Broward County Resilience with Jennifer Jurado

Today we meet Jennifer Jurado, Broward County’s Deputy Director of the Resilient Environment Department and Chief Resilience Officer. Broward County, located in South Florida, is the 17th most populous county in the United States, home to Fort Lauderdale, and nearly two million residents.

Jennifer brings over 20 years of experience in local government to the conversation, offering a deep understanding of interagency collaboration, aligning on shared goals, and financing resilient infrastructure. We discuss these topics and more.

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Save the City: What's your origin story? How did you become Broward County's Chief Resilience Officer? 

Jennifer Jurado: I started with Broward County right after graduate school. I became the county’s water resources manager when there was very little dialogue about climate, working on issues regarding sea level rise and the impacts on water supply. I staffed our Water Advisory Board, a forum where we began having broader conversations about climate. I was early in my career and my position continued to evolve, but I still oversee that work. Ultimately, my position focuses on water resources, environmental planning, and community resilience.

STC: What is the scope of your work?

Jennifer: I'm currently the Deputy Director for the Resilient Environment Department as well as Broward County’s Chief Resilience Officer. Our county has significant land use authority and responsibilities related to water resources policy, planning, and management, so I oversee that work directly. That means the continued development and application of models to support our planning efforts. I also oversee things like shoreline protection, beach management programs with a focus on resilience, and other challenges caused by rising seas. I work closely with the natural resources, environmental engineering, urban planning, and housing divisions within our department, as well as across the diversity of agencies that make up Broward County government. 

I enjoy being in a position where I can work directly on the implementation of programs and projects, it’s a great advantage. What does that look like? Working closely with partner agencies on drainage improvements, or advancing large-scale clean and renewable energy installations while developing new policy recommendations. Projects are sometimes in conjunction with our parks division, construction management, facilities, or involve our port and airport. Other opportunities include working with our fleet division on electric vehicle initiatives. So I work across the county and all its organizations to advance our shared resilience needs and our county’s commitment to reach net zero.

On the adaptation side, we are planning for new investments to address future conditions, namely flood risk and heat. There’s a lot of collaboration daily – I’ve mentioned internal agencies and countywide organizations, but I also work community-wide. We have 31 municipalities in Broward County. The majority of investments happen through municipal initiatives, so it’s important that we’re planning together, building support for resilient standards, and assessing our challenges together. 

Whether it’s through the Water Advisory Board that I continue to staff, the Climate Change Task Force, or the convening of our annual Resilience Roundtable, there’s a lot of coordination happening as we work to develop and advance our resilience plan. The next tier is working across Southeast Florida with neighboring communities.  

STC: As you said, Broward County is home to 31 municipalities and several of those communities have their own climate resilience plans, goals, and initiatives. How do you make sure they are all marching towards the same goals as the county? How do you ensure the county is marching towards the same goals as the state?

Jennifer: Let me start by stating the importance of policy and planning recommendations in my role. Broward County has a highly advanced position because of our past investments in hydrologic modeling to support sound practices and policy recommendations. It’s critical that I share and translate the technical information to our county commissioners who are the policymakers and who ultimately determine our direction. I believe this has been a strength of ours, strong policy leadership on climate, which goes back to the early 2000’s. We’ve been doing this work for some time and have numerous forums for engagement - allowing joint participation and alignment.

The municipalities are heavily represented on the Water Advisory Board and have representation on the Climate Change Task Force along with others. Everything we do is part of a public forum involving key stakeholders. So when we present a recommendation, it’s never just from Broward County. It’s reflective of an extensive stakeholder engagement process that includes cities, and the real estate development community, many of whom serve directly on the subcommittees that inform policy recommendations. There is never a work product born in a vacuum.

We have a Broward County Climate Action Plan as well as our four-county Regional Climate Action Plan. Sometimes what’s happening at the regional level helps inform what we do in Broward County, and sometimes what we do in Broward County prompts regional initiatives.

We engage with municipalities and encourage their endorsement of various tools we utilize and the adoption of our plans and planning scenarios. We bring leadership at the county and municipality levels together annually to discuss the state of our climate challenges, progress, and priorities. This ensures alignment. At the regional level, we have annual summits providing another mechanism for establishing a path forward.

