Appalachia's Hidden Disaster Burden; How Policy Fails those in the Appalachian Mountains
- Aarush Borker
- Jun 27
- 6 min read
The Forgotten Frontline of Climate Disasters
In early summer 2022, two catastrophic flood events occurred. Although they differed in death toll and damage, the most obvious difference was never highlighted: their locations.
On July 26, 2022, St. Louis, Missouri's largest city, experienced a record amount of flash floods. Over 9 inches of rain fell in 24 hours, flooding highways, homes, and severely damaging the city's public transit system. Almost immediately, this disaster made national headlines; CNN, the New York Times, and many other major networks provided live coverage. The federal and state government response was also swift. Both FEMA and state aid were mobilized within hours for residents of St. Louis.
While the damage from this flood is tragic, it pales in comparison to an event that occurred in Eastern Kentucky just two days later. On July 28, 2022, the Appalachian region experienced massive flooding, with some hollers receiving over 14 inches of rain. Unlike St. Louis, entire communities were washed away, killing 45 people, destroying hundreds of homes, and cutting access to vital infrastructure such as roads and water lines. Yet, national media coverage was slow and inaccurate. It took days before the event appeared on headlines across major networks. More importantly, it was labeled as a localized tragedy rather than a national disaster.
This stark disparity is not due to the severity of each storm. It results from geography, poverty, and neglect. In rural Appalachia, natural disasters highlight environmental vulnerability and reveal the shortcomings of the systems meant to protect these communities. Today, despite the rising risk of natural disasters in Appalachia, most towns in the area receive far less than adequate government disaster relief.
Environmental Risks in the Appalachians
Before exploring policy solutions, let's examine the environmental complexities of the Appalachia region:
Geographical vulnerability
Steep slopes plus impermeable surfaces cause flash floods
Low-lying hollers drain water rapidly
Climate change is worsening storms:
Hurricanes like Ida and Florence now move further inland, affecting West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee
More frequent extreme rain events due to a warming atmosphere
Lack of resilient infrastructure:
Outdated or missing stormwater drainage systems
Old bridges and culverts are not designed to withstand current floods
These challenges are not just natural phenomena; they are technical problems that environmental and civil engineering can address. Through improved forecasting, floodplain mapping, and stormwater system design, much of this risk can be reduced (see my interview with a professor specializing in flood and tropical storm models here). However, many Appalachian communities lack the funding, staffing, and political will necessary to implement these solutions. The effort to mitigate flood impacts is increasingly seen as a matter not only of environmental concern but also of justice.
The Policy Gap: Why Governments Don’t Act
FEMA, or the Federal Emergency Management Agency, “is a US government agency focused on helping people before, during, and after disasters," [3]. Based on this definition, this agency should be able to effectively provide aid to any area across the United States, regardless of geography or socioeconomic status [4]. However, this promise often falls short due to the method FEMA uses to evaluate which communities qualify for funding and how much they receive. At the heart of this process is a cost-benefit analysis that compares the estimated costs of a proposed mitigation or recovery project against the monetary value of the damages it is expected to prevent.
In theory, this approach ensures that taxpayer dollars are spent efficiently. However, in practice, it systematically disadvantages low-income and rural communities, particularly in regions such as the Appalachian Mountains. These regions often have lower property values, sparse populations, and limited infrastructure. Each of these contributes to lower “benefits” on paper without consideration of the human and environmental risks. For example, suppose a town of 500 people in rural Kentucky proposes a flood mitigation project. In that case, the potential dollar value of property saved is often too small to meet FEMA’s benefit-cost ratio (BCR) threshold [5] even if lives are at risk.
As a result, wealthier urban communities with higher property densities are far more likely to qualify for FEMA grants, while poorer, more disaster-prone regions like rural Appalachia are left to fend for themselves. This built-in bias toward economic return over community vulnerability exposes a fundamental flaw in FEMA's current funding framework: it values property more than people.
What are the Solutions?
