Flooding has impacted a lot of communities across upstate New York at one time or another.

Whether it was record flooding in the Southern Tier in 2011, or more recently in the Hudson Valley, most of us can never feel too prepared.

But a new bipartisan bill in Congress is looking to make that preparedness a bit easier for those communities.

On a January afternoon in Binghamton, the Susquehanna River is mostly calm, a stark contrast from September 2011 when the remnants of Tropical Storm Lee brought rainfall of 6 to 12 inches to the area. Hundreds of homes washed away, leaving firefighters like Al Gardiner to make lifesaving rescues.

"It was tough. There's a lot of critical infrastructure that was affected, including Lourdes Hospital. A lot of the residential high rises downtown had to be evacuated. Banks and fire headquarters also had to be evacuated," said Gardiner, who is chief of the Binghamton Fire Department.

More than 10 years later, residents are still feeling the effects of that record flood. For over a decade, many have felt handcuffed when it comes to preventing damage from a weather event like this in the future. It’s caught the attention of Republican U.S. Rep. Marc Molinaro, who has since introduced a bipartisan bill in the U.S. House of Representatives to improve flood preparedness.

"The issue of both confronting climate change and the impacts of of extreme storms has been a priority for me,” said Molinaro, who represents New York's 19th Congressional District.

The bill is co-sponsored by Democrats Don Davis, of North Carolina, and Abigail Spanberger, of Virginia, along with Republican Zach Nunn, of Iowa. In part, it would allow communities to use U.S. Department of Agriculture emergency funds to reconstruct flood infrastructure. Under current regulations, this is prohibited.

"We need the governor and others to ensure that those dollars not only get to small cities like Binghamton, but rural communities like Dryden, not only Syracuse, but the Catskills," said Molinaro.

The bill would also reduce the local cost share for limited resource municipalities from 35% to 10% for flood mitigation projects.

Now Fire Chief Al Gardiner said his department was able to put in new measures to better respond if a flood like this ever happens again.

"That's really tough to prevent. But what we can do is we can we can we learn a lot. We develop flood plans and we're able to mitigate certain aspects of it," said Gardiner.

While we may never know when Mother Nature might strike again, communities want to do everything in their power to be prepared. The bipartisan bill would also direct the USDA to commission an agriculture flood vulnerability report to help farmers understand their risks.