With regard to the State, we seek partnerships to ensure alignment in our planning. We want the State to understand the importance of utilizing the same scenarios and information sharing to enable coordination.

STC: In Southeast Florida, you all have been working on climate resilience for many years, and you are seemingly further along in your journey toward adaptation in terms of working with your neighboring counties. For municipalities in the earlier stages of resilience planning, what advice do you have for building coalitions at the regional level?   

Jennifer: There’s a strong appreciation for collaboration; we’re mutually invested in each other’s success. How do we work better together? It’s about reaching out. We spend a lot of time sharing our approach with communities in and outside the State of Florida. Whether you’re sharing a policy model, a technical procedure, a best practice, or a community engagement strategy – why would we start at ground zero when somebody else has laid a strong foundation that meets 80% of our needs? There’s no competition there. It’s about easing the path for another partner so we can all move together more quickly. No matter how advanced one community is, you always have something to learn from somebody else.

STC: In reports produced by Broward County, you all often make the business case for resilience. Can you talk about why the County has chosen that messaging and why it’s effective?

Jennifer: We didn’t approach business leaders by saying, ‘Can we talk about climate change?’ We started engaging with the business community on the topic of economic resilience. We started with a conversation about how climate impacts our community, what that will look like, and why it’s in their best interest to plan for it. That’s how we began – ultimately talking about how businesses can protect their economic interests, especially in cases where they rely on outside investors. They are interested in what happens with mortgage rates, insurance costs, and bond ratings, and how those changing costs will impact local governments. So again, acknowledging mutual interests – that’s what the business case is about.

We quantify the risk exposure and what we have to lose as well as gain. For so long, the conversation has been focused on all the negatives, all of the exposures, but there is a lot to gain. Not only avoiding losses but new opportunities and outcomes that come with resiliency investments. That’s the conversation the business community wants to have.

In Broward County, we just completed a full economic analysis surrounding our infrastructure improvement plan. The response has been incredibly positive. Our effort is focused on taking the economic analysis and connecting it with the work we do on resilience, risk reduction, and our residents. 

STC: In more and more areas around the country, property insurance is becoming unaffordable. Does that come up in your resilience work at all?

Jennifer: I do think about making sure flood insurance is still going to be available and affordable. We look at what point insurance becomes unaffordable. Through our work, we’ve demonstrated that adaptation efforts have the potential to preserve about $20 billion in insurance coverage. There are still some policies that will ultimately be deemed unaffordable, and not every parcel is going to be preserved, but as a whole, we estimate we can maintain $20 billion in coverage at rates comparable to today, by reducing risk and losses through proactive adaptation investments.  

STC: Who pays for the upfront cost of resilient infrastructure? Is it property owners, the government, or both?

Jennifer: We have a county ordinance requiring an upgrade to seawalls to a particular elevation that accounts for a scenario in which the sea level rises two feet, and compliance by 2050 is mandatory. Seawalls are also part of public property, so cities are responsible for making those improvements. On the high end, planning to 2070, the total combined public and private investments in elevated seawalls could total $18 billion.

Other investments will need to be made, including more pumps for our stormwater systems. Some of that is already financed through local bond initiatives. We have other investments that involve planning and coordination with the Army Corps of Engineers. Beyond pump upgrades, it could be supporting coordinated water management operations and gaining additional storage both above- and below-ground. Much of this expense could be achieved through redevelopment.  

We’re in conversations now to figure out what level of investment the county might facilitate, the cost to preserve property value, and how we can preserve the tax base.

STC: Are there other communities you admire in terms of how they are approaching climate resilience or adaptation?

Absolutely. Broward County recently joined the Resilience Cities Network and I’ve been impressed by the members in that network. We spend a lot of time reviewing the resilient strategies of communities that are similar to us, Rotterdam is an excellent example. We also look at Calgary, Glasgow, San Francisco, and Boston. We are always looking to take advantage of superior work that’s happening around the country and globally.

Lightbulb Moments

• Collaboration between the policy side and the technical side of the house is a must. Broward County implements favorable resiliency policies because Jennifer and her team translate scientific models to policymakers in terms they understand.

• Money talks, and it always has. Making the business/economic case for adaptation and resilience work seems like common sense, but it often goes ignored. Instead of forcing changes on the business community, teach them why they should advocate for resilient infrastructure.