There are two paths to solving this issue. One aligns more with environmental engineering, while the other takes on public policy. However, as I will explain later, the two methods are very intertwined
A. Proven Engineering Solutions to Flooding
Green infrastructure
Rain gardens, bioswales, permeable pavement, and reforestation of riparian zones
Gray infrastructure
Context: Gray infrastructures are traditional, human-engineered systems for managing resources like water and transportation
Resizing culverts, installing stormwater vaults, reinforcing roadways, and bridges
Nature-based solutions
Stream daylighting, wetland restoration, and floodplain reconnection
Many of these solutions involve creating new technologies that mimic natural processes with slight twists to optimize them for a certain issue. For example, one could construct artificial wetlands to combat coastal flooding. This process is not biomimicry. Some examples in the context of Appalachia could be: subsurface gravel wetlands, step-pool conveyance systems, and engineered log jams.
B. Policy Reforms Needed
Change FEMA’s BCR formula:
Incorporate vulnerability and community need, not just property value
Establish needs-based rural resilience grants:
Create dedicated funding streams for high-risk, under-resourced communities
Provide technical assistance:
Fund state/university partnerships to help towns design and apply for mitigation projects
Waive or reduce match requirements:
For economically disadvantaged counties or federally recognized disaster zones
While many of these ideas seem very disparate from the engineering-based solutions above, it’s important to think a little deeper. In today’s economy, green infrastructure is not a cheap solution to most issues. This is due to several reasons, such as it being a relatively new field with constantly emerging technologies, or a concept called environmental racism/classism. In short, this means the disproportionate exposure of marginalized communities, particularly those of color or low-income level, to environmental hazards and burdens. As a result, these marginalized communities do not receive the necessary funding to implement such infrastructure. However, if these policies above are put into place, that could change
C. My Opinion
While this may be overly ambitious, I’ve seen that from my, albeit short, time in educating myself on current events, these traditionally labeled ‘radical’ ideas are often necessary to see the benefit of these underrepresented communities. My favorite idea involves governments and non-profits buying high-risk land and converting it to green flood storage areas. To promote this, local governments could receive stipends for their work, and non-profits receive extra funding towards their goal, which would most likely align with the environmental friendliness of this idea. Going back to those high-risk lands, engineers could implement wetland restoration, reforestation, or controlled flood basins. A certain policy may guarantee that no one is displaced without fair compensation and resettlement.
Infrastructure Justice is Climate Justice
The bottom line is that engineering alone cannot solve the issue that communities in the Appalachian Mountains are facing. This can be generalised to the feeling as a whole. Fundamentally, engineering is pursued to help the human race progress and thrive through the development of new technologies. However, it has a bottleneck. In our case, we finally have the technology necessary to complete this goal, but we don’t have the means to do so. The most viable way to implement these technologies is through policy backing. By educating the affected communities on solutions that could aid them and being vocal through advocacy, this goal can be accomplished.
There needs to be a call for action. Whenever possible and through any medium that you see fit, advocate for disaster equity, support legislation, and fund community-based engineering projects. Only through this will meaningful change be reached. And each time you do so, I want you to keep in mind the lives lost in Appalachia and use it to fuel your advocacy. To truly drive in the idea of change being necessary, one of the residents who was affected by these floods explained in an interview, “We don’t want charity, we want fairness” [6].
References:
[1] Kasakove, S., & Hassan, A. (2022, July 26). Flash floods swamp St. Louis area, breaking a century-old rain record. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/26/us/flash-flooding-st-louis-missouri.html
[2] Elamroussi, A., Maxouris, C., & Paul, P. (2022, August 1). Kentucky flooding death toll rises to 28, governor says, and more storms could hit the area. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/31/weather/kentucky-appalachia-flooding-sunday
[3] FEMA. (n.d.). How FEMA works. Federal Emergency Management Agency. Retrieved June 26, 2025.
[4]Brennan, M., Krull, H., Ecola, L., Sangalang, X., Brown, A., & Hlavka, J. P. (2023). Equity in resilience planning: Benefit-cost analysis for hazard mitigation grants (RR-A2171-1). RAND Corporation. https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RRA2100/RRA2171-1/RAND_RRA2171-1.pdf
[5] FEMA. (n.d.). Benefit-Cost Analysis (BCA) Toolkit. Federal Emergency Management Agency. https://www.fema.gov/grants/tools/benefit-cost-analysis
[6] Cheves, J. (2025, February 19). How to help and get help in the midst of Kentucky flooding, winter storm. Kentucky Lantern. https://kentuckylantern.com/2025/02/19/how-to-help-and-get-help-in-the-midst-of-kentucky-flooding-winter-storm/
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