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The federal government signed off on a holiday gift for Coconino County communities struggling against post-fire flooding. In late December, Congress passed the $1.7 trillion Omnibus Appropriations Bill, which included funding for federal programs that support post-wildfire watershed restoration and flood mitigation.

Coconino County currently has $90 million worth of flood control projects that have been approved for reimbursement by the recently funded federal programs � but that doesn’t mean the money is in the bank.

There are several obstacles that remain between the county, the funds and the mitigation deemed necessary to protect residents from post-wildfire flooding. In some cases, residents may not even want the help. Altogether, it’s a complicated situation, and while the funding is good news, it doesn’t mean that flooded residents are out of the woods � or water � just yet.

Here’s how it breaks down:

The flooding

Monsoon rains on the Pipeline Fire burn scar � which shares some overlap with the 2010 Schultz Fire scar � resulted in 45 major flood events in Coconino County neighborhoods this summer. According to county officials, “torrential flash flooding caused millions of dollars of damage to private properties.� Roads were washed out, homes were inundated with mud and rock slides, and for weeks county workers and residents sat on edge as every darkening cloud threatened another bout with flooding.

In July, the Coconino County Board of Supervisors approved an expenditure of $5 million for initial flood response. In October, it approved a transfer from the general fund of $10.5 million for further response and small-scale mitigation projects. To date, the county flood control district has spent over $8.2 million responding to post-fire flooding.

They’ve spent a good chunk of change, but county officials have estimated a need of between $100-$150 million to create and maintain flood mitigation systems that will adequately protect residential properties. This is money the county simply does not have � a fact that spurred collaboration between the county and congressional partners to find the funds in the federal government.

The funds

The money needed by Coconino County � or at least $90 million worth � was found in the Omnibus Appropriations Bill. The bill was massive, to say the least. It’s $1.7 trillion included $772.5 billion for nondefense discretionary programs, $858 billion in defense funding, $44.9 billion in emergency assistance to Ukraine and U.S. NATO allies and $40.6 billion to assist communities across the country recovering from drought, hurricanes, flooding, wildfire, natural disasters and other matters. It’s the last number that most concerns fire and flood impacted communities in Coconino County.

From that $40.6 billion, the legislation included $925 million for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Emergency Watershed Protection Program (EWPP). The Coconino County Flood Control District has two approved projects on the EWPP project waitlist totaling $50 million.

The Omnibus Bill also included $210 million for post-wildfire disaster relief funding through the U.S. Forest Service. This money is specifically for projects that will address impacts to communities downstream from wildfires on national forests. County officials stated that the flood control district “worked with the Coconino National Forest and the U.S. Forest Service Region 3 leadership to submit a $40 million request to the Forest Service Chief for watershed restoration within the nine watersheds impacted by the Pipeline Fire in 2022.�

With the passage of Omnibus, the money to fulfill that request is now available.

One important point of understanding is that these funds aren’t as straightforward as checks deposited into county coffers.

“These are all reimbursement grants,� explained Lucinda Andreani, director of the county flood control district. “The district and county have to cover those costs and then get reimbursed.�

Still, the federal entities � the EWPP and the Forest Service � have historically been “pretty good about their reimbursements,� Andreani said, adding that she is confident that with the funding made available through the Omnibus Bill, Coconino County will see costs covered.

The mitigation projects

For clarity, it helps to break the county’s approved flood mitigation projects into categories based on the funding source � either the EWPP or the Forest Service.

The county has two projects on the EWPP waitlist. The first is expected to cost about $22.5 million and will address five flood corridors � Wupatki Trails, Brandis Way, Campbell, Copeland, and Peaceful. Each one of these flood corridors has different needs, said Andreani, that are related to the existing (or in some cases nonxistent) flood mitigation constructed after the 2010 Schultz Fire.

“For Wupatki Trails, it's upsizing that existing channel,� Andreani said. “For Brandis, it's upsizing and converting to shotcrete both the upper and lower sections of the channel. For Copeland and Peaceful, it's new mitigation, because those two corridors elected to not go forward with mitigation post-Schultz.�

The goal will be to get these channels to a place that can handle a 25-year storm � or 2 inches of rainfall in 45 minutes � under current post-fire conditions.

That’s the goal, at least. However, if costs rise above what the county projected, “it may be that we would have to ratchet back the design,� Andreani said.

With the construction of the Taiwanese Semiconductor Manufacturing Company computer chip plant in Phoenix, materials are at a premium.

“Steel, and concrete are expensive in Arizona right now,� Andreani said. “That's one of the downsides of this massive chip plant in Phoenix. It’s good for the economy overall but it's making it tough to get steel and concrete.�

But should all go to plan, the 25-year storm design should be a big improvement for flood management in the area.

“Note that post-Schultz, the design storm was five-year,� Andreani said. “So if we can get to 25-year, that's going to have a very positive impact on those neighborhoods.�

The second county project on the EWPP waitlist is a $27 million “major plan� for the Government Tank flood corridor, which exhibited extreme flooding after the upstream watershed was severely burned in the Pipeline Fire.

“That includes channels and detention basins,� Andreani said. The project is still in its “conceptual stage� of engineering, but Andreani has high hopes for its effects.

