The Floodplain Management Services program educates individuals who live and work in floodplains on flood hazards and the actions they can take to reduce property damage and prevent loss of life. The program’s objective is to foster public understanding of the options for dealing with flood hazards and to promote prudent use and management of the nation’s floodplains.

The Floodplain Management Services program provides the full range of technical services and planning guidance that is needed to support effective floodplain management. The most common types of studies are floodplain delineation studies, flood hazard evaluations, dam break analyses, hurricane evacuation studies, flood warning and preparedness studies, regulatory floodway analyses, comprehensive floodplain management studies, flood risk reduction studies, urbanization impact studies, storm water management studies, floodproofing studies and flood-prone structure inventories. The program also aids with conducting workshops and seminars on nonstructural floodplain management measures such as floodproofing.

Location

This project targets the southern half of Wood County in central Wisconsin.

Description

The Baraboo Retention Project was initiated through an ongoing partnership with the Wisconsin Department of Emergency Management and the Wisconsin Silver Jackets team. This project was split into two phases. The first phase involved modifying the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources’ existing Hydrologic Modeling System (HEC-HMS) hydrologic model, identifying floodwater storage sites on tributaries, and running different tributary storage scenarios in the HEC-HMS model.

The second phase involved building a two-dimensional (2D) River Analysis System (RAS) hydrologic model, running the alternatives from the HEC-HMS model to evaluate differences in flood extents, and running additional near-stream storage scenarios to determine viable locations for floodplain water storage adjacent to the river.

Status

Work on the Baraboo Retention Project is complete, and the final report is dated Dec. 12, 2023. A summary was presented to the sponsor on Feb. 7, 2024.