Local Mitigation Strategy – LMS
Executive Summary
The Jackson County Local Mitigation Strategy (LMS) is a comprehensive plan intended to reduce the community’s long-term vulnerability to natural and technological hazards through various forms of mitigation. Hazard mitigation is any program, initiative, or action taken to permanently reduce or eliminate long-term risk to people and their property from the effects of hazards. Hazards can be natural, such as hurricanes and floods, or technological, such as hazardous materials incidents or a large-scale loss of power.
The Jackson County LMS is organized into five sections:
Section 1: Describes the role of the LMS Working Group in updating and maintaining the overall mitigation strategy and its component initiatives. It also describes the process to monitor, evaluate, and update the plan over the next five years. This section also describes procedures intended to keep the public actively involved in local hazard mitigation planning, and how the LMS will be consistent and incorporated into other local planning mechanisms where appropriate
Section 2: Provides a profile of the county with descriptions of the topography, demographics and future land use of Jackson County.
Section 3: The Hazard Identification and Vulnerability Assessment. This section provides an overview of the types of natural and technological hazards the County is vulnerable to, and a history of these hazards and their effects. Natural hazards identified and assessed by the working group include severe weather, flooding, wildfires, erosion, infestations and diseases and drought and extreme temperatures and erosion. Technological hazards include hazardous materials storage and transportation, terrorism and radiological incident.
Section 4: Describes mitigation policies at the local, regional, state and federal levels.
Section 5: Describes ongoing and proposed mitigation projects identified by the Working Group. These are most frequently ongoing, non-capital programs that have been directed by local elected officials. Mitigation projects are capital improvements such as road paving and culvert repairs and other infrastructure upgrades or replacements. For these efforts, local government may require outside funding assistance. To assist the latter, each mitigation initiative identified in this Section includes potential funding sources where available.
The LMS Working Group has developed a series of mitigation initiatives intended to address hazards that affect Jackson County and its municipalities and protect the public at large from the impacts of these hazards. This is also intended to be an evolving list that will change as current projects are completed, new needs and problems are identified and local priorities change with development, population shifts and increases. The Working Group meets annually to review and update this strategy.
View the adopted 2021 LMS Plan.