In his forthcoming book, Seek Higher Ground: The Natural Solution to Our Urgent Flooding Crisis, Tim Palmer lays out the history and legacy in the US and explores the reality of worsening flood risks and impacts in light of the climate crisis. Host Sara Gabler welcomes Tim on this flooding episode of A Public Affair. Sara and Tim are also joined by  two representatives of the Coon Creek Community Watershed Council, a conservation non-profit based in Coon Valley, Wisconsin. 

Together they offer both a nation-wide and Southern Wisconsin specific perspective on the impact of flooding, the importance of understanding your flood risk, and the value of community efforts toward flood mitigation.

Tim Palmer is photographer, writer, and former land-use planner. He is the author of more than thirty books, and we’ll be discussing his last book, published this month by the University of California Press, called Seek Higher Ground: The Natural Solution to Our Urgent Flooding Crisis. Among many honors for his work and his books, he has received a Conservation Achievement Award from the National Wildlife Federation, the Ansel Adams Award for Photography from the Sierra Club, the Lifetime Achievement Award from American Rivers, and the National Outdoor Book Award.

The Coon Creek Community Watershed Council is a non-profit based in southern Wisconsin. Its mission is to continue the historic legacy of conservation leadership in the Coon Creek Watershed as stewards of the land, water, and air.

Nancy Wedwick is an educator, lawyer, organizer, grandparent, fifth generation Coon Valley resident, and president of the Coon Creek Community Watershed Council, a nonprofit she and her neighbors formed in response to increasingly severe flooding in their region. While generating flood resilience may be one of the Council’s immediate goals, Nancy ultimately sees her work as part of a movement to build collaborations within and across watersheds, and to imagine a safer and more sustainable future for her community. She is passionate about enhancing watershed literacy by nurturing the relationships linking people to each other and to the lands and waters they share.

Sydney Widell is the council’s Watershed Coordinator. She began collaborating with the council as a masters student at UW-Madison.

 

Photo by jim gade on Unsplash of Odana road in Madison in August 2018

 

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