Prior to the storm, FEMA was restudying areas of the New Jersey and New York coastlines to update flood hazards that were developed more than 25 years ago for the National Flood Insurance Program Rate Maps (FIRMs) in these areas.īut the agency now has rushed to update the maps to help support repair and reconstruction work. The maps are called “ Advisory Base Flood Elevations” (ABFEs) and they can be used to help determine flood insurance rates for property owners. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.A new map of Westchester’s flood zones released this week shows more local areas with expected flood hazards and more risks for homeowners and business already battered by Hurricane Sandy. Top 10 Surprising Results of Global WarmingĬopyright 2014 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. Will Climate Change Destroy New York City?Ĩ Ways Global Warming Is Already Changing the World This version of the article was originally published on Live Science. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. Moore's most recent Op-Ed was " After Sandy, Lessons from Historic 1993 Flood Resurface ". We are counting on the agency to revisit their updated maps and give New Yorkers - and ultimately the entire nation - a real assessment of what's at stake, and how to better prepare for the future. New Yorkers know firsthand the importance of making sure FEMA's updated maps reflect real flooding risks. All across the country, river- and coastal-flood maps are woefully out of date. If New York has to wait another 30 years, FEMA's proposed maps seriously underestimate the risk of flooding for the city. New Yorkers may not feel the impacts of this in the short-term, but the last maps were not updated for 30 years. Below is a comparison between those maps and FEMA's.Īs you can see, the area at risk in the future is far more extensive than FEMA's new maps indicate. The New York Department of State, using data from FEMA's new flood maps and storm-modeling data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, assembled an interesting set of Risk Assessment Maps that show how flood risks change in response to sea level rise. As sea levels continue to rise, the areas susceptible to flooding will also increase. Residents of New York will likely find that FEMA's newly proposed maps are similarly obsolete in coming years. In the aftermath, it became all too clear how out of date FEMA's maps of flood zones were, having left communities in the dark about the risks they actually faced, as illustrated in the image below. When Hurricane Sandy flooded parts of New York City many residents never expected to be underwater because flood maps did not show their neighbored as being in the danger zone. While the new maps are a big improvement over the previous ones, there are areas inundated by Sandy that still lie outside the newly mapped 100- or 500-year flood plains - and the impact of sea-level rise on future flood risk isn't accounted for, at all. Instead they were calibrated to earlier, less extensive floods. Our analysis also shows that the past decade, or so, of sea-level rise (about 2-3 inches) was not accounted for in the maps, nor were the computer models calibrated against data from Sandy. NRDC filed formal comments on the new maps with FEMA today, raising the fact that FEMA did not factor-in future sea-level rise and other climate factors, as it is now required to do. But when FEMA released updated maps recently, these risks were still not accounted for. Given the impact of Hurricane Sandy it was hoped that new maps for New York City might be the test case for how to account for sea-level rise and climate-related impacts. In 2012, Congress passed legislation that required FEMA to factor in future climate risks, as part of the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act. In fact, doing so is now required by law. Given that it can take two decades or longer for FEMA to update flood maps for an area, it's important that those maps start providing a more realistic look at both present and future risk. As Sandy illustrated with fearsome efficiency, flooding is among the biggest risks the nation faces from climate change - as the climate warms, sea levels rise while extreme weather and storm surges raise the likelihood of floods. Hurricane Sandy served as a wake-up call for New York and New Jersey - and the nation - to become better prepared for flooding and the other impacts of climate change.
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