Federal flood insurance plan update draws pushback on North Coast

Leaders on the North Coast are pushing back against proposed modifications to the Federal Emergency Management Agency's flood insurance program, citing concerns about restricting development.

The federal flood insurance program, created in 1968, is designed to provide an alternative to disaster assistance to meet the rising costs of repairing flood damage to buildings and other property. Support for homeowners through the program relies on cities and counties agreeing to meet certain building and development standards.

The updates stem from a 2009 lawsuit the Audubon Society of Portland and other environmental groups brought against the federal agency for its flood insurance program in Oregon. The lawsuit claimed that the federal government did not consider the impacts of flood plain development on wild salmon and steelhead.

The federal agency has since brought potential changes forward for review. A first draft of the implementation plan was released in 2021.

Under the changes, communities will have to achieve mitigation of all negative impacts, or zero net loss, in three natural flood plain functions - flood storage, water quality and riparian vegetation.

Regional representatives from the federal agency have held public meetings across affected areas in Oregon to describe the changes, give options and take comments. Staff from the federal agency held a meeting at the Astoria Library last week, which was mostly attended by a handful of city staff and elected officials.

The Clatsop County Board of Commissioners drafted a letter in April to the federal agency, asking questions about the implementation plan and pointing to potentially harmful impacts. Other jurisdictions, including Warrenton and Seaside, have followed with letters of their own.

Concerns center around limiting development, straining city staffing and budgets and impacting property owners.

"One of the critical issues for our community is the need for more housing - specifically workforce housing," Seaside Mayor Steve Wright said in the letter. "We believe that the proposed plan could significantly curtail future housing development, disparately affecting our lower income community and working families."

Warrenton stands to be among the most impacted by the changes. Mayor Henry Balensifer has been critical of the proposal and the process. He called the potential impacts an "existential concern" for the city.

"The impacts of this are nothing short of staggering and breathtaking to the city of Warrenton," he said. "Every resident that lives anywhere that is getting flood insurance currently should be paying attention to this It's going to have to be all hands on deck to make the impacts heard and known."

While the plan is labeled as voluntary for communities, Balensifer challenged that designation.

"The truth of the matter is that federal policy makes it dang near impossible to not be into the option," he said, pointing to qualifying for federal disaster relief funding and receiving a federally-backed mortgage. " Not only have the feds gotten harder on development on flood plains, but they've also made it such that you are required to participate in their programs if you even want to be able to have access to capital."

Balensifer said downtown and the swaths of land around the Skipanon River and Alder Creek would likely be the most impacted by the implementation plan, but noted that rising sea levels will only increase the areas affected by floods.

"As this gets further along the road, the impacts are going to become clearer and it's not going to just be a hit to the city, it's going to be a hit to existing property owners, it's going to be a hit to people who want to develop their properties - it's not just developers that are going to get whacked by this," he said.

Four options have been laid out by the Federal Emergency Management Agency for communities to meet the new standards, including adoption of a model ordinance that will suggest updates to flood plain management code, submission of an ordinance checklist addressing the requirements, implementation of a community compliance plan or development of a community-level habitat conservation plan.

Implementation of the modifications remains a few years out. The federal agency is taking public comments on the proposed action through June 26.