WA's Nooksack River has been sounding the alarm, and people are finally listening

The Quinault Indian Nation is building new housing for its community about a mile from its current village on the coast of the Pacific Ocean. The goal is to relocate the whole village to a place further above sea level to avoid flooding and sea-level rise.

The concept of “sponge cities” is taking off as a way to prevent flooding. This style of urban design focuses on creating environments that absorb more water with plants and open ground as opposed to pipes and concrete.

The Center for Neighborhood Technology’s RainReady program is creating flood mitigation projects most suitable for Illinois communities in need by ensuring community members have input. The program designs nature-based solutions, like widening creeks and installing rain gardens, based on demographics and flood data. And community committees are involved throughout.

Researchers, conservationists, and shellfish farmers on both U.S. coasts are starting and studying seaweed farms as a way to soak up excess nutrients in acidic water to help shellfish survive and grow.

Mobile homeowners are buying the land their homes are on to form resident-owned cooperatives so they can upgrade infrastructure faster. This allows them to combat and adapt to climate change by installing things like solar panels and drainage systems.

Stormwater fees, which are based on property runoff, are funding infrastructure upgrades and green spaces to absorb rainwater, reduce damage from flooding and improve water quality. Several municipalities have seen reduced flood damage and increased water quality after implementing stormwater fees, and have even hosted community events to educate residents on how the fees are used to make improvements.

Farmers in West Bengal, India, are swapping rice for bananas to save on expenses and labor and adapt to increasingly erratic monsoons and rainfall impacting yields. The farmers use solar panels and drip irrigation setups funded by the state government to reduce emissions and minimize water loss, as bananas require a lot of water.

The city of Amsterdam funded a blue-green roofs program to reduce both flooding and the urban heat island effect. The water collection system stores and releases rainwater, the variety of indigenous plants increase biodiversity, and the connected digital network allows them all to be controlled remotely.

When housing needs to be built or refurbished in neighborhoods like Packington Estate in London, developers co-design projects with residents to build trust in estate regeneration. And on top of building trust, residents know what will work best for them.

A wastewater treatment plant in Oregon not only cleans water that is released into the local river, but it also creates fertilizer that is sent to farmers to use on non-food crops and it produces renewable power from methane. The green energy created at the plant heats five buildings on the site and produces half of the energy the facility uses. This kind of co-generation system is growing in other places in the United States, China, Brazil, and Norway.