FEMA eases major floodplain construction rules; Helene rebuilding plan impacts unclear

BPR News | By Katie Myers

This coverage is made possible through a partnership between BPR and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization.

FEMA is no longer enforcing certain rules around rebuilding in floodplains as a Trump administration decision rolls some federal funding criteria back to pre-Obama standards.

The change is expected to impact large infrastructure construction and publicly funded building projects — like schools — after a natural disaster. It eases regulations around construction elevation for facilities like water systems, federally funded housing, and other public works projects. Many layers of local, state, and federal requirements still apply under FEMA programs that help homeowners and businesses rebuild via loans or grants.

A press release from FEMA, issued in late March, says the move will speed up the pace of recovery from storms and disasters like Hurricane Helene.

“Stopping implementation will reduce the total timeline to rebuild in disaster-impacted communities and eliminate additional costs previously required to adhere to these strict requirements,” according to FEMA.

The floodplain rules come from the federal Flood Risk Management Standard, which Trump rescinded by executive order on Jan. 20. Funding criteria under prior rules required federal agencies to evaluate weather patterns and analyze whether 500- and 100-year floodplains could shift, due to climate change — and to consider that before committing taxpayer money toward rebuilding.

Chad Berginnis, the head of the Association of State Floodplain Managers, said rebuilding to the 100-year floodplain level was the norm before Obama-era changes. The rules Trump’s administration has rolled back will no longer require federally funded projects to be rebuilt 2 feet above floodplain elevation. It also strikes a requirement that critical facilities like fire stations or hospitals be built 3 feet above the floodplain elevation level.

The standard, Berginnis said, was intended to ensure expensive rebuilding projects — funded by taxpayers — don’t get destroyed when the next flood hits.

“Why on Earth would the federal government want it to be rebuilt to a lower standard and waste our money so that when the flood hits if it gets destroyed again, we’re spending yet more money to rebuild it,” Berginnis said.

Last fall, federal climate scientists found that extreme and dangerous rainfall events like Helene are made more likely by climate change, and will be as much as 15% to 25% more likely if the world warms by 2 degrees Celsius, which it is projected to do if we continue burning fossil fuels. With more extreme rainfall come challenges for infrastructure that was designed for a less extreme climate.

“You’re going to have storm sewers overwhelmed. You’re going to have basins that were designed to hold a certain kind of flood that don’t do it anymore, like retention ponds,” Berginnis said. “You’re going to have bridges that no longer can pass through that water like it used to. You have all of this infrastructure that’s designed for an older event.”

Josh Harrold, the town manager of Black Mountain, told BPR the old climate consideration rules weren’t an onerous part of rebuilding projects.

“We know this is going to happen again,” Harrold said. “The scale of that is up in the air. No one knows what that’s going to be like, but we are, you know, taking the approach of, we just don’t want to build it back exactly like it was. We want to build it back differently.”

Harrold and other local and state officials contacted by BPR said they don’t yet know how the Trump order will impact their projects.

This comes as some municipalities are adopting and refining stricter floodplain rebuilding rules. The City of Asheville in January adopted city ordinance amendments to comply with the National Flood Insurance Program’s rebuilding requirements, and it is unclear how this change will affect that process. The City of Asheville did not respond to a request for comment.

Berginnis said communities may not see immediate results from this change — but the effects will be felt in the future if leaders bypass additional flood protection in their rebuilding process.

“Everything that gets rebuilt using federal funds will be less safe when the next flood comes,” Berginnis said. “And even though in Western Carolina, it has been a long time since you’ve had a big flood, it doesn’t mean that it can’t happen next month or next year.”