Episode 13: Waverly, Indiana – Transforming A Community With Vision, Determination … And Mitigation

How do you move a whole town out of harm’s way while preserving the town’s history and keeping it as a functional community space? For more than 100 years, a small riverside town in Waverly, Indiana, endured repeated flooding. By 2005, state and local officials began to address the problem, and over the last decade the community has transformed into a living history park with restored and reclaimed historical structures, added walking paths, canoe/kayak portage sites, and other amenities. We visited this transformed landscape to learn more about the FEMA hazard mitigation grants and additional state, local, and private sector funding that was used to acquire properties in the floodplain. Property owners voluntarily sold their property so the land could be returned to open space, reducing the amount of emergency response resources that are required during flood events in Morgan County.