Taylor's Valley Flood Plain

Flood Plains in Taylor's Valley

A while ago, I had the opportunity to interview Ciera Yates, a resident of Taylor’s Valley that was strongly impacted by Hurricane Helene in September of 2024. Since I am focusing on flood plains this week, I decided to do some digging on the area and find out why the flooding was so extreme. 

Figure 1: The area in light blue has a 1% annual chance of being a flood hazard according to FEMA (NOAA, n.d.). 

When I first saw figure 1, I thought that a 1% chance was quite low, and the residents of Taylor’s Valley had suffered from a once a century flood. After looking further into the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) website, I discovered that if an area has a 1% annual chance of flooding, then the area is considered high risk. These zones have a 1 in 4 chance of flooding during a 30-year period, which is the length of a typical mortgage (FEMA, 2024). These chances may not be as high as areas along coasts, but when flooding does occur, it can be detrimental to the community. 

Figure 2: Satellite view of Taylor’s Valley’s flood risk. Many homes are directly in the impacted area or very close to it. Map from FEMA’s National Flood Hazard Layer Viewer (FEMA, n.d.). 

How to Mitigate Flooding Damage? 

For homeowners, a good first step is investing in flood insurance. If a home is located in the 1% annual chance area, it is always a good idea to have insurance in case the worst happens. While this can be expensive, there are ways to lower premiums and protect your home. Changing things in your home such as adding flood vents in foundation walls, elevating utility systems (HVAC units, electrical systems, etc.) above the base flood elevation level, and switching carpeting to a more flood-resistant material can all be strategies to make your home better protected from flooding. By making these changes, insurance companies may offer a lower premium. For homes that experience more regular flooding than areas in the Holston River Watershed would see, elevating the entire house is costly, but can prevent a lot of future damage (FEMA, 2025). 

Mitigation at the community level can help take the cost and stress off individual homeowners. Investing in green infrastructure reduces runoff and protects floodplains, reducing the risk of flooding. Some examples include rain gardens, storm retention ponds, and underground storage systems. Green infrastructure has been found to be more cost effective than grey infrastructure in terms of cost to build and is extremely efficient at reducing storm impacts (EPA, 2025). 

Other community measures can be considered based on location. For Taylor’s Valley, it would be good to restrict building new homes in the flood plain (a new home was built adjacent to the river months before Hurricane Helene). In extremely flood prone areas, it is recommended to remove homes in at risk areas and convert the land into public parks capable of absorbing flood waters. To me, this seems like a long-term solution as homes age and not a practical solution on a short timeline. Educating the public on emergency systems and testing them often is an easier and more cost-effective approach. Signage for evacuation routes, education on flood insurance, and a system to alert neighborhoods when a flood risk is imminent can keep citizens safe. Another simpler option is enforcing new building codes and ensuring the infrastructure is up to standard to withstand flooding and other natural disasters (NLD, n.d.). 

Taylor’s Valley Looking Forward 

As shown in figure 2, many homes are directly in the path of the 1% annual flood risk. When this small neighborhood was designed, it is highly unlikely that there was any knowledge that a small river and lack of suitable infrastructure would cause as much damage as it did. For a small rural town, there is a lack of funding to make large infrastructure changes at the homeowner or community level; however, this doesn’t mean there is nothing that can be done. The residents of the area and others nearby came together as a community and worked to restore the area and are looking for ways to reduce future risk. Some small things that would make big impacts are community rain gardens and emergency systems in place, as well as considerations in future new constructions. I plan on sharing the information I found with Ciera Yates since she is on the board of Trails To Recovery, a non-profit that helped rebuild the area after Hurricane Helene. With small changes, hopefully the area and residents will be less prone to such a disaster in the future. 

 

References: 

Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). (2024). Flood maps. https://www.fema.gov/flood-maps 

Federal Emergency Management Agency. (2025). Mitigation for homeowners. https://www.fema.gov/fact-sheet/mitigation-homeowners 

Federal Emergency Management Agency. (n.d.). FEMA’s National Flood Hazard Layer (NFHL) viewer. ArcGIS.com. https://hazards-fema.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=8b0adb51996444d4879338b5529aa9cd 

National Levee Database. (n.d.). Flood Basics; Flood Mitigation. https://levees.sec.usace.army.mil/flood-basics/flood-mitigation/ 

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). (n.d.). North Fork Holston River at Saltville. https://water.noaa.gov/gauges/salv2 

United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). (2025). Mitigate Flooding. https://www.epa.gov/green-infrastructure/mitigate-flooding