FEMA Agrees to Revise NYC Flood Maps

By Brian Lafferty

We learned the hard way about the impact of major storms on our City. One of the takeaways of the process was understanding what, exactly FEMA believed to be the flood risks related to NYC.

In 2015, Mayor de Blasio filed an appeal to FEMA, to reevaluate their flood risk calculations. It turns out, the coastal flood risk models had not been updated since 1983.

After reviewing the appeal, FEMA has agreed to reevaluate and restudy  the region, bearing the cost of this research. In a win for long term planning, both the City and FEMA have agreed to work together to create a new methodology to incorporate the growing risks of climate change and sea level rise onto flood maps. The New York City Panel on Climate Change will participate in the work, with the end goal of being to create a new set of flood maps for planning and building purposes that better accounts for the future risk of sea level rises and coastal storm surge.