ASFPM Makes Case for FEMA Flood Map Funding in Letter to OMB
ASFPM submitted a letter to the Office of Management and Budget urging the Administration and Congress to fund FEMA’s Flood Hazard Mapping and Risk Analysis Program at $350,000,000 in FY 2025, as previously requested by the Biden-Harris Administration in the FY2024 budget.
Recent research from the Pew Charitable Trusts shows that there’s a flood somewhere in the country on average eight out of every 10 days of the year — with landlocked states almost as likely as coastal states to experience a flood-related disaster. Severe flooding is taking a heavy toll on the nation’s fiscal health, causing more than $85 billion in damage in economic losses in 2021, and $119 billion in damage and economic losses in 2022. Today, flooding in the U.S. is a pervasive, year-round threat, affecting Americans nationwide while disproportionally impacting low-income and disadvantaged populations. Climate change is making it worse.
Yet, even as flooding gets worse, we are far from knowing where flooding can occur. Unfortunately, the state of our nation’s flood mapping is incomplete and fails to inform innumerable critical development decisions at essentially all levels. Although the accuracy of our existing flood map inventory has improved significantly over the past 20 years, the current inventory is far from complete. We have mapped only 1.1 million miles of the nation’s streams, rivers, and coastlines, while there are over 3.5 million miles of streams, rivers, and coastlines nationwide. Further, this does not include the large areas where urban stormwater, or pluvial, flooding can occur, which is among the most rapidly emerging flooding threats. Nor does our mapping inventory include areas that were previously considered “low” risk because they were undeveloped but are now being converted into housing subdivisions.
