Griffo-Buttenschon flood buyout bill

S6893 would establish a NY program for buyouts of flood-damaged homes

Dec 14, 2019

New York State Senate Deputy Minority Leader Joseph Griffo (R -Rome, District 47), and Assemblywoman Marianne Buttenschon (D-Marcy, 119th District) introduced legislation (S6893) on 6 Dec 2019 that would create a NY State buyout program for flood-damaged homes. This program would be separate from existing FEMA buyout programs, which require a higher total damage threshold. The program, if enacted, would be administered by the New York State Urban Development Corporation, and it would allow for municipalities to buy out flood-damaged homes at fair market value, and then the vacant land would revert to parkland or common space. In a press release, Senator Griffo said:

Throughout New York State, especially the Mohawk Valley, Southern Tier and along the shores of Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River, there has been a persistent, pervasive and destructive pattern of flooding. The floods that these regions are experiencing are exacting a devastating toll on residents who are unfortunate enough to find themselves in the path of these dangerous waters.

The political pressure for flood relief has been building as extreme events drive flooding across the watershed and elsewhere. One way to avoid future costs and alleviate current crises is to get people off the floodplain, and one way to do this is to purchase damaged homes and tear them down. In a recent paper in Nature Sustainability, Kris Johnson and colleagues explore the future benefit from preserving floodplains today.

Flooding is the costliest form of natural disaster and impacts are expected to increase, in part, due to exposure of new development to flooding. However, these costs could be reduced through the acquisition and conservation of natural land in floodplains

Buyouts can be part of the approach to minimizing future costs from flooding. There is an expectation that after damaging floods, FEMA will step in and provide assistance, but this can be complicated. Increasingly there is a call for buyouts, which allow homeowners to recoup costs, while allowing FEMA to remove properties with repetitive losses from the floodplain. However, FEMA has threshold monetary levels for events that must be achieved before they can provide private assistance (homes), and a common complaint is that the buyout process is lengthy and onerous. What if there were an easier way?

FEMA’s threshold damage levels for private assistance can be difficult to achieve in smaller events or in rural areas, and this may be part of the impetus for the introduced bill. In the press release, Assemblywoman Buttenschon said:

Mohawk Valley residents know the dangers and costs of widespread and increasingly frequent floods all too well. Families who own homes on a flood plain often struggle to sell their houses, even at a reduced price, or bear the burden of repeated renovation and repair projects. This legislation would enable homeowners to voluntarily sell their flood-prone properties to local governments, which would transition those properties into open, public space. I want to thank Deputy Minority Leader Griffo for partnering with me on this bipartisan and commonsense bill, and I’ll keep fighting to ensure our communities receive the funding we need to recover from extreme weather events.

A few questions emerge after reading this bill. The first concerns the floodplain designation. From the bill it is not clear who determines the floodplain and floodplain boundaries, but what is clear is that they seek a non-traditional designation of the floodplain. This is important because floodplain boundaries are already mapped and delineated in a robust way. The Press release states: “ .. legislation (S6893) would provide local governments with a mechanism to designate these hard-hit residential areas as floodplains.”

The second question surrounds the funding source for the buyout option. Where does the money come from for this program? The idea is to either bypass or supplement Federal FEMA buyouts with NY State buyouts. Thus this would shift part of the cost burden for flood damage from the national pool of FEMA funds to the NY taxpayer.

Let’s first examine the question of floodplain delineation, which sounds fluid and flexible in the bill but is, in reality, a complex topic. Floodplain mapping has been ongoing and evolving for decades. The new mapping is digital, and therefore maps are easy to access. Many of the new maps are based on LiDAR data, which provides high-resolution topography and thus more accurate delineation of boundaries. In fact LiDAR mapping has revolutionized floodplain mapping. An interesting read is “FEMA’s romance with LiDAR data” which provides an overview of using LiDAR for floodplain mapping and includes one of the very first applications, Schoharie Creek in the Mohawk Watershed.

There are two simple ways to get floodplain maps in NY. One way is through the New York State Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services (DHSES) (“Mitigate NY”) and the other way is through FEMA. Because the maps have been transferred to digital platforms, it is now simple to navigate to a web site and look up properties. I did this for Fort Plain, which is a small community on the Mohawk River. This remarkably simple process allowed me to generate a PDF of the municipality showing the areas with a 1% (blue) and 0.2 % (orange) probability of annual inundation.

