Background
The Dutchess County Department of Emergency Response has completed a project to develop a County-Wide Hazard Mitigation Plan (HMP). All municipalities participated in this planning project, which was completed in mid-2016.
The creation of this plan will help the area to better prepare for, respond to and recover from hazard events and disasters, and allow the County and municipalities to maintain their eligibility for federal mitigation grant funding from the New York State Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Services (NYS DHSES) and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). This is an opportunity for the County and municipalities to create a detailed plan that will address a variety of potential hazards that could affect our residents, businesses and other institutions.
The goal of the HMP is to identify projects that can reduce damages from future natural hazards. The plan includes a risk assessment and a hazard-mitigation strategy. This plan addresses the County and municipality’s risk to flooding, severe storms, severe winter storms, extreme temperatures, wildfires and other natural hazards. Mitigation projects and initiatives have been identified to address these risks to both public and private property.
The term "hazard mitigation" describes actions that can help reduce or eliminate long-term risks caused by hazards, or disasters, such as floods, severe storms, severe winter storms and wildfires. As the costs of disasters continue to rise, governments and citizens must find ways to reduce hazard risks to communities. Efforts made to reduce hazard risks should be compatible with other community goals; safer communities are more attractive to employers as well as residents. As communities plan for new development and improvements to existing infrastructure, mitigation can and should be an important component of the planning effort.
While mitigation activities can and should be taken before a disaster occurs, hazard mitigation is essential. Often after disasters, repairs and reconstruction are completed in such a way as to simply restore damaged property to pre-disaster conditions. The implementation of such hazard mitigation actions leads to building stronger, safer and smarter communities that are better able to reduce future injuries and damage.
When recurrent disasters take place such as riverine flooding, Nor’Easters and ice storms, repeated damage and reconstruction can occur. This recurrent reconstruction becomes more expensive as the years go by. Hazard mitigation breaks this expensive cycle of recurrent damage and increasing reconstruction costs by taking a long-term view of rebuilding and recovering from disasters.
Effective hazard mitigation planning can provide the following benefits:
Hazard mitigation actions are commonly broken into four different categories:
Common mitigation actions that are taken include:
Dutchess County Primary Point of Contact:
William Beale
Dutchess County Department of Emergency Response
392 Creek Road, Poughkeepsie, NY 12601
845-486-2082
wbeale@dutchessny.gov
Planning Consultant Point of Contact:
Jonathan Raser
Tetra Tech, Inc.
1000 The American Road, Morris Plains, NJ 07950
973-630-8042
jonathan.raser@tetratech.com
Sections of the Final Plan as approved by FEMA are provided below.
