During an event held on Monday, Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin spoke about how Birmingham’s history and geography have created the “perfect storm” for flash flooding conditions in the city.
1819 News reported that Woodfin joined a panel of experts at the Bloomberg CityLab summit in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The event was hosted by Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Aspen Institute. Woodfin joined mayors from Washington, D.C., Cincinnati, and San Francisco, along with international mayors.
“CityLab this year visits one of the most creative cities in the world to elevate what’s new, learn from what’s working, and bring together a global community of public innovators,” said James Anderson, who leads the Government Innovation program at Bloomberg Philanthropies.
“Big thank you to Mike Bloomberg and Bloomberg philanthropies and Aspen Institute for allowing me to share Birmingham’s story on extreme weather-related events caused by climate change and how we can better prepare for a wetter future,” Woodfin said.
“Here’s the favorite part,” the mayor added, “none of it was on the taxpayer’s dime. [Organizers] asked me to speak, and they told me they wanted to cover the trip.”
The discussion focused on flash flooding in cities and how climate change affected it. Woodfin was asked about flooding in Birmingham.
Woodfin described a bit of the history of Birmingham and how the population of Birmingham has shrunk over the last few decades. He also described how the city sits in a valley.
“We’ve had to grapple with environmental injustice stemming from soil and air issues for quite some time. I’ve been serving as mayor for the last five years. What I didn’t know when I signed up for this job was that I would also have to compete with extreme weather events such as flash flooding,” Woodfin stated. “Remember, we sit in a bowl, so we’ve already been dealing with tornados pretty much since time. But over the last two years, with these extreme weather events and the humidity in Birmingham and all these other things that converge at one time — just since January 1, everybody, we’ve had 86 water rescues in a city that’s landlocked. That’s kind of extreme when you think about it for firemen and firewomen who sign up for a job to put out fires, but they’re doing water rescues.”
Woodfin went on to say that of the city’s 27,000 inlets, 18,000 have been assessed and found to be “past their lifespan.” He stated, “If we wanted to pave every street in our city it would be about a $50 million price tag, but to get our storm water infrastructure up to where it needs to be a $50 billion price tag.”
The city has looked at repurposing empty lots and planting more trees, and trying to create fewer “asphalt parking lot” issues. Woodfin considers Joe Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law as a partnership that will help the city.
“This bill is a once-in-a-lifetime for a city like Birmingham to get water infrastructure right, and that will be probably our main partner,” Woodfin said.
Woodfin was asked how race and equity have impacted flooding in Birmingham, he discussed how he believed racism affected the layout of the city, leaving black neighborhoods in the worst areas for pollution and flooding.
“Race sits at the center of the city of Birmingham and has been since probably its inception. I would dare say we’re probably the poster child for redlining neighborhoods. The city of Birmingham is a city made up of 23 communities and 99 neighborhoods,” Woodfin explained. “In the steel industry, black residents and their neighborhoods were right by these plants. So well before we talk about these extreme weather patterns, the intentional design of redlined neighborhoods by putting black residents — in a city that’s now 70% black — putting black residents near these smokestacks, living in floodplains, living in areas where your ingress and egress is surrounded by train tracks on all sides. All of this was definitely intentionally deliberate. So in the last five years, everything we do is centered around justice, racial equity.”
Woodfin continued, “We’ve actually created the Mayor’s Office of Social Justice and Racial Equity where climate change has to be a part of the conversation because these extreme weather patterns are affecting those same neighborhoods I just described more so than other areas of town where they may stay on hills or heights,” he said.
At the end of the discussion, the speakers were asked for positive solutions to flooding. Woodfin called for bipartisan efforts to address climate issues.
“I would just say, water as we know it is a basic necessity of life,” Woodfin argued. “It is a quality-of-life issue from a municipal standpoint. It doesn’t have to be a divide on solving this issue. It doesn’t have to be Republican, Democrat, urban, or rural. This is an issue we all should be behind trying to figure out how to solve, particularly on the extreme weather pattern side.”
Woodfin is serving his second term as Birmingham’s mayor.
