While the Town of Old Saybrook can’t prevent natural disasters like Superstorm Sandy, it can take steps to reduce the damage and disruption of natural events—and coming up with a plan can not only save lives and property, it can make the town eligible for grants to help it better weather any future storm.

Old Saybrook held a public meeting on Dec. 5 to discuss the update of its Natural Hazard Mitigation Plan (NHMP), a detailed strategy for the town to prepare for possible—and probable—destructive natural events.

“This is a plan for what can we do to mitigate against natural hazards, which really means what can we do to increase our likelihood of surviving,” said Old Saybrook Town Planner Christine Nelson.

According to Samuel Bell, a senior resiliency planner with GZA GeoEnvironmental, Inc., the consultant firm hired by the town to assist in the plan’s development, the plan’s primary purpose “is to reduce and/or eliminate the future property damage to both public and private property and to improve public safety.”

This will be the third iteration of the plan and, like the previous two, the most recent of which was produced in 2014, is being prepared for the Town of Old Saybrook and the Borough of Fenwick. Plans must be updated every five years and this process has been accelerated with the aim of completing the new plan in February 2019.

Nelson outlined the importance of having an approved NHMP in place: Getting ahead of the challenge and getting federal funding to do so.

While she noted the town could eventually be eligible for Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) disaster recovery funds after an event regardless, “if you have a pre-disaster mitigation plan, then you’re eligible for funding to try to get ahead of disasters and try to put infrastructure and systems in place that help people to better survive natural hazard events.”

“The 2000 Federal Disaster Mitigation Act,” Bell said, “is what led FEMA to…require that every community, state, tribal entity, [and] U.S. territory must have a FEMA-approved plan to be able to apply for the Hazard Mitigation Assistance Grant Program and also public assistance programs, which are critical to communities right after a major disaster. If you have a road that gets washed out or knocked down, it enables you to get advance assistance and funding to build back those roads.”

At the Dec. 5 meeting, Nelson said the planning team “take[s] a look at all the natural hazards that are likely to affect life in Old Saybrook, and we focus on the ones that are most probable to give us trouble,” which she said in Old Saybrook are flooding, winter storms, and hurricanes or tropical storms.

Nelson also noted that multiple events can—and often do—occur simultaneously—that hurricanes, for instance, can induce flooding.

Hazards are not limited to major weather events, such as Tropical Storm Irene or Superstorm Sandy, said Bill Webster, a member of Old Saybrook’s Sea Level Rise Climate Adaptation Committee and a Fenwick resident.

“We had a breach in the dune,” he said. “This happened about three or four weeks ago—there was no storm involved at all. It was a full moon and a higher tide, and that’s what caused it. We are in the process of hiring people to replenish the sand with bulldozers.”

Fenwick has “two sides exposed to the water,” Webster said. “We have the river side and we have the Long Island Sound side. Right there is where the dune breached. On the other side, we have water that floods the road. We are going to be looking at raising the road two or three feet. That’s an example of mitigation with the sea level rise and everything that goes with it.”

Bell worked previously with the town on its Coastal Community Resilience Study (CCRS) to review the natural disasters that are likely to affect Old Saybrook.

“As a part of [the CCRS], we started to fold in climate change and how that exacerbates typical natural hazard events,” Nelson explained.

Bell lauded Old Saybrook’s “solid, diversified, and dynamic planning team,” which consists of officials from Old Saybrook, Fenwick, and the State of Connecticut, as well as people from the University of Connecticut, the Lower Connecticut River Valley Council of Governments (RiverCOG), and the community regional health district, among other entities.

The team is required to hold three meetings. One took place on Oct. 25. The two remaining meetings will be held on Thursday, Dec. 20 and Tuesday, Feb. 19, 2019.

Having members from the Connecticut Department of Energy & Environment Protection (DEEP) and other state agencies “is important because a lot of the actions are going to need to be permitted,” Bell explained, noting that existing and new laws have to be understood and taken into consideration. “There are new climate change-related state regulations that have recently come out that need to be accurately documented.”

The result, he said, will be a better response and recovery effort when the next storm strikes.

“When a major disaster occurs, you’re ready to go, because all of these individuals have been working together to develop these actions,” said Bell.

Much of the work of the committee entails gathering information about asset information: Buildings and roads built since the 2014 plan was completed. The team is also re-categorizing natural hazards.

“One of the biggest changes in this plan is going to be climate-related hazards,” said Bell. “We already have a lot of that information developed that will be folded in from the CCRS and infrastructure evaluation. It’s information that wasn’t included in the previous plan update.”

Data such as property values, which play a role in determining risk assessment; population density; median household income; and median age all are being taken into consideration. Old Saybrook’s median age is 50, whereas the median age for the state is 39. This piece of information earned a “flag” for the town’s population age, using the Census Bureau’s social vulnerability index.

Computer simulations predict how particular roads will flood under different circumstances. Route 154 and the Boston Post Road are termed the “Resilience Corridor,” as an important evacuation route “in the event of a major hurricane, flood, or nor’easter,” said Bell.

The team has taken an inventory of federal, state, and major local roads, as well as state and town bridges. Old Saybrook High School has been designated the town’s emergency shelter.

Several residents at the meeting were from Chalker Beach, which was one of the communities in the area hardest hit by Superstorm Sandy. Among the concerns was that the town might consider eminent domain—purchasing private property without owner consent—in the flood-prone areas.

“No,” Nelson said. “We’re not there yet.”

As part of the planning process, the committee is required to have two public meetings; the next one will take place on Monday, Feb. 4, 2019 at the Town Hall.

“We’ll make the draft plan available upon completion for input and at the next meeting we’ll be presenting the results of the overall plan,” Bell said.

Agendas and minutes of the planning commission may be found at www.oldsaybrookct.gov/planning-commission.