C3FHMP: Flood Hazard Mitigation Partnering

The District's Coordinated, Comprehensive, Collaborative Flood Hazard Mitigation Partnering (C3FHMP) effort addressed Strategic Initiative No.3 of the Flood Control District of Maricopa County (District) 2009 Comprehensive Plan: Increase Collaboration and Partnerships. The District initiated the process to determine how the funding and resources of other entities could be best applied to mitigate flood hazards in Maricopa County, or where mutual benefits would be realized.

The C3FHMP scope included partnerships: (1) with government agencies and non-contract private interests; (2) formal or informal in nature; (3) financial or non-financial (collaborative) in nature; (4) increasing District effiicency or effectiveness; and (5) pertaining to both capital projects and flood control operations.

C3FHMP reviewed the District's current partnering environment (baseline condition), interviewing District staff and collecting data on current and past District agreements. The C3FHMP team polled staff regarding weaknesses as well as opportunities for new partnerships. Taking this input, the C3FHMP team formulated an external data collection approach, identifying stakeholder agencies (representative current and potential partners), identifying potential partnerships for purposes of prompting, and identifying critical questions to detect strengths, weaknesses and opportunities perceived externally. The team reviewed internal and external data and enumerated 50 potential partnerships identified by interviewees. Evaluation by team members under six evaluation criteria assessed whether each listed partnership would provide a net benefit to the District. Four partnerships evaluated as net detriments were identified as unsuitable. The 46 remaining partnerships were assessed as either "recommended" or "conditionally recommended." Due to staff limitations, 13 of the 46 were selected by the C3FHMP team and District management for deliberate action, with the remaining recommendations to be implemented in the future subject to staff availability. The order of these 13 is not reflective of priority among them:

1. Emphasize partnerships with city planning departments for joint adoption of, and coordination on, District Area Drainage Master Studies/Plans (ADMS/Ps) to increase developer implementation.
2. Develop partnerships with Maricopa County Planning & Development for joint adoption of, and coordination on, District ADMS/Ps to increase developer implementation.
3. Emphasize partnerships with Maricopa County Department of Transportation (MCDOT) for coordination on District ADMS/Ps and MCDOT planning to increase alignment of the District's Capital Improvement Program and MCDOT's Transportation Improvement Program.
4. Develop partnerships with the federal Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) for joint development, funding and/or implementation of District ADMS/Ps to obtain federal funding.
5. Emphasize partnerships with cities for small projects by increasing small project program capacity to better address local flooding hazards.
6. Emphasize partnerships with cities for regional projects by increasing consideration for in-kind cost share contributions.
7. Emphasize partnerships with cities for regional projects by increasing District cost share to better address regional flooding hazards.
8. Emphasize partnerships with cities and other agencies for distribution of ALERT system data (weather, rainfall and flood warning information) to increase ALERT system effectiveness.
9. Develop partnership with cities for periodic countywide flood control meetings to increase countywide flood control technical expertise and coordination.
10. Develop partnerships with other agencies for GIS data-sharing to increase data availability and operational efficiency.
11. Emphasize partnerships with cities for Operations & Maintenance (O&M) field cross-training to increase efficiency and ensure District-specified flood control structure maintenance standards are met.
12. Develop partnerships with cities for District inheritance of O&M responsibilities on major new regional structures, where appropriate, to ensure standards are met.
13. Develop partnership with cities and other agencies to include links on the District public Web site to other-agency flood control contract advertisements to increase bid competition.

The C3FHMP Final Report provides additional details regarding this initiative and its recommendations.

For more information contact Christopher Fazio at 602-506-4489.