Jim Wright, Tennessee
Jim Wright is the author of an ASFPM book titled The Nation’s Responses to Flood Disasters: A Historical Account, which he wrote in 2000. Jim began his career as a water resources engineer in the Flood Control Branch of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in Knoxville, TN. He later worked for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, assisting communities with solutions to local flood problems and developing what would become a national model for floodplain management. Jim was the State Floodplain Manager for Minnesota in the mid-1970s when ASFPM was being conceived and created by the Region 5 states.
Jim returned to the TVA in 1978, where he remained until 1994 carrying out the same type of work for the federal government that he had done for the states of Wisconsin and Minnesota. While at TVA, Jim along with Frank Thomas, FEMA;andJerry Peterson, US Army Corps of Engineers were influential federal agents and an integral part of what was then known as the Interagency Task Force on Floodplain Management (ITF-TF). They wisely invited ASFPM to participate in their meetings to update federal agencies on what states and locals were doing to manage flood risk on the ground.
Jim was instrumental in ensuring the completion of the ITF FPM Assessment Report after Larry Johnston’s untimely death in 2020 and was able to tap resources available to him to move forward some funding for not only the assessment report but as well as ASFPM’s annual conference proceedings with the Natural Hazards Center as well. This greatly contributed to advancing the ASFPM professional and academic credibility.