New Jersey Future Wins National Award for Sandy Report

June 23rd, 2016 by New Jersey Future staff

Maria DiSalvatore, left, vice chairwoman of the New Jersey Association for Floodplain Management, accepting New Jersey Future’s award at the Association of State Floodplain Managers national conference in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The Association of State Floodplain Managers has honored New Jersey Future with its national 2016 Tom Lee State Award for Excellence in Floodplain Management. The award recognizes New Jersey Future’s report In Deep, which reviews lessons from the organization’s innovative post-Sandy local recovery planning manager program.

The pilot program involved placing experienced planners in six selected municipalities to assist with short-term recovery, help evaluate offers of post-disaster assistance, secure additional resources, and facilitate decision-making to increase long-term resiliency. These professionals were made available at no cost to the participating towns, through funding from the Merck Foundation and the New Jersey Recovery Fund.

The In Deep report examines the origin and outcomes of the groundbreaking approach to helping communities take steps to make themselves more resilient to natural disasters and summarizes the lessons learned from those engagements. It also contains recommendations on how to build upon the pilot program, including a call for funding local recovery planning managers as a standard government practice after a major disaster.

The Association of State Floodplain Managers presents the Tom Lee State Award for Excellence in Floodplain Management annually to recognize an outstanding floodplain management program or activity at the state level.