Overall Strategies for Flood Recovery and Resilience—Part 2
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After fully assessing policies and regulations at both the local and state levels, the next strategy is amending zoning, subdivision, and stormwater policies and regulations to match plans. Although the team recommends tailoring options to the specific needs and attributes of each community, they established four categories describing different geographic areas (in this case, within a river valley). These are:
- River corridors: Conserve land and discourage development in particularly vulnerable areas along river corridors such as floodplains and wetlands.
- Vulnerable settlements: Where development already exists in vulnerable areas, protect people, buildings, and facilities to reduce future flooding risk.
- Safer areas: Plan for and encourage new development in areas that are less vulnerable to future floods.
- The whole watershed: Implement enhanced stormwater management techniques to slow, spread, and infiltrate floodwater.
According to the report, these four categories represent a variety of interrelated benefits and each community should “weigh their resilience goals with other community priorities” to find the right policies and practices that best meet their needs.
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For example, a comprehensive plan can direct development away from floodplains, which will serve valuable purposes. First, it will help to keep people and property safe from flooding and second, it will hold flood waters, slowing them from reaching areas downstream. Another practice is to encourage landowners, including farmers, to implement predisaster mitigation measures to protect their property. These could include incentives like agricultural easements, installing stormwater ponds or swales, planting vegetation that can withstand inundation, and storing hay bales in the least flood-prone areas so they do not contribute to flooding by creating dams and clogging culverts and other stormwater infrastructure.
Another important recommendation is to implement floodplain limits that exceed FEMA requirements. Although it is common practice for communities to simply adopt the National Flood Insurance Program’s minimum standards, that “does not guarantee avoidance of flood damage and losses.” As a result, the report notes that “to avoid this problem, local governments could explore prohibiting all new development in floodplains or floodways.” Similarly, flooding along streams and rivers, known as fluvial flooding, can cause erosion that is actually a greater threat than inundation, and erosion control measures should be considered to protect these vulnerable areas.
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The fourth and final overall strategy is to consider participation in the National Flood Insurance Community Rating System (CSR). This voluntary program offers a wealth of benefits to communities that implement floodplain management activities that exceed the minimum standards of the National Flood Insurance Program. One of the greatest benefits of the program is that flood insurance premiums for policyholders in participating communities are discounted according to a rating system that is similar to that used to rate fire insurance premiums.
At the start of participation, most communities are given a Class 9 rating that provides a 5 percent discount on premiums. From that point, communities can get additional credit for any or all of the 18 public information and floodplain management activities prescribed in the program, with the ultimate goal of reaching a Class 1 rating that provides a 45 percent discount on flood insurance premiums. Although the report notes that the high administrative costs for participation in the CSR may be prohibitive for communities with limited resources, a regional organization may be able to assist several communities with developing their applications at the same time, easing the administrative burden.