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.

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