Flood Prediction Proposal Never Funded By Legislature

Southern West Virginia saw significant flooding last week, and Kentucky saw even more flash flooding over the weekend. But a system to detect rising water isn’t any closer to completion.  

In Gov. Patrick Morrisey’s State of the State address in February, he promoted the idea of a flood warning system called SENTRY, or the Smart Environmental Notification Threat Response System. It was to be a 36-month, $10 million pilot program aimed at improving flood prediction and response. 

The proposal said SENTRY would integrate additional rain gauges, soil saturation sensors, wind data and stream monitoring with artificial intelligence-driven modeling to forecast elevated flood risk one to six hours in advance, with a target accuracy exceeding 90 percent. 

The West Virginia Legislature did not take up the proposed project. 

At a press conference Monday, Morrisey responded to a question about the proposal. 

“You may recall that at the beginning of the legislative session we wanted to make sure that we had systems to detect when waters were coming up,” he said. “We had presented that in the State of the State. That’s not something the legislature acted on, and so we are going to look for that again.”  

A story published by West Virginia Watch Monday, indicated that flood emergencies have doubled in the last decade since the deadly 2016 floods.  

“I think we want to make sure that people have early warning systems to be able to measure when water is coming up,” Morrisey said. “I think the most important goal when it comes to flooding is trying to save lives, and so that was very much focused on that. I’m hopeful that’s something we could look at next session.”