The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is in charge of the National Flood Insurance Program, which covers property owners in flood-prone communities at affordable rates, where private insurance companies would either charge more or not offer insurance at all.
But there is one key requirement: the ground floor of buildings insured must be at a minimum as high as the expected level of a major flood. FEMA data show that there are 250,000 non-compliant flood insurance policies, and the structures insured accounted for over $1 billion in flood claims in the past ten years, reports The New York Times. And climate change will increase the frequency of floods, so the figure is expected to increase in the future.
How did this situation come to be? Local governments are responsible for enforcing the building height requirement, but have failed to do so, and there are no penalties for it, said Rob Moore, from the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council.
The Director of FEMA’s floodplain management division, Rachel Sears, said the Agency’s approach has been not to pursue penalties, but rather to encourage communities to improve compliance with the rules. She said: ‘We encourage the communities and property owners to directly remedy the specific violations’.
The list of buildings that do not abide by the rules includes properties in more than 2,000 counties across the U.S., both on the coast and inland. Ms Sears cautions that the list may contain some mistakes, with properties erroneously categorised as not compliant with local floodplain ordinances, but her agency does not know to which extent this might happen. FEMA does local audits every year to check which places break the rules. Last year 610 out of 22,000 participating communities in the programme were audited.
A problem that can explain the lack of enforcement by FEMA is that enforcement tools are too drastic. A first step is to put the entire city or town on probation, something that increases the insurance policy rate by $50. The second step is suspension from the programme; as a result, property owners would not be able to get national flood insurance, and therefore they would neither get a federally backed mortgage, thus making properties hard to sell. In addition, it would make it more difficult for the community to rebuild after a flood takes place. In 50 years of the National Flood Insurance Program, 77 communities were put on probation, and 12 were suspended for not enforcing the rules.
The New York Times has interviewed officials from communities across the country and found there are multiple ways a community may end up not complying with FEMA’s rules. Often local authorities said they were not aware of having done anything wrong. Incorrect elevation measurements were also blamed for allegedly rule violation.
It’s a difficult issue. On one hand, lack of enforcement sells a wrong signal to other local authorities who may follow in those steps. On the other hand, the overall goal is reducing the flood risk, not removing communities from the programme — defends Ms. Sears — but encouraging them to follow the Agency’s requirements.
