Tell Congress to Support FERA

Floodplains on the Illinois River, Illinois | Mitch Paine Photography

Tell Congress to Support the Floodplain Enhancement and Recovery Act

90% of floodplains in the contiguous U.S. are damaged or degraded. Restoring these floodplains is critical to the health of rivers as well as building community resilience to increasingly hazardous weather and flood events. Currently, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) policy makes it harder for projects that do this work to happen. FEMA’s “No-Rise” rule is an excessive permitting burden on ecosystem restoration projects that leads to higher costs and delays, disincentivizing critical floodplain restoration nationwide. This needs to change.

In order to effectively restore more of our nation’s floodplains back to a natural and healthy state, Congress must pass the Floodplain Enhancement and Recovery Act (FERA).

If passed, FERA would give states and local communities more flexibility under FEMA’s “No-Rise” rule to execute projects needed to restore floodplains and help keep communities safe.

Tell your members of Congress to support the Floodplain Enhancement and Recovery Act now.

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Currently, under the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) policy, any proposed projects in a regulated floodplain must abide by the “No-Rise” rule, proving that they will not increase the base flood elevation of the area. While this rule protects communities from increased flood risks of inappropriate and harmful development, a more flexible approach is needed for ecosystem restoration projects that create resilience by restoring functioning floodplains. The application of FEMA’s “No-Rise” rule also causes negative impacts, including:

Projects delayed or indefinitely paused due to cost and technical burden
Significant project cost increases - $4.56 million in Washington State Alone
Millions of dollars in stalled federal and state funding
Reduction in landowner willingness
Less effective restoration and resilience projects

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Dear {contact_data~salutation}

I am writing to urge you to support the Floodplain Enhancement and Recovery Act (H.R.6256/S.1564). With increasingly hazardous weather and flood events impacting communities nationwide, we must act now to restore functioning floodplains that can hold floodwaters and increase overall community resilience.

The excessive and unnecessary permitting burden of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s “No-Rise” rule is a significant obstacle to achieving the pace and scale of floodplain restoration projects that states and local municipalities are prepared to construct. Under the current FEMA “No-Rise” rule, ecosystem restoration projects are treated the same as traditional development projects and must prove that they will not increase flood heights and cause harm to neighboring properties. While the “No-Rise” rule exists for important reasons, it is often misapplied to ecosystem restoration projects- even when restoration projects pose no increased flood risk to people or property. FERA will provide flexibility in FEMA’s “No-Rise” analysis for ecosystem restoration projects that pose no adverse impact to people or property and will avoid delays and cost overruns. FERA’s specific definition of ecosystem restoration projects is a critical step towards improving our nation’s resilience in the face of increasing environmental risks.

Please support the Floodplain Enhancement and Recovery Act (H.R.6256/S.1564)

Sincerely,

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