Flood Inundation Maps & Report Released for Lake Champlain & Richelieu River

In the last post, information was provided about the draft report prepared by a working group of the International Joint Commission (IJC) about flood inundation and forecasting in the Lake Champlain-Richelieu River watershed.  The IJC is a a collaboration between the US and Canada to provide coordination, management and protection of shared watersheds. Here in Vermont, we have representatives that have been appointed to the International Lake Champlain-Richelieu River Technical Working Group.

Today, the final report that came out of the Lake Champlain-Richelieu River Technical Working Group was released.  The report, A real-time flood forecasting and flood inundation mapping system for the Lake Champlain-Richelieu River watershed, was an outcome of a 2013 comprehensive Plan of Study.

From the press release:

"The IJC endorses the TWG observation that enhanced coordination among agencies involved in real-time forecasts is necessary to support the development and maintenance of forecast models and quality-controlled joint water level predictions. The Commission endorses the TWG recommendation that a binational coordination body be mandated and funded to consolidate and synthesize flood forecasting work undertaken domestically into a single binational flood forecast. This body would also be charged with developing and disseminating consistent messaging to emergency responders and the public.

"Consequently, the new IJC report does not evaluate potential flood mitigation measures as this was outside the terms of reference provided by governments.

"The Commission reiterates its strong recommendation that governments implement the full scope of the 2013 Plan of Study (PoS) to evaluate past impacts, flood plain management practices and adaptation strategies, and to assess soft (i.e., low impact and cost) to moderate flood mitigation measures and their impacts."

An outcome of the report was a series of inundation flood maps that show the areas of the Lake Champlain and Richelieu River shorelines that would be inundated when the Lake flood waters are at a certain height. Again, from the press release:

"The inundation maps show flooding potential under different flood scenarios and are not designed for regulatory purposes. A preview of these maps is available on the IJC web site at: http://arcg.is/1MhXui2."

Please take some time to explore the inundation maps, as well as read through the final report which can be found at http://ijc.org/files/publications/Lake-Champlain-IJC-Report-to-Govts-Dec-2015-NEW.pdf 

IJC invites public comment on draft flood forecasting and mapping report for Lake Champlain and Richelieu River

IJC invites public comment on draft flood forecasting and mapping report for Lake Champlain and Richelieu River and previews flood inundation maps

The International Joint Commission (IJC) is requesting comments from the public on a draft report to enhance flood preparedness and warnings for Lake Champlain and the Richelieu River by December 10, 2015.  Specifically the IJC asks if the report’s recommendations are sound and whether the recommendations address real needs for enhanced flood preparedness and warnings for Lake Champlain and the Richelieu River.  The Commission is also inviting the public to preview the associated flood inundation maps.

Following the submission of IJC’s  July 2013 Plan of Study “The Identification of Measures to Mitigate Flooding and the Impacts of Flooding of Lake Champlain and Richelieu River” (POS), the governments of the United States and Canada asked the IJC to address two issues associated with the system wide flooding in 2011:
a. closing the gaps in the data needed for a future real-time flood forecasting and inundation mapping system, and
b. the creation of static flood inundation map products.

The IJC appointed the International Lake Champlain-Richelieu River Technical Working Group (TWG) comprised of technical experts from United States, Canada, Quebec, Vermont, and New York to address the two issues. The IJC is now inviting public comment on the TWG’s draft report Toward an operational real-time flood forecasting and flood inundation mapping system for the Lake Champlain and Richelieu River.

The TWG report includes six recommendations addressing the need to:

1. Implement an operational probabilistic approach for forecasting floods, including modelling of wind set up and wave action;
2. Keep the Henry and Grand Isle water level station to maintain water level calibration and also install wave buoys to assist in wave model calibration;
3. Institute a binational coordination body such as an IJC Board to support agencies involved in real time forecasting;
4. Acquire new bathymetric data for the Richelieu River between Sorel and Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu;
5. Create a single consistent Digital Elevation Model (DEM) for the entire Lake Champlain-Richelieu River basin following the completion and quality control of LiDAR and bathymetric data acquisition; and
6. Generate static flood inundation maps for the entire Lake Champlain Richelieu River system.

