Hazard Mitigation Planning

About Us

Lehe Planning, LLC, was established in October 2000 to provide local governments and agencies access to professional planning and project management services. Our goal is to assist local governments and agencies with their total planning and project management needs.

Our firm offers a multi-disciplinary project team approach. We have established relationships with professional planners, GIS analysts, engineers, hydrologists, architects, emergency management specialists, and other professionals. With our network, we can assemble the right mix of professionals to meet any project’s demands.

300 Century Park South
Suite 216
Birmingham, AL 35226

205-978-3633

info@leheplanning.com

Lehe Planning, LLC, provides quality services with effective results delivered to our clients. Our firm uses a personable approach that facilitates a full partnership with each of our clients, respective of the unique needs and special conditions required for successful consulting services. Our approach to professional services delivery ensures value to our clients. Quality, thoroughness, innovation, and responsiveness are the cornerstones of our successes. We are committed to deliver customized services that fully meet each of our clients’ needs.

Our firm’s experience across public sector organizations assures responsiveness to a community’s planning and project management demands. Leveraging Federal funds, where available, minimizes the financial burden to localities during these harsh economic times. Our comprehensive knowledge and experience in achieving results assures the next client of the value of professional services offered by Lehe Planning, LLC.

What is hazard mitigation?

Hazard mitigation is any action taken to permanently reduce or eliminate long-term risks to people and their property from the effects of both natural and man-made or technological hazards: tornadoes, floods, hurricanes, severe storms, winter freezes, wildfires, heat waves and droughts, landslides, land subsidence, earthquakes, dam failures resulting from natural disaster crises and man-made hazards resulting from technological or human-caused crises. Communities can take steps to prepare and implement mitigation measures for almost any type of hazard that may threaten its citizens, businesses and institutions.

Why plan for hazard mitigation?

Hazard mitigation planning evaluates a range of measures to lessen or mitigate the impacts of future disasters and selects those measures which can most effectively meet the unique needs of each community. For example, a community could choose to construct a storm shelter to reduce the potential loss of life in the event of a tornado. Through a comprehensive planning process and risk assessment, the plan creates a unified approach among all Marshall County communities for dealing with identified hazards and associated risk issues. It serves as a guide for local governments in their ongoing efforts to reduce community vulnerabilities.

Hazard Mitigation Planning

Hazard mitigation planning begins the process of reducing or eliminating the long-term risks to human life and property from natural and man-made hazards.

Lehe Planning has participated in mitigation planning since its founding in 2000. We have helped over 100 communities participate in 19 county-wide, multi-jurisdictional plans covering over half the population of the State of Alabama. Additionally, we have developed specialized planning and feasibility studies for flood hazard mitigation project development.

Most recently, Lehe Planning has been actively updating multi-jurisdictional hazard mitigation plans for six Alabama counties. These counties include, among others, Jefferson (Birmingham), the most populous and vulnerable county in the state, and the two highly vulnerable Gulf Coast counties of Mobile and Baldwin.

Mitigation Plan Successes

MULTI-HAZARD MITIGATION PLAN UPDATES. Lehe Planning prepared the original mitigation plans for 19 Alabama counties between 2003 and 2006, and we have recently updated or are now updating six of these multi-jurisdictional plans to meet the latest 2008 FEMA planning guidance.

WATKINS BROOK FLOOD HAZARD MITIGATION FEASIBILITY STUDIES. A 2005 FEMA Hazard Mitigation Grant helped fund these feasibility studies to identify solutions to flooding within the City of Mountain Brook, AL, commercial core and surrounding areas of Mountain Brook Village and justify $4.375 million in FEMA funds for flood mitigation improvements.

MOBILE COUNTY, AL, EMERGENCY OPERATIONS PLANNING SYSTEM. Working in partnership with other local firms, we developed a comprehensive system to enhance emergency management operations for the Mobile County Emergency Management Agency and established a HAZUS and GIS database.

STATE OF ALABAMA ENHANCED MITIGATION PLAN. Lehe Planning, in partnership with other firms, drafted plan guidance to facilitate the State of Alabama’s efforts to achieve the Enhanced State Mitigation Plan designation through FEMA.

TOWN OF BROOKSIDE COMPREHENSIVE

PLANNING. Funded through the FEMA planning assistance program, we prepared a mitigation strategy to assist this small Alabama community with its recovery from devastating floods of 2003.

HURRICANE KATRINA LONG TERM RECOVERY PLANNING. Lehe Planning volunteered its services to assist Mobile County , AL, communities in their recovery from the widespread damages of Hurricane Katrina.

MODEL HIGHER REGULATORY STANDARDS FLOODPLAIN MANAGEMENT ORDINANCES. Based on the Community Rating System program criteria of the National Flood Insurance Program, our firm prepared model flood hazard prevention ordinances for Jefferson County, AL, and its municipalities.

UPPER SHADES CREEK FLOOD HAZARD MITIGATION PLAN. Funded through FEMA, this $500,000 plan addressed flooding issues of the creek and its tributaries within four neighboring jurisdictions.