Re-post: This blog first appeared on a newsletter released by Floodplains by Design.

Collaborative integrated floodplain management initiatives are underway across the State of Washington. As this collective work expands and increases in scale, the Floodplains by Design (FbD) partnership is evolving to meet the demands and opportunities of these efforts.

The FbD initiative was started in 2013 and has been led by a Management Team consisting of The Nature Conservancy (TNC), the Department of Ecology (Ecology) and the Puget Sound Partnership (PSP). TNC has served as the “backbone” organization – providing overall leadership and coordination of the statewide FbD effort. Ecology has administered the FbD grant program and provided resources and expertise to support the FbD effort. PSP has worked to ensure alignment between FbD and Puget Sound recovery groups and processes.

After working with partners over the course of 2019, the FbD team is excited to present the Organizational Plan for the FbD Partnership. The Organizational Plan defines a new structure for the FbD Partnership that is collaborative, resilient and provides a working framework to collectively make integrated floodplain management the norm in Washington State.

The Organizational Structure

The new organizational structure includes:

• Strategy Group—Provides direction for the collective work. Includes leaders from diverse organizations involved in floodplain management.
• Action Groups—ad hoc working groups that provide a forum for collaboration to implement shared priorities. Includes practitioners from organizations involved in floodplain management. Ecology and TNC will each dedicate staff to provide administrative support to these Action Groups. The groups align with focus areas for the FbD Partnership:
  • Culture and Capacity Building
  • Funding and Policy
  • Measurement and Science
• Operations Group—This group provides the “backbone functions” of communications and coordination. Includes staff from Ecology and TNC.

Next Steps

TNC will fill the role of non-governmental backbone organization for the next year. Over that time, they will work with Ecology and the Strategy Group to recruit and select another non-governmental organization to take this role in the long term.

The Action Groups are where the bulk of the collective, state-level work will be conducted. The Action Groups will start to meet this fall. Please contact Bob Carey (bcarey@tnc.org) if you are interested in joining one of the Action Groups.

Did you know?

The Habitat Strategic Initiative is working to refine and implement the Floodplains Implementation Strategy which aims to support integrated floodplain management and increase the connection of rivers in Puget Sound’s largest river deltas.