Carri Hulet, CH Consulting

Rachel Isacoff, The Rockefeller Foundation

Rebecca Jim, Local Environmental Action Demanded (LEAD) Agency in Northeast Oklahoma

Susan Liley, Citizens’ Committee for Flood Relief in De Soto, Missouri

Kelly Leilani Main, Buy-In Community Planning

Elder Chief Shirell Parfait-Dardar and Deputy Chief Crystlyn Rodrigue, Grand Caillou/Dulac Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Indians of Louisiana

David Southgate, Un Nuevo Amanecer, Inc.

New Orleans, LA

New Orleans is known as the most vulnerable city for climate change in the US and for its most expensive hurricane. ACV organizes communities of low to moderate income African American residents to make change in the issues that affect them.  Especially: Increasingly intense storms, major environmental injustices, flooding, urban heat, and health impacts from mold, rot, and trauma from repeated displacements from storms. 

ACV’s Work

With its sister organization and fiscal sponsor Southern United Neighborhoods, ACV has helped to win many important victories for its members, including the passage of laws that allocated billions of dollars in funding for affordable housing and other community development projects.

With the Next Step Cohort, ACV is organizing its members who are interested in developing their own relocation plan and outlining critical steps and choices for residents to make an informed decision for their long-term future.

De Soto, MO

CCFR serves the De Soto, MO, community, where 6,400 residents have been devastated by flash floods year after year – 4 major floods since 2015. De Soto is home to the biggest railcar repair site in the US for Union Pacific. Seven miles upstream along the Joachim Creek from De Soto, there are 15 dams, including one dam built of lead tailings. Unfortunately, Southern Jefferson County, including all of De Soto, is a lead Superfund site. Toxic flood waters regularly flood family homes and the city’s historic main street and have tragically resulted in loss of life. 

CCFR’s Work

CCFR has built a strong coalition of local and state government partners, national nonprofits, technical experts, and neighbors to generate resources and solutions for De Soto. Successes include securing a floodplain management plan and flash flood warning system; winning a national grant and building a retention pond and prairie to mitigate flood risk and create beautiful open space. 

With the Next Step Cohort, CCFR is working with residents, Buy-In Community Planning, the county, and the state to design a home buyout program centered on community members’ needs and supporting moving expenses for families participating in De Soto’s first-ever home buyouts. CCFR has helped 5 low-income families that experienced devastating flood losses move to new, safer homes.

Grand Caillou/Dulac

Over the past century, extractive oil and gas industries dug more than 35,000 canals in southeast Louisiana, resulting in 10,000 miles of disrupted wetlands. More than 75% of these canals are no longer in use; yet they were not filled back in. Worsening storms, flooding, saltwater intrusion, and erosion are causing catastrophic land loss – a football field every 100 minutes – and destroying habitat, homes, infrastructure, and sacred sites.

GC/D’s Work

The Tribe is working with a diverse coalition of partners to develop a community resilience plan, backfill canals to restore marshes and protect sacred sites, develop adaptive floating garden beds, and train community members as case managers to support neighbors to access disaster recovery resources. 

With the Next Step Cohort, GC/D Tribal Leadership recently opened a new Community Outreach Program Office (COPO) to serve all residents of Grand Caillou, Dulac, and Chauvin. Today, the COPO stands as a place where the Tribe gathers for meetings and events, and where the community finds refuge before, during, and after disasters. The building truly became a lifeline after Hurricane Francine when Tribal leadership helped families complete FEMA applications, distributed food, and provided supplies.

Northeast Oklahoma

LEAD Agency serves a corner of Northeast Oklahoma where the federal government once created a dumping ground for remnants of 9 Tribes and that now faces flooding from Tar Creek, flowing through one of the first Superfund sites. Nearly 1500 Ottawa County homes are exposed to flood waters heavy with lead, cadmium, arsenic, zinc, and manganese. 

LEAD Agency’s Work

LEAD Agency’s recent successes include working hand-in-hand with community and Tribal members to map toxic flood risk; design and conduct household surveys with Buy-In Community Planning; collect oral histories of community members relationships with water and build coalitions with fellow grassroots organizations, technical partners, researchers, lawyers and more to hold federal agencies accountable for environmental injustices.

With the Next Step Cohort, LEAD Agency is implementing pilot projects to mitigate toxic exposure in flooded homes with retrofitted HVAC systems and organizing neighborhoods around community-led responses to flood risk, including potential for home buyouts and relocation.

Playa de Ponce, PR

UNA serves 19 neighborhoods in Barrio Playa, south Puerto Rico's largest coastal settlement. The historically disinvested, low-lying, urbanized, Latinx coastal community is subject to coastal storms, riverine and stormwater flooding. In the absence of action to improve community resilience, climate disasters have contributed to a population decline of nearly 4,000 people in the past decade. 

UNA’s Work

With the Playa community, UNA has established a solar and potable water resilience hub, community gardens and kitchen; designed and conducted household surveys with partners at Buy-In Community Planning; organized citizen science water quality testing, beach cleanups, and reforestation projects; and is leading community-based participatory planning efforts to improve community resiliency.

With the Next Step Cohort, UNA is inventorying 170 abandoned properties and exploring how to transform them into a Community Land Trust to support renewable energy generation, mitigate flooding through green-infrastructure, and provide housing for those displaced by flooding.

Petersburg, VA

In Petersburg, VA, nearly 33,500 residents face challenges related to water management, including clogged drains, ruptured water pipes, and flooding from sudden heavy rainfall and sea level rise. Many neighborhoods, like “The Heights” (a historically urban community of color), have no or poor drainage fields, no access to shelter or evacuation to address increasingly strong and frequent disasters, like hurricanes, and are subjected to increasing impacts from extreme heat. 

UPAL’s Work

With local and national partners, UPAL has successfully implemented a HUD-funded Lead Elimination Action Plan project that resulted in the testing for lead in 100 homes and successfully remediating lead contamination in 80 residences across the cities of Petersburg, Richmond, and Henrico County. UPAL also established Virginia’s first solar-powered resiliency hub, located in The Heights in a historic USO building for “Colored” Army Troops during World War II. 

With the Next Step Cohort, UPAL is partnering with community members to embed their lived experiences with risk data in a statewide Environmental Justice map and supporting the growth of the Petersburg Community Resilience Hub to provide a short-term destination for residents displaced by floods, storms and climate induced power outages to generate long-term resilience through community-centered programs and planning.