Aug
12
A National Water Vision and Reauthorization of the National Flood Insurance Program
August 12, 2008 | Posted by smcclung
Jane Rowan - President, AWRA
Both the House and the Senate have before them a revised version of a bill that took center stage just a few years ago. The new version of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) (Senate Bill 2284, House Bill 3121) Flood Insurance Reform and Modernization Act of 2007) is before the Congress for reauthorization. Both versions continue to provide flood insurance, expanding coverage in some cases while tightening up conditions for coverage in others. One version expands coverage to include wind damage; the other version forgives NFIP’s $20 billion debt to the National Treasury for the costs covering flood damages from the 2005 hurricane season, including Hurricane Katrina. I am oversimplifying. The question is, does the new legislation do enough to protect the floodplain as a resource, the watershed’s flood relief valve, from new construction and expanded risks?
Neither version addresses the continued expansion of the floodplain insurance program, which may not adequately provide enough direct incentives to stay out of the floodplain. It is intuitive to limit risk and discourage development in the floodplain. The federal government programs let local legislatures decide the extent floodplain development can take place in their jurisdiction, but hope that the incentive of flood insurance coverage property owners will result in local flood mitigation planning/legislation. Is the flood mitigation and legislation on the books in high risk communities enough? When a flood disaster takes place in a non-participating community, the federal government is compelled to provide relief without having had the benefit of premium collections. For the most part, high risk communities have created their own floodplain regulatory controls and have been granted access to flood insurance, but has the planned response taken place? I am concerned less with the decision to provide relief than with the effectiveness of creating disincentives for reconstruction or new construction in flood prone zones.
In a nation guided by a National Water Vision, there would be recognition that the floodplain is part of the watershed, maintaining water quality maintenance by limiting erosion and encouraging groundwater recharge. The alternative is the potential of a developed floodplain contributing in huge and significant ways to water quality degradation during floods. Absent of this Vision, what guiding principles do Congress and state and local communities use?
When the NFIP was first enacted in 1968 to provide insurance for properties in the floodplain not available privately, there were 1 million policyholders and $50 million in risk. After 40 years, the number of policy- holders has increased to 5.7 million, and the risk to $1 trillion. One of the stated goals of the NFIP was to create a means to share risks while creating preventative and protective measures for construction in the floodplain. Absent a National Water Vision, will Congress’ goals ever be reached?
Although passage of the currently proposed Act may not happen in this Congress it is my hope that in the next Congress, there will be an intentional shift toward recognition of a National Water Vision in not only the legislation dealing with the national flood insurance program, but also with any legislation dealing with water and water related projects. The best that could happen, would be for all branches of government, as well as state/local government, and the American people to internalize a National Water Vision, as recommended in AWRA’s last Water Policy Dialogue that took place near the Capital last year. What is this National Water Vision? What do you think it should be?
For more information on the proposed Act, check out both bills directly at http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billsearch.xpd and type in the bill number, either S. 2284 or HR 3121.
Comments
4 Comments so far
The points raised in Ms. Rowan’s post are right on target. EDF has long believd that major reforms are necessary to align incentives in a way that helps protect and restore floodplains and prevent undue encroachment and development that either increases flooding or drives up flood recovery costs.
The same approach to reforms–aligning incentives to foster water efficiency, protect environmental values, develop appropriate, flexible water markets and the like–could be productive on the water allocation and management front.
Discussing these reforms in the context of a national “water vision” does seem to hold significant potential, if that vision can be translated to federal legislation. But, waiting for Congress to develop that national vision might not be the best way to go.
Maybe the next step could involve an independent convening of a diverse set of interests (spanning the gamut from water suppliers and users to conservation organizations) to see how much common ground we can find on our own.
I think we might be surprised by how far along we could get.
Mary Kelly
Vice President
Rivers and Deltas
Environmental Defense Fund
Flood plains and riparian corridors are one of the most critical ecological elements of the landscape and, at the same time, the most significant natural flood and fluvial erosion attenuation asset that provides billions of dollars of ecosystem services. Yet EPA and other federal agencies leave it entirely up to FEMA, through the NFIP, to accomplish flood plain protection through local regulation that is only required by 44CFR to meet FEMA’s minimum standards.
These minimum standards allow extensive new flood plain encroachment that exacerbates flood hazards and contributes to an unimaginable level of ecosystem degradation; to say nothing of the direct economic costs.
Only the floodway (the inner portion of the mapped floodplain, often comprised of only the active river channel) enjoys any reasonable level of protection from new encroachment. Under FEMA minimum standards, all other areas of the floodplain are open to encroachment; essentially, all it needs is a local permit and be elevated above BFE. This criterion causes flood elevations to rise (up to one foot in the Base, or 100 year flood), and creates a situation where channelization of waterways is required to protect the new development encroachments and existing development from the inevitable dynamic meandering, avulsing, and eroding nature of fluvial systems.
What may not be commonly recognized is that NFIP mapped flood hazard areas in most watersheds across the nation cover a small percentage of all stream miles and riparian corridors. Many, if not most streams, get no protection whatsoever under the NFIP. Beyond that, many, if not most mapped flood hazard areas don’t even have a designated floodway so basically get little or no protection from new encroachment.
In a 1978 paper entitled “The Origin and Rationale of Criterion Used In Designating Floodways” by James E. Goddard for the Federal Insurance Administration, it is stated: “The rationale in selecting this minimum criterion was to designate a floodway that was a compromise between prohibiting encroachments into the flood plain while permitting economical land use and protecting against unreasonable invasion of private property rights.”
Can you believe this? So if I have an existing residence in a flood plain with my first floor elevation at or below base flood level, the community can issue development permits to encroach in the flood plain and flood me deeper and more frequently; and that is not an “unreasonable invasion of my property rights”? How,”economical” are these flood plain encroachment land uses?
Could anyone have imagined in 1978 that we would be spending the kind of money we are today on flood recovery, and losing the ecological resources and ecosystem services that flood plains provide at an astounding rate? How the social, economic and ecological sustainability of the nation’s fluvial systems are threatened by continued encroachment into riparian corridors as never before? And that FEMA has done nothing to change this standard, nothing to offer incentives to local governments to encourage adoption of enhanced flood plain protection ordinances, and nothing of significance to map or avoid exacerbating fluvial erosion hazards.
And EPA apparently doesn’t consider flood plains worthy of any protection under the CWA (nor, I guess do the courts), similar to what is provided for wetlands; despite the fact that flood plains and riparian corridors may be equally valuable elements of the ecosystem and essential to achieve CWA goals.
As long as congress tries to make the NFIP financially solvent only by messing with the insurance side of the equation instead of adopting a truly effective and meaningful incentives-based encroachment avoidance strategy, and the NFIP remains the only game in town to protect flood plain and riparian corridor functions, the CWA objectives to “sustain the chemical, physical and biological integrity” of surface waters will go down the drain despite all of EPA’s TMDLs, watershed plans, and good intentions. And the public costs of flood recovery will soon become unsustainable (if they are not already)as the climate continues to destabilize.
I applaud AWRA and Jane Rowan’s interest in this issue. It may not take legislation as much as it takes FEMA, EPA, USDA, and the NGO’s to get together, develop the vision, recognize the shared objectives and start implementing the collaboration, the policies, and the programs that avoid rather than encourage the continued and accelerating loss of flood plains and riparian corridors.
Pasture, Rangeland, Forage Rainfall Index Plan of Insurance
a good theme, and you can read more