By Susan Vela
The Cincinnati Enquirer

The Mill Creek Watershed Council wants to teach flood-prone homeowners how to minimize their property damage when the next 500-year flood comes rolling through the region.

"Got water?" ask the pamphlets advertising the Nov. 9 flood-proofing workshop that the council is co-sponsoring with the village of Evendale, Hamilton County Soil & Water Conservation District and the Hamilton County Wet Weather Initiative.

TO REGISTER

Call 563-8800 or visit www.millcreekwatershed.org. The registration fee is $10 if paid by today and $15 through the day of the event. The fee includes workshops, exhibits and continental breakfast and lunch.

The workshop will include presentations by consultants, community leaders and state and federal administrators and will last from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at TechSolve, 1111 Edison Drive in Bond Hill. Don't expect to be inundated with a deluge of statistical information. Organizers aim to offer simple advice.

"We want to keep this at a level that everyone can get something out of it," said Nancy Ellwood, the council's executive director. "There are simple things that people can do to limit the damage, like elevating their appliances inside and elevating their air-conditioning units outside. It doesn't take a lot of effort to do these things."

The council began planning the first-ever workshop several months ago. Meanwhile, it continued lobbying the U.S. Corps of Engineers for long-term help.

For the Mill Creek Watershed, from southwest Butler County to the Ohio River, the federal agency is working to secure $352,000 for an early-warning system to entail a network of software, rain gauges and field and base stations.

Wallace Wilson, a private flooding consultant in Michigan and member of the Wisconsin-based Association of State Flood Plain Managers Foundation, will give a "Flooding 101" presentation.

Too many flood-prone homeowners, he said, don't think about proactive measures until their homes have been devastated by high waters for the first, second or even third time.

"The flood memory is only about four years long. You have to have one every four years," he said. "Otherwise, everybody seems to be a gambler and they'll play the odds."

He plans to highlight a new "no-adverse philosophy" that communities across the country are adopting. It calls for builders, developers and community leaders to agree that no new development will adversely affect neighbors.

"Everybody's part of the problem and we need to address that," Mr. Wilson said. The desire to change "has to come from the local community. It can't be something that comes from Washington, D.C., or Columbus."

E-mail svela@enquirer.com