Nearly a decade ago, a record amount of rain poured over West Virginia, flooding waterways and washing away thousands of homes, schools and businesses. The record-setting storms left 23 dead in its wake, more than $1 billion worth of damage and years of recovery.
Among those flooded was then-House Speaker Tim Armstead’s community. The floods prompted him to revisit a 2004 flood protection plan the state had drawn up in response to a devastating flood that had killed a West Virginian years earlier. The state had never implemented it.
In 2017, Armstead, who passed away earlier this week, proposed a measure to establish a comprehensive and coordinated statewide flood protection program aimed at saving lives and mitigating future damage.
“I think that’s one of the first steps, is to try to get a real group that is always looking at ways to address flooding,” Armstead said in an interview after the 2016 floods.
But now, nearly eight years later, torrential storms have inundated West Virginia communities, leaving a total of 12 dead this year, and the efforts spearheaded by Armstead have never been fully instituted. The office created to prevent flooding remains unfunded, and the state’s updated flood plan sits largely ignored.
West Virginia’s mountainous terrain and thousands of rivers and creeks — along with decades of strip mining and timbering — make the state especially vulnerable to flooding. This is likely to get worse as climate change continues to increase the risk. And with an increasing frequency of floods, mitigation efforts are crucial to lessen the damage caused by them.
The start of the resiliency effort
In late June 2016, hours of heavy rainfall pummeled communities across West Virginia during several rounds of thunderstorms. With the ground already oversaturated from previous storms, the deluge of rain ran quickly off the mountains and into the valleys, flooding those communities.
Hours into the heavy rains, then-Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin declared a state of emergency for 44 of West Virginia’s 55 counties. President Barack Obama declared 12 of those counties federal disaster areas soon after.
In the aftermath, the Federal Emergency Management Agency along with the Red Cross and a collection of religious and volunteer groups flocked to West Virginia to help communities recover.
But in the days following the floods, it came to light that a more than decade old state study on how to reduce damage from flooding disasters had never been implemented and instead was “sitting dusty on a shelf somewhere.”
In 2004, after years of work, a joint-task force composed of more than 20 federal, state and local agencies produced a 365-page Statewide Flood Protection Plan. The plan proposed several actions, including suggestions on floodplain and wastewater management as well as improved building codes and flood warning systems.
“Even implementing all of the recommendations provided in this plan will not completely eliminate the risk of flooding,” the report stated. “However, implementing the recommendations included in this plan will reduce the flood-related risks to lives and properties in West Virginia.”
In 2005, Armstead was among several delegates that unsuccessfully tried to create committees responsible for the coordination of flood protection and mitigation efforts — a suggestion from the recently-submitted flood plan. But the legislation wasn’t taken up by the assigned committee.
The 2016 floods, again, sparked a renewed sense of urgency around the issue of flooding.
In the legislative session after the disaster, Armstead introduced a bill that would have created a council responsible for coordinating all the flood protection programs in West Virginia, including proposing recommendations, monitoring funds used to reduce or mitigate flood damage and working with federal agencies on flood projects. The council would also be responsible for reviewing and updating the flood protection plan annually.
The bill also created the Joint Legislative Committee on Flooding, tasking it with studying flood protection efforts and making recommendations to address the threat of flooding.
The creation of the State Resiliency Office
In the final version of the bill, lawmakers created the State Resiliency Office within the state Department of Commerce. It also created an accompanying board made up of several state department leaders.
The office was now responsible for monitoring federal funding and initiatives and coordinating recovery and mitigation efforts for natural disasters beyond just flooding. It also was tasked with pursuing additional funds for long term recovery and resiliency efforts.
But two years after the bill passed, it was reported that the legislative flooding committee had only met sporadically since it had been created, and the State Resiliency Office had just hired their first employee. In 2020, the office was reportedly “barely functional.”
Lawmakers spent the next few years reforming the agency.
They passed a bill that moved the office to the Governor’s Office and then another one later that made further adjustments to the office and clarified its role in coordinating and planning disaster response, recovery and resiliency. Throughout those years, there was little funding beyond the money to keep the office operating.
In 2023, lawmakers passed a bill that created the West Virginia Flood Resiliency Trust Fund to provide that funding. The fund is intended to enhance flood prevention and protection, prioritizing low-income communities. But lawmakers did not put any money into it.
The same bill that created the trust also moved the Disaster Recovery Trust Fund, which was established in 1990 to provide relief after a natural disaster, under the authority of the State Resiliency Office. But that fund has also remained empty.
A collection of different groups and experts working on addressing the state’s risk of flooding have collaborated with the State Resiliency Office over the last couple of years. Many of those involved have approved of the work the office has been able to do with its limited resources.
“Those folks know what they need to do,” said David Lumsden, board chair for the state’s Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster. “But plans without resources are a fantasy.”
The office finished its first update of the state’s flood plan in June 2024, but without funding, it’s not clear how the office can implement any of the proposals.
Before the agency had even completed its review, Robert Martin, director of the State Resiliency Office, told a legislative committee in December 2023 that there were “probably projects right now we’d be able to execute if we had what we were looking to do either with federal or state dollars.”
In his last budget proposal as governor last year, Sen. Jim Justice asked the Legislature for $50 million for the flood resiliency fund. But as lawmakers hammered out the budget, they rejected Justice’s request, leaving the fund empty again.
As of last November, the office was still looking to secure funding.
Days before flooding in the southern coalfields this year, Gov. Patrick Morrisey submitted his proposed budget without any funding for the trust. And the Legislature voted down an attempt to add money to the trust.
Following the deadly floods that hit Ohio and Marion counties in June, Morrisey said that there would be “additional discussions with the Legislature and others about the importance of flood prevention.”
He added, “I want to make sure we’re learning from the past.”