When it rains, it pours: integration of equity in flood risk management in Boulder County, Colorado

Abstract

Flooding disproportionately impacts underserved and marginalized communities. Institutional means of addressing environmental injustice related to such events remain inadequate in the United States of America. Professionals involved in community engagement and risk management contend with these challenges nonetheless, drawing on their personal ideas about equity rather than formal guidance to do so. This study uses qualitative methods to explore how local, county, and region-level government professionals in Boulder County, Colorado, understand and engage with equity in flood risk management. We sort the approaches to equity that study participants described into three categories, responding to their focus on: access needs, traditionally and present-day overlooked groups, and the duty of a government employee to serve the whole community. While other scholars have productively categorized such ideas and practices in relation to theories of equity, we turn instead to notions of efficacious practice through design frameworks developed in disability studies. Doing so, we offer a model for understanding empirical approaches to equity that professionals may use in the absence of other guidance. . Our results show that disability studies can provide powerful insights for research on flood risk management. Further, they demonstrate the importance of critical engagement with how professionals navigate their work in support of equity in the context of substantial institutional failures.