Whiteside County will begin preparing a Countywide plan that will identify activities and projects to reduce the damages caused by natural hazards, such as floods, snow storms, thunderstorms, tornadoes, and ice storms, among others. The plan is called a Natural Hazard Mitigation Plan and will be funded through a grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA.)
Whiteside County has had ten Federal declared disasters since 1965 with flooding occurring during nine of these ten disasters. They occurred in 1965, 1969, 1973, 1974, 1985, 1990, 1993, 2005, 2008, and 2011.
“Developing this plan will help us be better prepared before storms hit. The focus of this plan is to reduce the harm to property and residents. We have an emergency response plan. The mitigation plan is aimed at prevention, so it will complement our response plan. The County and each participating municipality who adopts the mitigation plan being developed will become eligible for Federal funds,” said Seth Janssen, Whiteside County Emergency Services & Disaster Agency Coordinator.
A Whiteside County Hazard Mitigation Planning Committee has been create, with representatives from each participating municipality, along with technical partners and other stakeholders. Meetings of this committee will be conducted as working sessions so that any interested resident can attend and ask questions. The purpose of these working sessions is to gather and discuss information that will be used to prepare the plan.
The first meeting of this Committee will be on Thursday, July 17, 2014, at the Odell Public Library, 307 S. Madison Street, in Morrison, IL, beginning at 1:00 p.m.
All Whiteside County municipalities are invited to participate in this planning process. Albany, Erie, Fulton, Morrison, Prophetstown, Rock Falls, Sterling, and Tampico, IL, intend to participate. There is still time for other municipalities to join the process. This is a “living plan” which will be updated annually, allowing participants to add projects to the plan. However, municipalities who do not participate during the development of the plan must wait five years before they will have the opportunity to participate again.
“Typically plans are developed, and then the public is asked to comment. With this Hazard Mitigation Plan, input from the public will be gathered before and during its development. We will also hold a public forum after the Plan is drafted, but our focus will be to gather input before the draft is completed,” added Janssen.