Disasters: ways resilient counties recover and mitigate
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At a luncheon, sponsored by the Resilient Counties Advisory Board, a panel of North Carolina officials discussed their reaction to and recovery from Hurricane Matthew, and The Nature Conservancy (TNC) launched its Naturally Resilient Communities Guide, a follow-up to a focus group discussion at NACo’s 2016 annual conference.
TNC’s guide uses the way nature works to address flooding problems, according to Nate Wolwode, a risk reduction and resilience project manager at TNC. Escambia County, Fla. used a natural infrastructure approach to deal with the damage caused to Pensacola Bay by Hurricane Ivan and to prevent severe storm damage in the future.
Escambia Commissioner Grover Robinson showed how the county reduced wave energy and reinvigorated the bay’s ecosystem by installing breakwater barriers and building islands beyond the barriers. Escambia’s “Project GreenShores” typifies the kinds of projects applicable to every community in the country, Wolwode said.
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House Natural Resources Committee advances Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development (SPEED) Act
On November 20, the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources advanced the Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development (SPEED) Act (H.R. 4776), which would make important changes to streamline federal permitting and strengthen county involvement in decision-making by amending the National Environmental Policy Act. Counties support commonsense permitting reforms, and NACo secured provisions in the SPEED Act that would guarantee counties a seat at the table during federal environmental reviews.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency releases new definition of the “waters of the United States”
On November 17, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released a proposed rule defining what constitute the “waters of the United States” and are subject to federal regulation under the Clean Water Act. The new definition is narrower than previous rules and codifies the decision of U.S. Supreme Court in the 2023 case Sackett v. EPA.
County Countdown – Nov. 17, 2025
Every other week, NACo's County Countdown reviews top federal policy advocacy items with an eye towards counties and the intergovernmental partnership.