Bentz floats bill to protect flood insurance program

Pendleton Mayor McKennon McDonald said a bill that Rep. Cliff Bentz is sponsoring could help people who own property within the Umatilla River floodplain save thousands of dollars in potential permit fees if they want to build on their land.

McDonald said the city has about 470 properties, totaling 3,400 to 4,000 acres, that Bentz’s bill could affect.

The Republican congressman from Ontario, who represents most of Oregon east of the Cascades, introduced the bill on March 9 to block what he calls an “unnecessary and unconstitutional” requirement that the federal flood insurance program comply with Endangered Species Act protections for salmon and steelhead.

Bentz contends this mandate “effectively allows the federal government to dictate local zoning and this is totally contrary to the constitutional reservation of such decision to state and local governments.”

The situation could potentially restrict housing and other development within the floodplains in 31 of Oregon’s 36 counties and in dozens of cities, including Pendleton, La Grande, John Day and Enterprise in Northeastern Oregon, according to Bentz’s office.

The issue does not affect Baker County, as dams block threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead runs from reaching the county.

That’s not the case, though, in most of the state, including much or all of Union, Wallowa, Umatilla, Grant and Morrow counties.

Bentz claims flood insurance program lost focus

Bentz is sponsoring the National Flood Insurance Program Clarification Act of 2026.

The bill would change the National Flood Insurance Act of 1968, clarifying the act is exempt from a requirement in the Endangered Species Act of 1973.

The flood insurance act, among other things, created a national program through which people who own property in a floodplain can buy flood insurance. The vast majority of flood insurance policies are sold through the national program, which the Federal Emergency Management Agency administers.

The Endangered Species Act, meanwhile, requires federal agencies, including FEMA, to ensure its actions and programs comply with the act’s provisions designed to protect wildlife, a process known as “consultation.”

Bentz’s bill would exempt FEMA from the consultation requirement as related to the flood insurance program.

Although FEMA’s chief tasks are to help areas affected by hurricanes, floods and other natural disasters, as well as administering the flood insurance program, the agency, as a result of a lawsuit 17 years ago, expanded its role to include trying to ensure the flood insurance program complies with the Endangered Species Act.

In 2009, according to FEMA records, the Portland Audubon Society sued the agency, arguing it wasn’t consulting with federal agencies that manage endangered species about the potential effects of the flood insurance program on those species. The suit was settled in 2010, and FEMA started consulting with the National Marine Fisheries Service, the agency that manages salmon and steelhead, according to federal records.

In 2016, the fisheries service concluded the flood insurance program as it is deployed in Oregon is likely to jeopardize 16 anadromous fish species listed as threatened or endangered under the ESA. Land use rules in cities and counties have to comply with FEMA standards to ensure property owners in those jurisdictions are eligible to buy flood insurance through the agency.

In response to the 2016 “biological opinion” from the fisheries service, FEMA is writing an environmental impact statement for the “National Flood Insurance Program-Endangered Species Act Integration” in Oregon.

According to FEMA, the agency, to comply with terms of the 2010 lawsuit settlement and the 2016 fisheries service biological opinion, must ensure that zoning and land use rules in cities that participate in the federal flood insurance program and that have anadromous fish habitat, such as Pendleton, “do not further jeopardize listed species and their critical habitat.”

Bentz’s bill would require the fisheries service to withdraw the 2016 biological opinion along with other similar documents that, according to the congressman, “pervert and misdirect the purpose” of the flood insurance program.

Pendleton mayor says she seeks balance

According to an official in Bentz’s office, the environmental impact statement FEMA is writing could potentially lead to a situation in which cities and counties choose either to severely restrict development in their floodplains, or withdraw from the national flood insurance program, forcing property owners to try to buy flood insurance on the private market.

That’s essentially what Pendleton officials are concerned about, McDonald said March 11.

“As we’re looking to try and grow industry and develop properties, anything that puts restrictions on that is something that we want to look at, with a full view of what’s going on,” McDonald said.

She said she supports efforts to protect the environment, including habitat for endangered species.

“But there are some things that might be required as part of being part of that national flood insurance program that make development cost prohibitive with all the studies and the tests and things that you need to do to be able to locate in that area,” McDonald said.

Those requirements could potentially increase the cost of development permits by $15,000, she said.

The current mandate that FEMA comply with the ESA could potentially boost the permitting cost for projects as minor as building a raised flower bed or repaving a street or sidewalk, McDonald said.

She said her goal is to seek a balance.

“We strongly support the efforts to protect and restore habitat,” she said. “But sometimes those overly broad restrictions threaten our ability as a city to move forward with even simple development or simple projects.”

Oregonians for Floodplain Protection, a nonprofit coalition originally created to represent Clatsop, Columbia and Tillamook counties, opposes the FEMA-ESA integration plan, and in January 2025 the coalition filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging both the 2016 biological opinion from the fisheries services and requirements that FEMA is requiring for cities and counties to stay enrolled in the flood insurance program.

The coalition contends on its website that FEMA’s plan would “effectively make every local floodplain permit a federal action.”

Bentz makes the same claim in the press release announcing his bill.

“This bill stops application of the Endangered Species Act in a way Congress never intended,” Bentz said. “Flood insurance exists to protect human life and property. It should not be used as a vehicle to impose sweeping land-use mandates on local communities.”

— East Oregonian reporter Berit Thorson contributed to this report.

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