Roderick Scott has seen the devastation of flooding first-hand, from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to Mandeville, Louisiana. After years in flood mitigation, he’s spearheading an effort to teach a new generation of workers how to elevate and flood-proof homes.

As board chair of the Flood Mitigation Industry Association, Scott is waist-deep in the development of flood risk training. He’s helping homeowners and businesses to protect their properties from floods, and he’s training workers to learn how to raise and protect thousands of homes and businesses at risk of flooding. 

The Department of Commerce and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have contributed $6.8 million in a federal grant toward developing a curriculum that could be used by community colleges across the country. The grant is part of $60 million awarded in June to advance a climate-ready workforce under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). 

With flooding damage exceeding $40 billion in damages across the U.S. every year, those investments are essential. A June 2024 report from the Congressional Budget Office found that each $1 spent on flood mitigation yields an average of $2.69 in damage avoided. 

Flood mitigation is needed on 1.3 million properties across America, according to the report. Mitigation would cost about $193 billion but could save $519 billion in damages in the next 30 years.

All that flood protection will require thousands of workers. Scott envisions a mobile workforce of people who can travel the country to elevate and flood-proof homes and businesses.

He’s taken a circuitous route to flood mitigation in Louisiana. He grew up in New Mexico and worked in radio broadcasting, then construction in Iowa. A devastating fall from a roof sent him scrambling for other work, just before flooding devastated Cedar Rapids and other Iowa communities in 2008. With a background in historic structures, Scott worked on the move of Cedar Rapids’ National Czech & Slovak Museum to higher ground, as well as protecting historic train depots in Fort Madison, Iowa, from flooding.

In Louisiana, he has worked to elevate buildings in Mandeville where his wife Louisette Scott worked for decades as a city planner. Mandeville (pop. 13,000) has now become a poster child for using elevation to protect homes, businesses, and historic structures.

“Mandeville on the lake” is built on the north side of Lake Pontchartrain and has flooded repeatedly. Since requiring the elevation of damaged buildings and providing financing assistance, Mandeville has lowered flooding damage from 750 buildings in 2005 with Hurricane Katrina to 59 buildings in 2021 with Hurricane Ida.

“We know how to stop the building damage,” Roderick said. “We can’t stop the flooding.”

Elevating a structure is one of several strategies the Flood Mitigation Industry Association will teach to save buildings from flood damage. Buildings can also be relocated or dry floodproofed (keeping out as much water as possible). In wet floodproofing, floodwaters rise and fall within a building without causing significant damage. 

For decades, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has bought out flood-prone properties. The result dismantled communities and left checkerboards of vacant properties and devalued hold-outs. “The last thing you want to do is tear it down,” Scott said. “You can buy out the property, but relocate the building. Reuse the building. Why are we tearing it down and putting it in a landfill?”

The country faces huge challenges in mitigating increasing flooding and sea-level rise, Scott said. Flood insurance can be prohibitively expensive, and flood risk is based on historical data, not future risk. 

It can be a struggle for property owners to secure financing on their own. Structural solutions to these nationwide problems remain elusive. “We haven’t set up a way of financing it,” Scott said. “People in Nebraska are not going to be willing to pay for house retrofits in Florida,” he said.

Training a flood mitigation workforce is an essential step toward stemming the billions of dollars of damage caused by flooding. “We’ve got to adapt,” he said. “The longer you delay, the worse it’s going to become for the tax base, the people, and the community to adapt. Adaptation is the future.”

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), passed by the 117th Congress and signed by President Biden is a piece of federal legislation that aims to reduce inflation by lowering the cost of prescription medications, investing in domestic energy production, and promoting clean energy, among other objectives.