In the past few weeks, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has published final rules in the Federal Register identifying participating National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) communities in various states subject to suspension from eligibility in the program.
The scheduled suspension is due to noncompliance with the floodplain management requirements of the program. Suspension will stop the sale of flood insurance to the communities’ property owners and will pull any direct federal financial assistance for construction or acquisition of buildings in identified Special Flood Hazard Areas.
If a community adopts and provides documentation of the necessary floodplain management measures prior to the effective date of suspension, the suspension will not occur.
In exchange for making flood insurance available to property owners from the federal government, a local community agrees to adopt, administer and measure enforcement of local floodplain management aimed at protecting lives and new construction from future flooding.
Communities received six month, 90-day and 30-day notification letters of the suspension and have 30 days to take action to avoid suspension. Specific reasons for the suspension include failure to adopt the new maps.
More information is available from
this list and your local floodplain management office. Since the final rules were published on more than one date, the document combines the listings to avoid repetition of information and also includes the listing of communities that have changed or established Flood Elevation Determinations (follows the suspension list).
Meanwhile, FEMA has also published final rules on request for written comments by Feb. 23 on the information collection for the claims appeal process, and announcement of the National Advisory Committee meeting on Feb. 16 in San Francisco.