The current effort has significantly advanced the creation of flood-inundation maps for the Lake Champlain-Richelieu River system. These maps provide an emergency planning tool for authorities and the general public on land that may flood during high water events. Static inundation maps were created for the Vermont side of Lake Champlain and a portion of the New York northeastern shoreline on the US side, and for the Richelieu River from the border to downstream of the Fryers Rapids on the Canadian side. A preview of these maps is available on the IJC web site at: http://arcg.is/1MhXui2 , however, the site is under construction and the text accompanying the maps is in French only at this time. A complete LiDAR Digital Elevation Model available in Canada also allowed for the representation of inundation depths for the 11 flood scenarios.  The inundation maps are not designed for regulatory purposes, but rather to show flooding potential under different conditions.  Furthermore the report does not evaluate potential flood mitigation measures as this was outside of the scope of the reference from governments.

This public comment period is being held from November 16 to December 10, at which time the IJC will consider public comments before submitting its final report to governments.


Contacts:

Nick Heisler  (English)  Ottawa 613-992-8367 Heislern@ottawa.ijc.org

Sarah Lobrichon (French)      Ottawa 613-992-5368 LobrichonS@ottawa.ijc.org

Frank Bevacqua Washington 202-736-9024 Bevacquaf@washington.ijc.org

                                             
Sarah Lobrichon
Policy and Communications Analyst | Analyste des politiques et des communications
International Joint Commission | Commission mixte internationale
234 Laurier Ave. West, 22nd Floor, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1P 6K6
234, avenue Laurier Ouest, 22e étage, Ottawa (Ontario), Canada K1P 6K6
Telephone | Téléphone 613-992-5368 / Facsimile | Télécopieur 613-993-5583

Imagine two countries sharing hundreds of lakes and rivers along their border without conflict
www.ijc.org
Imaginez deux pays qui partagent des centaines de lacs et de rivières le long de la frontière sans conflit

Is Your Community Flood Ready?

How will post-disaster funding for communities change in October?  

What does your community need to do?  

Is you community planning in order to avoid flood damage?

Visit the new Flood Ready Vermont website www.floodready.vermont.gov to find out.  

Flood Ready Vermont has the tools and data your community needs to:

• Get up to speed on the Emergency Relief and Assistance Fund (ERAF);
• Identify flood hazards and take action to minimize future damage;
• Update your community plans; and,
• Find out what communities are doing to get flood ready

Use the Flood Ready Atlas to help you identify what is working to keep your community flood resilient and where structures are at risk.  Community Reports quickly compile useful information for your municipal and hazard mitigation plans.  

Flood Ready Vermont www.floodready.vermont.gov is a place where community leaders can share information and ideas to make our communities more flood resilient.  

Funding for the design of the website was provided by the High Meadows Fund, promoting vibrant communities and a healthy natural environment while encouraging long term economic vitality in Vermont; and through a Federal Emergency Management Agency Hazard Mitigation Grant.

Early partners to inspire and help launch the site include the Connecticut River Watershed Council (CRWC) and the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF), as ably represented by David Deen, Upper Valley River Steward for CRWC; Angela Mrozinski, Outreach Director for CRWC; Ron Rhodes, North Country River Steward for CRWC; and Anthony Iarrapino, Senior Attorney for CLF.

The website development and design team was led by Daniel Shearer, Tamarack Media Cooperative, and Beka Mandell, Webskillet Cooperative.

Let us know what you think and tell your story about working for flood resilience!

Update on the Homeowners Flood Insurance Affordability Act (HFIAA)

Last week we had provided news about the US Congress passing the Homeowners Flood Insurance Affordability Act (HFIAA) at the end of March.  Since then, FEMA has published an overview of the the bill found on their website and in the FEMA Resource Library.  This overview document can also be found on our Flood Hazard Management webpage.

