All signs indicate that it will be several more months – if not years – before FEMA finalizes the floodplain maps for many Puget Sound jurisdictions, including King County (Green River) and Pierce County (Puyallup River).

“Acknowledging that there are ongoing flood hazard analysis studies where the ‘without levees’ approach has been used, FEMA will temporarily withhold issuing Final Determinations for those communities whose levees do not meet accreditation requirements and would clearly benefit from this new approach.  This temporary delay will allow us to properly evaluated affected levees under the new procedures.” 

--FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate, 3/10/11

The exact impact of this policy change on the maps in the Puget Sound region is not yet entirely clear.  Initial conversations with local FEMA representatives indicate that this change will mean at least further delays in the King County and Pierce County floodplain maps, which are still in their preliminary stage.  It may also apply to the pending floodplain maps for other jurisdictions (e.g., Skagit, Lewis, and Snohomish counties) where FEMA has treated as non-existent various levees that do not meet FEMA’s accreditation standards.

In February, 27 US Senators sent a letter to FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate asking FEMA to revisit its “without levees” analysis policy as part of creating new floodplain maps in jurisdictions around the country.  Under the “without levees” approach, FEMA assumes that any levee that does not meet FEMA’s levee accreditation standards (44 C.F.R. §65.10) (i.e., protection from a 100-year flood event) does not exist for purposes of preparing pending floodplain maps. Many communities – and now their federal representatives – criticized that policy as unjustly mapping into the floodplain many properties that benefit from the presence of unaccredited levees, with corresponding adverse impacts on property values and community development opportunities.

In response, last week FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate responded that FEMA would replace the “without levee” modeling approach with “a suite of methodologies that are technically-sound, credible and cost-effective.”  Further, Fugate wrote:  “Acknowledging that there are ongoing flood hazard analysis studies where the ‘without levees’ approach has been used, FEMA will temporarily withhold issuing Final Determinations for those communities whose levees do not meet accreditation requirements and would clearly benefit from this new approach.  This temporary delay will allow us to properly evaluated affected levees under the new procedures.”  Letter from Craig Fugate, 3/10/11.

The exact impact of this policy change on the maps in the Puget Sound region is not yet entirely clear.  Initial conversations with local FEMA representatives indicate that this change will mean at least further delays in the King County and Pierce County floodplain maps, which are still in their preliminary stage.  It may also apply to the pending floodplain maps for other jurisdictions (e.g., Skagit, Lewis, and Snohomish counties) where FEMA has treated as non-existent various levees that do not meet FEMA’s accreditation standards.

Stay tuned.