The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s (DEQ) Flood Resiliency Blueprint (Blueprint) within the Division of Mitigation Services (DMS) released the report, More Resilient by Design: North Carolina’s Flood Resiliency Blueprint. This report highlights key achievements and advancements including allocating $22 million in Blueprint funds to implement flood resilience projects in the six priority river basins, completing the Draft Flood Resiliency Blueprint and releasing the Draft Neuse River Basin Action Strategy.
The report outlines DEQ’s ongoing and future efforts to build a more flood-resilient North Carolina, aiming to reduce the impact, disruption and costs of future floods.
“We must raise our sights beyond immediate recovery and focus on rebuilding more resiliently, because we know these storms will keep coming,” said DEQ Secretary Reid Wilson. “By planning and implementing flood resilience strategies through the Flood Resiliency Blueprint, DEQ is working to ensure North Carolinians can thrive in the decades ahead.”
In 2024, DEQ established partnerships with state agencies and local governments to begin implementing flood resilience projects that met Blueprint selection criteria. The Blueprint aims to support ongoing flood resilience work in the six priority basins the Blueprint is authorized by the North Carolina General Assembly to work in.
The Blueprint’s early investments resulted in the implementation of 54 projects worth over $40 million for $22 million in costs to the Blueprint program. To date, the Blueprint has committed an additional $56 million in flood resilience investments.
“One of the critical missions of the Blueprint was to develop a targeted approach to flood resiliency investments,” said DMS Director Marc Recktenwald. “These projects represent the beginning of targeted state investments based on the Blueprint and how the Blueprint can be used as a force multiplier for local governments and state agencies.”
The Blueprint continues to advance several initiatives, including:
- Building upon and enhancing the effectiveness of existing flood modeling tools, which will provide more accurate estimates of current flood risks and project future flood risk to support long-term strategic planning.
- Developing a decision support tool that’ll empower state agencies, local governments and flood resiliency partners to make informed flood resilience decisions. Collaborators and stakeholders have actively engaged in testing the Blueprint tool, with the inaugural public release in Spring 2025.
- Developing River Basin Action Strategies for all six priority basins (Cape Fear, Lumber, Neuse, Tar-Pamlico, White Oak, and French Broad) that are supported by the best available data and information.
As the Blueprint progresses, its ultimate goal is to develop a statewide program that covers all 17 river basins in the state.
About the North Carolina Flood Resiliency Blueprint
In 2021, the North Carolina General Assembly directed the DEQ Division of Mitigation Services to develop a statewide Flood Resiliency Blueprint. The Blueprint is intended to serve as the backbone of NC's flood resiliency planning and be based on the best available science, stakeholder engagement, and sound decision-making and result in actionable projects. The goal is to make North Carolina more resilient to flooding disasters, by limiting the extent and severity of flooding and by building systems that allow communities to recover more quickly and limit future risk. The Blueprint team is developing a decision support tool to help local governments, agencies, and non-governmental partners develop, evaluate, and prioritize resilience actions as well as plan and marshal funding to implement those priorities.