“At this early level of engineering, we're seeing that the work we're proposing can mitigate the downstream impacts of flooding to Doney Park without having to do any work in Doney Park,� Andreani said. “Which is a good thing because Doney Park is much more dense and it's flat. The challenges of constructing there are significant, potentially more difficult than upstream.�

That’s not to say there will be no mitigation in the Doney Park region. In fact, some of the early funding the flood control district received went directly into mitigation projects designed to protect Doney Park.

“They're out constructing now a set of berms on the southern Government Tank flow into Doney Park,� Andreani said.

That’s the first set of projects expected to be funded by $50 million from the EWPP. The second set consists of “on-forest� watershed restoration measures across nine fire-impacted watersheds. These should be funded by $40 million from the Forest Service.

Watershed restoration measures must go “hand-in-hand� with the downstream mitigations, “otherwise the measures downstream won’t work,� Andreani said.

The biggest threat to downstream channels and detention basins is sediment that can easily clog and render a mitigation system ineffective. On-forest watershed restoration is designed to slow floodwaters and reduce the amount of sediment that makes it downstream in the first place.

Crucial as these measures are, the Forest Service is a big boat to steer. It is currently unconfirmed whether Coconino County will receive approval for the full $40 million of reimbursement funding requested. The Coconino National Forest, however, is ready and waiting for the “go� signal.

“While budget analysts in our Washington office haven't completed a full analysis of the bill, we've already started project preparation on our end locally so we can quickly start the post-fire work needed in the Pipeline and Tunnel fire scars on Coconino National Forest land,� stated Randi Shaffer, deputy public affairs officer for the Coconino National Forest. “We're working with partner agencies and doing all the rest of the back-end stuff so that when and if we receive funding, we can implement plans as soon as possible.�

In a recent meeting with the county board of supervisors, Andreani mentioned that her conversations with officials in the Forest Service district office led her to feel “very confident that the funding will be forthcoming.�

The obstacles

Even if all the county’s requests are fully awarded, there are still a few obstacles to get past, and the first is coming up with funds to match the awards.

In a recent county board of supervisors meeting, Andreani explained that the EWPP funds come with a required grant match -- which would put the county on hook for $10.4 million from their own budget.

“We can't accept the grant if we can't make the match,� Andreani said.

How the county will come up with this money is yet to be determined, but Andreani’s suggestion is that the county use $12 million awarded through the American Rescue Plan. The county board of supervisors will vote on a funding plan and decided whether to accept the EWPP funds during its Jan. 24 meeting.

The second obstacle is timing. As mentioned above, mitigation projects on and off forest need to happen in concert in order to be effective. The EWPP funds could be released “fairly quickly,� Andeani says � as early as the end of January. The Forest Service funds could take longer.

But if all goes to plan and the funds are released in a timely manner, then, Andeani said, they’d be on track to complete the work in some of the flood corridors � Wupatki Trails, Campbell and Brandis Way � in spring 2023.

The Government Tank project, “let’s face it, it’s huge,� Andreani said, adding that it would likely take two to three construction cycles to complete -- which could mean that it doesn’t see completion until after 2024.

As for Copeland and Peaceful � the two flood corridors with no existing mitigation � there’s a more immediate obstacle: resident approval. The reason these corridors did not receive mitigation following the 2010 Schultz Fire is that residents did not grant the county easements onto their property to allow for construction of mitigation. It is entirely possible that the county runs into the same problem again.

This is a concern for Trina Kramer, who lives adjacent to the Peaceful flood corridor and has seen firsthand the �15-foot trench� sometimes called the “mini Grand Canyon� that eroded substantially under the flow of unmitigated floodwaters. Massive, ongoing erosion notwithstanding, Kramer reported awareness of neighbors who were not interested in granting easements for flood mitigation.

“Aside from that concern, we personally, and a bunch of our neighbors, are holding off almost completely on building � putting up fences to contain a livestock, all of these things -- because we expect the floods to continue in the summer,� Kramer said. “We will have been sitting for over a year by the time the work is being done with our properties almost unusable.�

Further downstream, Brandis Way neighbor Gary Sharpe said he is also aware of the massive erosion and “a couple of holdouts� on the Peaceful flood corridor. His house has managed to avoid serious damage from unmitigated flood waters due to a berm installed years ago, but other neighbors have not been so lucky.

“The people behind me probably 2 to 3 feet of mud that has been drying up in their yard,� Sharpe said.

If residents do not grant the county easements, it’s possible that the flood corridors won’t receive mitigation.

“We're not here to force mitigation on people,� Andreani said. “We're here to try to support people with getting mitigation or reducing impacts.�

The county does have legal authority condemn property that could be used to move forward with mitigation projects if a majority of residents are in favor or the board of supervisors deems it in interest of the greater public safety.

But Andreani says that such legal maneuvers would be an extreme last resort. More likely is that if residents in unmitigated flood corridors decline the support, the county will either shift those funds to work in other flood corridors or simply not use them.

According to terms of the funding agreement, the county has 220 days to obtain easements and move forward with the project.

For Sharpe, the hope is that the easements are granted. When asked whether he thinks his neighbors might sign the agreements necessary to allow for county flood mitigation, Sharpe said “Oh, I hope so. Man, I'm praying.