The Central Texas project, led by Texas A&M AgriLife Research, will be supported by the Institute for Science, Technology and Public Policy, which is part of The Bush School of Government and Public Service
Floods have bedeviled communities in and around Coryell County for decades. A $4 million, 30-month project led by Texas A&M AgriLife Research aims to bring the area relief. As part of that larger project, funded by the Texas General Land Office, the Bush School will help residents distill their preferences and synthesize them with engineering recommendations to create policy proposals to present to local, state and federal officials.
AgriLife Research lead investigator Raghavan “Srini” Srinivasan, Ph.D., told AgriLife Today that the project goal is to provide county commissioners with watershed information to help create and incorporate an advanced flood warning system.
During recent news broadcasts, one local official, Coryell County Judge Roger Miller, called the project’s commencement a “historic event,” while resident Samantha Saxon said the area’s floods can be so severe that she had “water going everywhere on every side of our house” during one.
The policy proposals will probably take several years to create, said Arnold Vedlitz, Ph.D., director of the Bush School’s Institute for Science, Technology and Public Policy. Proposals might include retention ponds or other ways to channel water, for example. Or residents might prefer less intrusive and expensive ideas.
“We need to be deliberate, and really listen to people, and make sure that people are comfortable with what could be done and trust it’ll be done correctly,” Vedlitz said.
Vedlitz hopes that, as part of the project, Texas A&M can create a blueprint to guide the process of distilling science and public preferences into policy proposals. Ideally, he said, organizations around the country – particularly small ones with limited resources and limited disaster-response experience – could reach for that blueprint to deal with problems such as flooding.
“We want this to be transferrable,” he said. “We hope what we learn can help people around Texas and the country.”
To read more about the project, visit AgriLife Today.
