Conflicting federal policies may force thousands of residents in flood-prone areas to pay more for flood insurance or be left unaware of danger posed by dams built upstream from their homes and worksites, according to an media review of federal records and data.
The problem stems from a complex set of flood policies and some national security precautions taken after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
To get the best discount on flood insurance, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s points-based rating system requires communities to chart all the homes, businesses and critical facilities endangered by a potential dam failure and warn people of their risk. But that’s difficult or even impossible in some communities, because other federal agencies restrict the release of such information for hundreds of dams that they own or regulate across the U.S., citing security risks.
The quandary has persisted for years, though federal officials have been warned of its implications.
Federal “dam information sharing procedures costs communities points, homeowners money, and potentially citizens lives,” a California emergency services official warned in a January 2020 presentation to FEMA’s National Dam Safety Review Board at an invitation-only meeting attended by dozens of federal and state officials.
The meeting’s minutes were provided to the news agencies this summer, nearly two-and-half years after the news organization submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to FEMA.
Since that meeting, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has begun publicly posting maps of areas that could be flooded if one of its hundreds of dams were to fail. But similar information remains restricted by other federal agencies, including by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which regulates about 1,800 power-producing dams, and by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, whose 430 dams in the western U.S. include some of the nation’s largest structures.
The Bureau of Reclamation said in response to questions from the news agencies that it is revising its policies and will start sharing more information about dam-failure inundation zones in 2025, though it said the process could take more than eight years to complete for all its dams.
Meanwhile, FEMA is accepting public comment through Sept. 9 on potential revisions to its Community Rating System, which awards discounts on flood insurance in communities that take steps to reduce risks. During a FEMA public hearing Wednesday, the floodplain administrator for Phoenix — the nation’s fifth largest city — raised concerns that the conflicting federal policies regarding dam flood zones were unfair to communities trying to get better insurance discounts for their residents.
“I believe this is a punishment to us,” Phoenix floodplain administrator Nazar Nabaty told FEMA officials.
Another community that has been affected by the information-sharing gap is Sacramento, California, which ranks among the most at-risk regions in the U.S. for catastrophic flooding. California’s capital sits at the confluence of two rivers and about 25 miles (40 kilometers) downstream from Folsom Dam, a large Bureau of Reclamation structure with a capacity that could cover the equivalent of the entire state of Rhode Island with a foot of water.
During a review about five years ago, Sacramento County achieved one of the best-ever scores in FEMA’s rating system. But the county did not qualify for the top flood-insurance discount because the Bureau of Reclamation’s restrictions regarding Folsom Dam made it impossible to meet FEMA’s criteria for mapping and public outreach about a potential dam break, said George Booth, the county’s former floodplain manager.
“We got wrapped around the axle,” said Booth, now executive director of the Floodplain Management Association, a professional organization that focuses on flood-risk reduction in California, Hawaii and Nevada.
The city of Sacramento, which receives a separate flood insurance rating, has faced similar struggles meeting FEMA’s standards for flood insurance discounts because of limited information about Bureau of Reclamation dams, said Rosa Millino, the city’s Community Rating System coordinator.
For an individual homeowner, the missed discounts could make about $100 difference in annual flood insurance premiums. When spread citywide, the extra cost could reach several million dollars. When costs are higher, fewer people tend to buy insurance. But there’s more at stake than just insurance premiums.
“People need to be informed of the potential dangers of living in an area that’s protected by a dam,” Millino said.
As the climate changes, heavy rains from intense storms have put communities at increased risk of flooding and placed the nation’s aging dams in greater jeopardy of failing. That’s been evident as recent floodwaters damaged or breached dams in Georgia, Minnesota, New York, South Carolina, Texas and Wisconsin, forcing evacuations and costly repairs.
Floods have caused about $108 billion of damage in the U.S. since 2000, according to FEMA. Standard home and commercial property insurance does not cover flood damage.
But FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program is available in 22,692 communities that have adopted and enforced floodplain management regulations. As of the end of July, it provided $1.3 trillion of flood insurance coverage to about 4.7 million policyholders — down about 1 million policies since the program’s peak participation in 2009.
Premium discounts ranging from 5% to 45% are available in jurisdictions that participate in FEMA’s Community Rating System, a voluntary program begun in 1990 that grades flood mitigation and safety measures on a 1-to-10 scale. A Class 1 rating earns the largest discount.
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