Leaders object to flood insurance changes

Leaders on the North Coast are calling on the Federal Emergency Management Agency to halt a review of the national flood insurance program, calling proposed changes "federal overreach."

The program, which was created in 1968, makes federally-backed flood insurance available to states and communities that agree to adopt and enforce flood plain management ordinances to reduce future flood damage.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is updating the plan in response to a 2009 lawsuit brought by the Audubon Society of Portland and other environmental groups against the agency for its flood insurance program in Oregon. The suit claimed the federal government did not consider the impacts of flood plain development on wild salmon and steelhead.

As of Wednesday, the Center for Biological Diversity and other conservation groups filed a notice of intent to sue the agency over its failure to protect flood plain-dependent salmon and orcas in Oregon that are protected under the federal Endangered Species Act. The coalition argues that the flood insurance program has allowed dangerous development in flood plains.

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

Through public comment, and at a public meeting held by federal representatives at the Astoria Library earlier this month, local officials expressed criticism and concern about the changes and their potential to restrict development.

Leaders reinforced those concerns in a letter to the agency on Friday signed by Mark Kujala, the chairman of the county Board of Commissioners, and mayors in Astoria, Warrenton, Gearhart, Seaside and Cannon Beach. Public comment on the proposed actions closed on Monday.

"This process is occurring during a time of unprecedented uncertainty as several competing mandates and state-level changes converge on local jurisdictions," the elected officials said. "This perfect storm, consisting of a housing crisis, debilitating fiscal impacts from the (state's) habitat conservation plan, and now the development-prohibitive requirements of this implementation plan, has created a confluence of regulation that will have extremely significant impacts on already constrained rural communities.

"While FEMA staff have stated that the yet-to-be-drafted model ordinance will not prohibit development, this is not fully accurate. The expense associated with collecting and maintaining data to support a community compliance plan or to mitigate development impacts can neither be initially undertaken nor sustained into the future by our communities."

Warrenton stands to be among the most impacted by the changes.

The county's regional housing needs analysis from 2020 estimated a need for 3,018 additional housing units, according to the letter. Warrenton, which has the largest need at 1,107 units, has more than 5,500 acres in the special flood hazard area, which makes up nearly 50% of the city's land.

The agency has laid out four options 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.

"The county and the cities have been asked to identify potential impacts, before the model ordinance and new requirements have been finalized," the letter said. "It is therefore impossible for our jurisdictions to identify, let alone quantify, the economic, social or health impacts of this (environmental impact statement).

"There is no doubt, however, that the impacts will be cumulatively significant when merged with new housing provision requirements and penalties and pecuniary repercussions when the (habitat conservation plan) is also implemented. This unprecedented combination of unfunded regulations, prohibitions and penalization will place rural communities, particularly the cities of Astoria, Cannon Beach, Gearhart, Seaside and Warrenton, as well as Clatsop County, in a dire position.

"The siloed agencies at the state level have created competing and conflicting requirements, which simply cannot be achieved if the biological opinion is implemented in Oregon as currently drafted."