Duck Hill's flooded Main Street following a massive rain downpour event in September 2018. Credit: Courtesy of Romona Taylor Williams

Climate change is contributing to a common and costly natural disaster: flooding. Data from Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the National Flood Insurance Program show that in 2024, flooding damage to homes and businesses carried an $8 billion price tag.

Flooding also comes with substantial human health costs. A research team at Yale School of Public Health discovered that flooding is associated with a higher mortality risk because of mental disorders and respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. Flooding can also cause exposure to infectious diseases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

First Street Foundation projects flooding events will increase in frequency and intensity in step with worsening climate change effects over the next 30 years.  And like other stubborn social inequities, researchers say Black and Hispanic people will bear the health and financial burdens of those events, bringing with them a higher risk for disease and death.

Data analysis by Headwater Economics found there are approximately 53 million people living in high flood risk areas in the United States.

Who’s most vulnerable to flooding?

However, infrastructure and demographics determine where flood waters rise, and some populations are more likely to be affected by flooding because of race and income and less likely to resettle during a flooding event or recover afterward, according to research that examined flooding and social vulnerability.

For example, Black communities in certain urban and rural areas will experience at least a 20 percent increase in flood risk according to First Street Foundation’s estimations.

Black people who experience social vulnerabilities such as poverty, food insecurity, lack of transportation, are more vulnerable to flooding events to begin with and have greater difficulty regaining their footing after flood events, be it acute or flash flood events or days-long flooding.

But advocates in local communities are pushing for more equitable policies and infrastructure in economically distressed or mostly Black zip codes and they are not waiting for change to come.

In the North Central Mississippi town of Duck Hill, Romona Taylor Williams said “main street would become a river” after flooding caused by heavy rains.

Williams, who is founder and CEO of Mississippi Citizens United for Prosperity (MCUP), said Duck Hill’s issues are layered. For instance, nearly 23 percent of the towns roughly 700 residents live below the poverty line. So, MCUP hired unemployed men in the community and trained them to install pipe systems that diverted floodwaters from buildings.

The health issues

Williams said the diversion drainage system has reduced the flooding with post-rain flood waters now receding more quickly. And MCUP continues to work in partnership with funders and state and national partners to implement like green infrastructure and gray infrastructure like retention ponds, ditches, and pipes, and other proactive responses, to climate, environmental, and health threats.

Fewer threats lowers the chance for communities to experience post-flood displacement, which can cause mental disorders; and flood-related health issues such as cholera, respiratory issues, hypothermia, mosquito-borne illnesses, and also maternal stress.

For Williams, the work is about ensuring rural communities are not invisible in policy conversations.

“People think about big cities when they hear about environmental justice,” she said. “But small towns deserve protection, too.”

As Duck Hill residents brace for future storms, Williams and local organizers said the goal is not only to address immediate hazards — but to build the kind of civic power that can push for lasting infrastructure change.

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