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Coastal Flood Resilience Planning: Infrastructure Assessment, Wastewater and Debris Management, and Evacuation Preparedness

North River, North Carolina

Featured image for the project, Coastal Flood Resilience Planning: Infrastructure Assessment, Wastewater and Debris Management, and Evacuation Preparedness

This project will develop a scientific assessment and create practical resources to improve flood resilience and emergency preparedness in the North River community of North Carolina. By mapping drainage and septic systems, enhancing communication channels, and preparing evacuation and debris management guidelines, the project aims to strengthen the community’s defenses against recurring floods. The resources produced will serve as educational tools and provide a foundation for local initiatives, helping residents adapt to environmental risks while reducing dependence on external support.

Description

About the Community

The North River community in Carteret County, North Carolina, is a rural, unincorporated coastal area known for its strong, close-knit community, primarily composed of Black residents with a significant proportion of elderly individuals. With a median income below the state average and a higher-than-average poverty rate, residents face economic challenges that add to the community’s vulnerabilities. Flooding is a persistent challenge in North River, with high-tide (sunny day) flooding, storm-driven floods, and rising sea levels frequently overwhelming its limited drainage infrastructure. The community relies on a ditch-based drainage system, which lacks the capacity to manage substantial water volumes and often becomes clogged. This stagnation causes water to accumulate, submerging roads and septic systems. As a result, access to clean water can be compromised due to potential contamination, posing significant health risks and further limiting mobility and emergency response in flood-prone areas.

Emergency preparedness in North River is particularly challenging due to limited digital communication access among its aging population. With unreliable internet connectivity and few residents using smartphones or computers, the community relies on door-to-door alerts and local efforts to disseminate emergency information. The lack of formal evacuation guidelines and dependable communication channels leaves residents vulnerable, especially during fast-developing storms. Debris management further complicates recovery; cleanup efforts depend heavily on federal disaster declarations, which only trigger support when storms reach specific hazard thresholds. As flooding and storm events increase, establishing a proactive, community-driven debris management strategy would help reduce dependency on federal declarations, ensuring swifter recovery and enhancing community resilience against recurring natural hazards.

Articles Related to the Community:

About the Project

The North River community, through their Thriving Earth Exchange project, seeks to enhance flooding infrastructure resilience and strengthen community resilience to flooding. The project aims to evaluate and fortify critical infrastructure to mitigate the impacts of sunny day flooding, storm flooding, and sea level rise. This effort includes assessing drainage and septic systems, identifying vulnerabilities, and developing fortification plans to ensure long-term sustainability. Additionally, the project promotes community-based flood emergency preparedness and adaptation strategies by educating residents, improving emergency communication systems, and fostering partnerships with local industries and government agencies.

The project team, composed of scientists and community leaders, will compile open-source infrastructure data, satellite imagery (such as Google Earth and Google Maps), and conduct field surveys to develop open-source datasets and a Drainage and Septic Systems Map. Data elements will include, but are not limited to, drainage locations, ditch dimensions (length, depth, width), septic tank locations, septic tank system types, and surrounding environmental conditions. All collected data will be integrated as GIS layers into the Drainage and Septic Systems Map, which will serve as the foundation for a comprehensive flooding assessment for the North River.

The next phase will focus on community adaptation and preparedness for flooding resilience. The project team will collect and compile emergency preparedness and debris management resources from federal, state, and local authorities. The team will assess current strategies and evaluate the needs for strengthening them, ensuring that preparedness efforts are effective and actionable. Additionally, the team will identify local and community services that can provide assistance and actively engage with community leaders to build local capacity for disaster response. Outreach materials will be developed to translate scientific findings into accessible formats for the public, ensuring that findings and recommendations are effectively communicated through various community engagement efforts.

Through this project, we plan to establish the following key outputs:

  • Ditch Drainage Systems and Septic Systems Map to conduct the flooding assessment for the North River
  • Community and Local Debris Management Guidelines for coordinated post-storm cleanup
  • Stay-at-Home and Evacuation Guidelines with hands-on community training
  • Community Resilience Handbook and informational flyers

Timeline and Milestones

The project divides into four sub-projects to align with the primary goals and outputs:

  1. Ditch Drainage Assessment Project
  2. Septic System Assessment Project
  3. Community Debris Management Project
  4. Evacuation Preparedness Project

12-Month Timeline:

  • Throughout Project
    • Continuous engagement and updates with community leaders and residents
    • Ongoing development of the community resilience handbook and informational resources
    • Identification and integration of relevant datasets
  • November 2024 – March 2025
    • Identify and onboard scientific partner(s) to support project efforts
  • March – August 2025
    • Execute sub-projects, incorporate datasets, and engage the community actively
    • Conduct back-end data processing and integrate findings into actionable plans
  • August – November 2025
    • Host a community meeting to present project findings, facilitate discussion, and gather input for final adjustments

Project Team

Community Leads

Lisa Rider is the Executive Director of Coastal Carolina Riverwatch, where she has been a dedicated advocate for clean water and environmental justice for over five years. As a lifelong resident of coastal North Carolina, Lisa has made it her mission to protect both the quality of water and the quality of life in the region’s communities. With over 20 years of background in local government and nonprofit management, she leads initiatives that address pressing issues such as integrated solid waste management and industrial impacts on water quality and fisheries.  Lisa is passionate about fostering the next generation of environmental advocates and is deeply committed to ensuring a resilient future for all of North Carolina’s coastal ecosystems and communities. Learn more at www.coastalcarolinariverwatch.org

 

Riley Lewis is the White Oak Waterkeeper with Coastal Carolina Riverwatch. Riley works with local communities and stakeholders to protect the quality of water and quality of life in coastal North Carolina through surface water monitoring, research, outreach and advocacy. She received her BS in Marine Science from the University of South Carolina and her MS in Coastal and Ocean Policy from the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Her studies and research focus on water pollutants and their impacts on local communities. She believes everyone deserves access to clean water and fights for this through the collaborative work at CCRW.

Community Science Fellow

Denissa Purba is a PhD Candidate in Civil Engineering at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). She holds a MSc from UIUC and a BSc from the Institut Teknologi Bandung, Indonesia, in the same field. Her research focuses on integrating electrified transportation planning, energy technology analysis, and evacuation management modeling to enhance community resilience against disasters and climate change. Denissa’s work aims to promote the adoption of alternative fuel vehicle technologies and improve the efficacy of emergency preparedness and education.

Scientist Wanted

Flooding Expert(s) 

Scientist Role:

We are seeking skilled a Flooding Expert to help us with the Ditch Drainage and Septic System Assessment Project for the North River community in NC. This role focuses on:

  • Assess drainage and septic systems; map and analyze collected data.
  • Develop open-source datasets and reports for community
  • Communicate findings and recommendations effectively to the community.
  • Collaborate with local leaders and stakeholders to ensure actionable outcomes.

Desired Skills and Qualifications: 

  • Background in climate science, hydrology, environmental/civil engineering, GIS, data science, or related field
  • Expertise in riverine and high-tide flooding, drainage, and clean water systems
  • Proficiency in large-scale data management, spatial data, and GIS
  • Strong communication skills for community knowledge transfer and stakeholder engagement
  • Experience or interest in community outreach, citizen science, and local education
  • Ability to connect scientific findings to local concerns
  • Availability for in-person community visits

Community and Social Scientist(s)

Scientist Role: 

We are seeking Community and Social Scientists to support our Community Debris Management and Evacuation Preparedness Projects for the North River community in NC. This role focuses on:

  • Gathering and consolidating federal, state, and local evacuation preparedness guidelines for the North River community.
  • Identifying potential government and community partners for collaboration.
  • Designing and creating a Community Resilience Handbook and informational flyers to promote disaster preparedness.
  • Assisting in the development of outreach materials to translate scientific findings into accessible formats for the public.
  • Effectively communicating findings and recommendations to community members through various engagement efforts.

Desired Skills and Qualifications: 

  • Background in community engagement, disaster management, social sciences, or education
  • Experience in building community partnerships and facilitating public outreach
  • Strong communication skills, especially in translating complex information for diverse audiences
  • Proven ability to create culturally sensitive, effective educational materials
  • Skilled in organizing community meetings and training sessions
  • Ability to connect scientific concepts with community needs
  • Preferred availability for in-person community visit; but remote is also considered. 

 

Thriving Earth Exchange asks all scientific partners to work with the community to help define a project with concrete local impact to which they can contribute as pro-bono volunteers and collaborators. This work can also position the scientists and communities to seek additional funding, together, for the next stage.  

Interested in volunteering as a scientist? Apply now!

Collaborating Organization(s)

Nurture Nature Center

The Nurture Nature Center is a non-profit located in Easton, PA, that supports building community resiliency to environmental risk by leveraging the power of informal science education, art-centered approaches to learning, and community dialogue and networking. Started in response to flooding in Easton, NNC has over a decade of work related to flood outreach, education, and social science research. NNC is currently an AGU TEX Community Science Hub.