Association of State Floodplain Managers Webinar: Building and Sustaining Relationships

On December 13, Hudson Valley Flood Resilience Network co-facilitators Emily Vail, Hudson River Watershed Alliance, and Jessica Kuonen, New York Sea Grant, presented about the Flood Resilience Network as a successful case study for building and sustaining relationships at an Association of State Floodplain Managers (ASFPM) webinar.

This webinar convened 515 people from 32 states across the United States. It was part of a training program to advance the integration of Clean Water Act Programs with natural hazard mitigation planning and implementation. It was hosted by ASFPM, in partnership with the National Association of Wetland Managers (NAWM) through a cooperative agreement with the U.S. EPA.

We were thrilled to have the Network receive this national-scale recognition. The webinar recording is available on the ASFPM YouTube channel and the link below.

Relationships and conversations are easy to start and can start for a variety of reasons—participating in a planning process, attending a training workshop, mingling at a conference. Once you have started a conversation, however, building and sustaining that conversation and the relationship with those involved in the conversation can be tough.

This webinar focused on two stakeholder groups in New York State: the Wayne County Shoreline Committee and the Hudson Valley Flood Resilience Network. Presenters shared how these groups started, how they have grown, the lessons they have learned as they have iterated, and what it takes to keep stakeholder engagement in the group lively and active.