The floodplain in cities and towns in the Mohawk Watershed (and the entire country) are mapped by FEMA. In this example, I used the FEMA website to generate a map of the areas that have a 1% (blue) and 0.2% (orange) annual probability of inundation (i.e. 100 yr and 500 yr floodplain). I selected the area and then generated the “FIRMette” map in a few minutes. This process can be done using your home address, anywhere in the US (it is not as interesting if you don’t live near a river). Note that the Flood Insurance Rate Map (FIRM) is used for insurance and building/development decisions. This particular map became effective on 1/19/2018.

Map of the floodplain in Schenectady NY (this is the Stockade District) using the mapping tool at MitigateNY, which is part of the New York State Hazard Mitigation Plan. In the diagram, the purple area has a 1% annual inundation probability (i.e. 100 yr) and the teal area has a 0.2% annual probability (i.e. 500 yr).

Given this background, I wanted to better understand some of the details of the Griffo/Buttenschon Bill. I was particularly interested in exploring the idea that local communities could “designate these hard-hit residential areas as floodplains.” I wrote both Senator Griffo and Assemblywomen Buttenschon to get more information as to how this program might be enacted given the existing framework of floodplain mapping in NY State.

I spoke with Reed Kinderman, Director of Policy and Operations in Senator Griffo’s office, who was kind enough to walk me through the ideas and inspiration behind the bill. While chronic flooding has been problematic and ongoing, the 2019 Halloween Storm did considerable damage in the district, part of which is in the Mohawk Watershed. Thus there is an awareness that flooding is problematic and only seems to be getting worse, especially with extreme storms that are dumping very large amounts (2” or more) of rain in single events.

Reed explained that the general purpose of the bill is to fill the gap in events that are damaging, but for which the total damages (in dollars) don’t reach threshold levels for the event required by FEMA. This is the problem: how to help residents cope with loss in floods that don’t qualify as major by FEMA’s definition. Naturally this scenario is especially important in more rural districts where total damages will always be lower than floods in urban settings.

Reed said that the buyout options would be determined at the local level and that there would be local decisions about where the floodplain is and who qualifies. We talked about existing floodplain mapping, but he indicated that in some cases the plan would allow for buyouts of homes outside (above) the area of 0.2% annual inundation probability (i.e. the 500 yr floodplain).

He told me that part of the inspiration of the bill came from two successful programs where local buyout programs appear to have been successful in addressing chronic flooding issues. These programs are in Nashville and in the State of Illinois. After our talk I looked up those other programs, and they seem to be important because they allow for some degree of local control on the decision-making process. But they are slightly different than what is being proposed here in NY.

In the flood-relocation program in Nashville, the city is buying chronically flooded homes at market value and allowing the land to go back to a more natural state. This program uses a combination of Federal, State, and local money to do the buyouts – this includes FEMA, TEMA, and Metro Nashville. FEMA covers 75% of the buyout and the remaining 25% is covered by TEMA and Metro Nashville. Buyouts include purchase of the home, subsequent demolition, and then return of the property to green space. The program is focused on chronically damaged homes on the 100 yr floodplain (area with a 1% annual probability of flooding), and decisions for eligibility are made at the local level.

The State of Illinois also has flood buyout program that leverages Federal money. The program is administered by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, and is a collaboration between the State and FEMA. It is focused on the acquisition and subsequent demolition of repetitive-loss homes and severely damaged structures across the state and is limited to those structures in the 100 yr floodplain. In this plan preference is given to repetitive-loss claims, and this includes structures with either: 1) four or more claims of $5,000 or greater; or 2) two or more separate claims where the total of both exceeds the current market value of the property.

Three items are common in the Nashville and Illinois plans. They 1) are done in collaboration with FEMA, 2) require repetitive loss, and 3) require homes be on the already-mapped 100 yr floodplain. This is an interesting approach and perhaps one that could be considered here in NY.

If so, I suspect that the Griffo /Buttenschon bill will need to be reworked to develop a partnership with FEMA and use existing floodplain mapping as a guide for who is eligible or not for buyouts.

If you are interested sharing your opinion, send comments directly to either Assemblywoman Butterschon or Senator Griffo.

This and other Notes from a Watershed are available at: https://mohawk.substack.com/

Notes from a Watershed - The Mohawk River

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Notes from a Watershed - The Mohawk River

Griffo-Buttenschon flood buyout bill

S6893 would establish a NY program for buyouts of flood-damaged homes

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