Flood Risk Management Task Force: Manayunk Public Meeting

Members of the Manayunk community and Philadelphia residents are invited to join City officials for a special meeting highlighting ongoing efforts to protect neighborhoods from the impacts of flooding and storms.

The talk is being hosted by the City of Philadelphia’s Flood Risk Management Task Force, a group featuring the Philadelphia Water Department and a wide range of City agencies and departments involved in flooding-related issues.

Scheduled for Thursday, May 11th at the Venice Island Performing Arts and Recreation Center, the public meeting will kick off at 6 p.m. and address questions such as:

• Why and when does Manayunk flood?

• What can residents and businesses do to better prepare themselves?

•What is the Task Force doing about flooding?

Community members and businesses are invited to join us for answers and to get a look at A Guide to Flooding in Philadelphia, a new resource providing residents with practical information about a variety of issues, from home flood-proofing to tips for safe post-storm recovery.
The guide was produced through the collaboration of City agencies on the task force, including:

• Office of Emergency Management

• Philadelphia Water Department

• Philadelphia Department of Public Health

• Office of Sustainability

• Philadelphia City Planning Commission

• Philadelphia Streets Department

• Philadelphia Parks and Recreation

• Licenses and Inspection

The Venice Island Performing Arts and Recreation Center—a state-of-the-art facility featuring flood control technology that can keep up to 4 million gallons of stormwater out of the Schuylkill River during a 1-inch rain storm—is located 7 Lock Street in Manayunk.

About the Task Force

The City of Philadelphia’s Flood Risk Management Task Force was convened in 2015 to address the circumstances of flooding as it impacts various Philadelphia neighborhoods, and represents an inter-agency effort to coordinate resources.

In September 2014, the City of Philadelphia held a flooding symposium that brought multiple City agencies together to explore ways to improve the City's flood mitigation planning.
The forum was hosted by the American Society of Civil Engineers, which had recently issued Flood Risk Management: Call for a National Strategy, a report urging communities to aggressively move ahead with making emergency preparations, strengthen existing flood-protection systems, and find new ways to reduce present and future vulnerability to flooding.

From that convening, the City of Philadelphia Flood Risk Management Task Force was established. The mission of the Task Force is to develop and implement an improved strategy for flood management and mitigation planning. To serve this mission, the City chartered this inter-agency task force to foster collaboration and maximize available resources and expertise within City government.

Task force goals include increasing inter-agency coordination of citywide flood risk management strategies, improving coordination of neighborhood-level strategies for flood risk management and fostering sustainable, sensible city planning and development.