Climate change now incorporated
Flooding from King Tides at the Matheson Hammock Boat Ramp Parking Lot in Coral Gables, September 2020
Each year, when FEMA helps rebuild communities after disaster, it spends millions of dollars to elevate and plan according to old floodplain data – long defined as an area with a 1% chance of flooding in a given year. But due to a new finalized rule from FEMA, this 100-year, rather loose floodplain standard is shifting, and understandings of climate change’s compounding impact on water level and storm severity right alongside it. At the most basic level, this means that FEMA’s functioning definition for a floodplain is being overhauled, with the Biden administration forcing many government agencies to now consider the wide-reaching effects of climate change in future policy and construction.
FEMA’s new rule directly states that it will “integrate current and future changes in flooding based on climate science” when it estimates flood risk, including the compounding effects of sea-level rise and erosion. In some coastal areas prone to flooding, this data has been captured for decades – in inland areas, not so much. Under the new rule, they’ll be rebuilt as high as the last 500-year floodplain, which has less than 0.2% chance of flooding in any year.
The crux of the issue comes from the rather rapid ecological changes we’ve seen in the past few decades. FEMA points to data from before this period, where we have consistently underrepresented the threat of a flood, and the compounding effects the next year when the waters swell again. Reacting to a flooding problem is much more expensive than dealing with it proactively, even though the cost comes up front. FEMA has estimated that these new stricter standards will come with a price tag of $150 million over the next decade, but that the added cost on each project would only be about 2% of the total, easily paying for itself in damage prevention over the next 60 years. There’ll be cost increases on local governments, too, which usually foot around 25% of project costs.
FEMA’s new system automatically assumes a much higher flood risk than in the past and increases it with each passing year. They’ll also build further back from water when applicable and implement pilings to elevate construction projects that cannot be moved away from floodplains. FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell has championed the rule as ushering in a new era of government response to disasters, saying it “will allow us to enhance resilience in flood-prone communities by taking future flood risk into consideration when we rebuild structures post-disaster. This is a huge win that will also allow us to end the repeat loss cycles that stem from flooding and increase the safety of families and save taxpayer dollars.” You can read more from FEMA.
LMA Newsletter of 7-22-24
