March 31, 2022
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When it comes to building creative solutions to flooding, community engagement is key.
That’s the big takeaway from projects in Hampton, Virginia, and Kinston, North Carolina, where project teams in each community gathered local input to accelerate local park improvements — including for ways to reduce flooding.
The municipal and community partners that led these projects identified takeaways to share with other communities interested in building resident-led flood resilience:
- How to develop a flood-resilient Adopt-a-Spot program (Hampton, Virginia). In Hampton, the project partners piloted community-driven, volunteer-based improvements to a living shoreline in the Phoebus Waterfront Park.
- How to lead inclusive community engagement for local projects with flood resilience elements (Kinston, North Carolina). In Kinston, the project partners gathered community input on the future of the park and its ability to reduce flooding, culminating in a master plan with input from over 300 community members.
With funding from the Kresge Foundation, the American Flood Coalition was proud to support both projects, partnering with the City of Kinston and Kinston Teens in North Carolina and with the City of Hampton and the Partnership for a New Phoebus in Virginia.
This post will dive further into lessons learned and best practices from Hampton and Kinston. We hope that leaders will bring some of these recommendations to their own communities.
Why community engagement is vital to building flood resilience
Community engagement should be an integral part of any flood plan, and can lead to more equitable and long-lasting outcomes. By emphasizing the lived experiences and vision of community members, community engagement can:
- Prompt greater dialogue about flooding and what it means to residents.
- Generate innovative ideas to build flood resilience into everyday spaces like parks.
- Lead to greater community buy-in and support for projects.
Let’s dive into both projects to see what community engagement looks like in practice.
Phoebus Waterfront Park in Hampton, Virginia
In Hampton, Virginia, the small neighborhood of Phoebus is no stranger to flooding, especially along the many tidal creeks and rivers that define this coastal community. For a neighborhood like Phoebus, living shorelines — a system of rocks and plants along a coast — can help reduce coastal flooding.
Phoebus has an existing living shoreline in Phoebus Waterfront Park, located along a tidal basin known as Mill Creek. Through outreach like workshops and surveys, the Partnership for a New Phoebus, in partnership with the American Flood Coalition and the City of Hampton, found that local residents wished to improve this park, both to reduce floods and to expand its role as an attraction for many different types of park users.
Adopt-a-Spot for flood resilience
Because of this local momentum and interest, the City of Hampton identified the Phoebus Waterfront Park to pilot its first ever Adopt-a-Spot program for flood resilience.
Like many communities across the country, the City of Hampton has an existing Adopt-a-Spot program, a common system in which community members or local businesses can volunteer or donate resources to a publicly owned place to support activities such as litter cleanup. But the city had not yet used this program to specifically address flood resilience.
As shown in the image above, the Partnership for a New Phoebus organized a volunteer event to bolster the living shoreline by adding new plants and landscaping. It was the first pilot project supported by the City of Hampton’s new Adopt-a-Spot program for flood resilience.
“The Partnership for a New Phoebus, with our strong network of volunteers, was so proud to pilot the first-ever flood-focused Adopt-a-Spot project in the City of Hampton,” said Joe Griffith, the Neighborhood Commissioner for Phoebus, and a board member at the Partnership for a New Phoebus. “This effort will help make the living shoreline more functional from a flood reduction perspective, and can also inspire folks to install living shorelines elsewhere.”
Griffith added that he’s learned a lot from this project and is now the go-to community contact because of this work.
Takeaways: How to develop a Flood-resilient Adopt-a-Spot program
The project partners in Hampton came up with the following key steps for communities to consider when developing a flood resilient Adopt-a-Spot program, as outlined further in this document:
- Determine how the program aligns with municipal goals, resources, and programs.
- Consult with municipal advisors to determine the approvals and documents required to ensure program functionality.
- Develop an easy-to-follow process for the municipality to carry out the program.
- Determine expertise needed and establish a technical support system.
- Create and/or identify additional resources to support resident or business groups.
- Consider piloting the program with one community group to test the established process and identify opportunities for improvement.
- Develop outreach tools to amplify the program and educational reach of the projects.
Emma Webb Park in Kinston, North Carolina
Since the city’s earliest establishment along the Neuse River in Eastern North Carolina, Kinston has dealt with flooding. But open spaces, such as parks and street medians, can store and slow water, thereby reducing flood risk.
Enter Emma Webb Park, a seven-acre park that lies a mile north of downtown Kinston. If the city can retrofit Emma Webb Park to show how it can slow and store more water during storms, it can be a model for integrating flood resilience into other open spaces throughout the city.
Over the past year, Kinston Teens, the City of Kinston, and the American Flood Coalition partnered to advance the community vision for Emma Webb Park. Through robust community engagement, and based on the community history and flood aspects of the park, the project team identified ways to honor the park’s past, while reflecting current and future needs of Kinston.
“Kinston is already leading by example,” said Kinston Mayor Dontario Hardy. “Restoring our streams and wetlands has been shown to be an effective method to help contain and mitigate flood intensity for surrounding communities. These kinds of preventative measures will save money in the long run.”
This effort resulted in a master plan that incorporated many community interests, including recreation, arts and performance spaces, and flood resilience measures. The master plan also includes a restored stream and widened floodplain to reduce flooding in the park.
“We knew a master plan was key to making physical improvements to the park, because many sources of grant or state funding require this level of planning before they will fund capital improvements,” said Chris Suggs, Executive Director of Kinston Teens and member of the Kinston City Council. “Earlier this month, after community engagement and presenting the master plan, I and my colleagues on the Kinston City Council officially adopted the master plan, making a commitment to bring it into reality.”
Takeaways: how to build inclusive community engagement for projects with flood resilience elements
The project partners in Kinston came up with the following key steps to be considered when developing an inclusive community engagement plan for local flood resilience projects. These are expanded further in this document:
- Build early and strong input from community-based organizations, municipal and technical partners into the community engagement plan.
- Organize community input events with equity in mind.
- Promote the project and engage through different channels.
- Provide ongoing updates on the project to community members.
- Create opportunities for residents to share memories and reflect on the project and also how flooding has affected them.
Such community input is already being reflected in planning, said Kinston Council Member Felicia Solomon: “It is a community park which will represent and which will serve everyone in this community… looking at this [master plan], I see the power of the arts that we’ve created in this city flowing into this park.”
Going forward
Both projects accelerate low-cost design concepts that address flooding and are driven by broad community input. In each case, the projects also benefited from the vital input of technical consultants, including park planning and design expertise from Design Workshop for Emma Webb Park and living shoreline expertise from Wild Works of Whimsy for Phoebus Waterfront Park.
But these projects were only a snapshot of a single year. Flood resilience is an ongoing process, and the American Flood Coalition is excited about where these projects go next.
To connect with any organizers from Hampton, Virginia, or Kinston, North Carolina, reach out to AFC Program Analyst Rolando Hernadez at rolando@floodcoalition.org. To learn more about these projects, view our recent Building Resilient-led Resilience webinar.
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More photos from the projects
