Shistain Disbanded NOAA Group Tasked With Annual Update Of Flood Risk Back In January

When President Joe Biden left office, a group of state and federal officials was nearly finished with its annual report on how the nation draws its flood maps. The group, FEMA’s Technical Mapping Advisory Committee, was disbanded in January, when President Donald Trump’s administration took an axe to all advisory committees within the Department of Homeland Security. The 2024 report was never published.

As Texas looks to build back from the deadly floods that killed more than 130 in July, and Wisconsin declares a state of emergency over flash floods in the Midwest this week, those who work in flood mitigation see a national system already decades behind. Federal flood maps, which indicate areas at high risk of flooding and are used to mandate flood insurance, are often outdated and not designed to provide a detailed reflection of risk.

The Trump administration, these experts say, has sown confusion and slowed progress on recent efforts to modernize the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s mapping program. The advisory group’s unpublished 2024 report was building upon an aggressive — and contentious — agenda for mapping reform that scientists and government officials deemed necessary to reduce human suffering and mitigate expensive relief efforts. The FEMA advisory group gave states, local communities and floodplain experts a seat at the table as FEMA considered more modern ways to map flood risks and hazards.

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FEMA has lost at least one-quarter of its staff since the Trump administration took office, and with them a significant amount of institutional knowledge about the flood mapping program and its problems. “The agency right now is in a period of uncertainty as to what the future looks like, so it’s certainly not an environment where people are going to necessarily be bold. I would guess that things are not moving as aggressively as what we were fortunate to have moving in the last six or seven years,” Maurstad said. “That’s even before you start talking about all of the staff that are gone.” The Trump administration has also revoked a rule, first created during the Obama administration, that required communities using taxpayer-funded programs to rebuild to a higher standard after disasters to prevent repeated damage from floods. And under DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, FEMA has been slow to distribute contracting and grant dollars, including for flood mapping projects.

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https://www.notus.org/climate-environment/trump-fema-flood-maps