) Protect health and well-being of people from flood hazards, (3) Protect natural and beneficial functions of the floodplain, and (4) Support critical facilities and emergency services. Each includes sub-goals. Committee members participated in a dot-voting exercise to prioritize sub-goals.
Key Outcomes
- The vision statement was unanimously approved.
- Goals and sub-goals were discussed and prioritized via sticky dot voting; staff will compile results.
- Staff will consolidate information into draft plan chapters and circulate to the committee by email in June.
- The next meeting is tentatively scheduled for July 9, 2026, with a potential backup date of August 13, 2026, to review draft elements and action items.
- Public comment deadlines: FEMA President's Council report due June 8, 2026; LWI Region 6 draft plan due June 17 (or August 13) – committee members were encouraged to review and submit comments.
Meeting Transcript
Go ahead and kick us off and then you'll just come in. Okay. I'll get her up on the dias. Welcome everyone. This is our third meeting of the floodplain management plan committee. It's called to order at 12 o'clock today on May 14th, Thursday in the St. Charles Council chambers. Please rise for a moment of silence in the Pledge of Allegiance. At today's meeting, the staff and consultant team will be providing updates regarding flood prevention, work going on at the state and federal level. They'll be restating the flood problem the plan must address, proposing a vision statement for the plan, and proposing goals for that plan. Committee members can ask questions or make comments during this presentation, but I'll open up full comments discussion after. We'll go around the room and prioritize the goals and write comments directly on these boards. The team will summarize the boards at the discussion and the plan documents required to get that back to us. When we're finished with the discussion in the boards, I'll open the meeting for comments from public and announcements, and then we'll adjourn for the day. So does anyone on the committee have any questions or comments about what's going to be happening? No, everybody's good. I'll turn it over to the staff and the consultant team at this time. Good afternoon, everybody. Again, my name is Kim Marisek with the Center for Planning Excellence. We've been asked to support the planning and zoning department to help develop this floodplain management plan. I have with me Melody Chang, who's also with uh CPEX. Um so thanks for coming again today. Excited to uh take this next step in the planning process with all of you. Um today, as you said, we're gonna be um kind of recapping some of what we talked about last time. Um also really digging into the vision and goals, which will kind of set the foundation for the plan itself and the activities that we will be selecting in the next meeting. Um so this this meeting will be um a little bit of a departure from all of the kind of information download that we've been providing in the last couple of meetings. So um we're hoping to get some good conversation happening around the boards later today. Um I'm gonna pass it over to Marnie to give an update on uh what's been happening. Thanks. Um so everybody may or may not know FEMA is back open. This has been an ongoing problem for this uh project. Um that FEMA was not funded for the bulk of the time that we've been working. Um, so that held us up for a lot of data that we wanted that we needed and that we were going to use to frame a lot of what we're doing and make recommendations. That data just started flooding in last Monday. No pun intended. Actually, no, I flood pun all the time. Um so um we're back on track with data. It uh kind of puts us a little bit behind um schedule uh to go back and um review some of these things, but the data that we're receiving from FEMA now will help us design a flood insurance improvement plan, a substantial damage management plan for after a storm event or a major disaster. Um claims data that we're reviewing constantly. Um we got a new download of uh claims data. Um so we're working through that uh as we're able. We're also able to actually speak to our representatives at FEMA. Um, and we've had some uh really good conversations with them since uh they're back uh in the office, and uh we have some uh really good news, I think that will be coming to the board hopefully in July. Um, as that's all going while FEMA was closed. Um the final report that is the president's council to assess the federal emergency management agency has come down. It is adopted by the committee. It is currently open for public comment. So this will be open for public comment until June 8th. We're kind of switching gears to make sure that staff and the administration are fully aware of this and that the parish can comment in a very strong and meaningful way about the recommendations that that they've got because some of them are some of them are kind of significant. So if anybody wants a copy of the report, I've got a few here.
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