Communities look to protect the health, safety, and welfare of their citizens.  Related to natural hazard events this has traditionally meant responding to the needs of the community after an event occurs.  Mitigation looks to reduce the need for response by permanently removing people and structures from harms way when a known area of impact can be identified (such as a floodplain) or significantly reducing the impact from a known risk (such as a tornado).  This Plan provides an assessment of the risks to Sangamon County from natural hazard events and a comprehensive range of mitigation projects to lessen the impact of these hazards on our communities.  With the availability of mitigation grant funding from the Federal Government, communities have the opportunity to implement mitigation projects that would not otherwise be financially possible.  The preparation of this plan follows the guidelines to make participating communities eligible to apply for mitigation grant funding.

The Springfield Sangamon County Regional Planning Commission worked with Sangamon County and all interested communities in the county to prepare a natural hazards mitigation plan. The following communities were invited to participate:

A Task Force was created, with representatives from each community’s government, as well as technical partners and other stakeholders.

The mission of the Sangamon County Multi-jurisdictional Natural Hazards Mitigation Plan Task Force is to reduce the impact of natural hazards on citizens, infrastructure, private property, and critical facilities through a combined effort of communities, institutions, and citizenry to develop a mitigation action plan that will be adopted and implemented by each participating community.

The Plan addresses several natural hazards: tornados, floods, winter storms, thunderstorms/lightning, earthquakes, extreme heat, dam failure, drought, and mine subsidence. For each community, the history and likelihood of future occurrence of each hazard have been examined and compared against each community’s vulnerabilities—the overall built environment and future development areas, paying particular attention to critical facilities in each community.

With input from the public, the Task Force developed goals. (Click here to view the final goals and objectives developed by the Task Force.) From these goals, specific mitigation actions were determined, each intended to make some part of the community more resilient against specific dangers. Each action in the plan is assigned to someone—an agency or organization—to carry out.

Find out more:

• Find information presented at the meetings.
• How you can participate and help shape the Plan.
• How the State of Illinois ranked several hazards that face Sangamon County.
• Hazard Reference Materials.
• Check out some useful links.
• Press releases and coverage.

NOTE:  The Planning Commission was awarded a grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for 75% of the cost of conducting this work.  The remaining 25% was provided by Sangamon County.