We have also started to get some information on how HFIAA will impact people in Vermont specifically, as well as the impacts to flood insurance nationally.  Here is a short summary:

• It will take some time to start to implement provisions of the new law:
• In the short term, there may still be individuals that get hit with full actuarial rates due to a new policy on a preFIRM residence (home built before the first Flood Insurance Rate Maps were created).  This new policy could be due to a lapsed flood insurance policy or a new policy being written due to a transfer of the property and/or a requirement by a lender for flood insurance;
• There will also be a lag for people who will be expecting refunds due to the change in their flood insurance premium as a result of the HFIAA.
• If you are a property owner living in Bennington County or in the Town/Village of Richmond here in Vermont:  FEMA will be releasing new preliminary or effective DFIRMs in the coming year.  Richmond's new DFIRMs are scheduled to become effective on 8/2/2014.  Bennington County's new DFIRMs are anticipated to become effective about one year from now (March 2015).  If the new preliminary DFIRMs show your house to be located in the mapped flood hazard area where you had not been shown to be located in the flood hazard area on previous FIRMs, you may be eligible for a grandfathered flood insurance rating.  Anyone who may be eligible for receiving grandfathered flood insurance rates is encouraged to get flood insurance BEFORE the new DFIRMs become effective for your community.  For more information regarding FEMA's grandfathering policy, please see an earlier post that was written for the Washington County map update process.  Please note that the estimated flood insurance premiums discussed may be different due to the effects of either Biggert Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2012 (BW12) or HFIAA.  

UPDATE **For Properties newly mapped into the FEMA Special Flood Hazard Area: your first year would be rated as a Preferred Risk Policy (PRP) rate - i.e. as if you are not located in the flood hazard area.  Policy ratings in subsequent years would be based on the same phase-in method used to eliminate pre-FIRM suubsidies.

• Flood Insurance premiums are going up for everyone.  While the HFIAA is allowing a phase-in of higher rates for primary homeowners, the law is still enabling a push for all policies to eventually reach full actuarial rates.  Property owners should seriously consider mitigating their home or structure(s) to reduce their flood risk and reduce the cost of flood insurance.  Additional information about mitigating your home or structure can be found on the VT Flood Resilience Sharepoint site found under either "Step 5: Insure" or "Step 3: Reduce".  

If you are a local official or someone else that may be helping individuals affected by the changes from the HFIAA, the Association of State Floodplain Managers (ASFPM) will be offering two upcoming webinars in May and June focused on the changes to Biggert Waters 2012 from HFIAA (see dates below).  From the ASFPM announcement, the first webinar in early April filled up and these two follow up webinars are also expected fill up quickly.  

Homeowners Flood Insurance Affordability Act (HFIAA) of 2014 (AKA Grimm-Waters 2014) meets Biggert-Waters 2012: Impacts and Implications

Learn how the Homeowner Flood Insurance Affordability Act modifies and expands on BW-12 implications

1 core CEC for CFMs

$30 for ASFPM Individual Members*

$45 ASFPM Chapters/Agencies/Corporate Partners*

$60 Non-members

*Members must enter the event promo code at registration to receive the preferred rate.  ASFPM members should register through the ASFPM Membership Login page.  

More information about the webinars can found by clicking on the webinar flyer links below:

Friday, May 2nd, 2014; 2:00pm-3:00pm (EDT)

Thursday, June 26th, 2014; 2:00pm-3:00pm (EDT)

US Senate Passes Bill to Delay Implementation of BW12

2/12/14 Update:  Here is a FEMA FAQ about the impacts of this bill on the implementation of BW12

There have been several articles (Washington Post, NYT) published today that provided details on the US Senate's passage of a bill to delay the implementation of Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2012, or BW12.  There has been discussion about a possible repeal or delays of the BW12 bill for several months.  However, this discussion seems to have gained more steam as homeowners and other people with structures located within the Special Flood Hazard Area are starting to receive their new flood insurance premiums.  More information from ASFPM about some of the efforts that are being made to consider or include other options in any bill that may be brought to the floor in the US House of Representatives. 

For anyone who is not familiar with the BW12 bill, the insurance reform act had several goals including changes to flood mapping, flood grants and reauthorizing the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) for an additional five years.  However, the changes that BW12 is best known for are changes to the flood insurance aspect of the National Flood Insurance Program.  Many of the flood insurance changes were designed to make the flood insurance fund more stable by reducing the fund's current deficit to the US Treasury, as well as beginning to create extra savings to help the fund to be able to withstand large scale disaster declarations like Hurricanes Katrina, Ike and Sandy.  Another aspect of the flood insurance reforms was to phase in actuarial rates for flood insurance policies which resulted in some groups of people losing the subsidy that they may have for their policy or losing any subsidy when a new policy was written.  Past posts by Ned include some information about how BW12 would impact flood insurance policies within the State of Vermont.  FEMA's website also has quite a bit of information that goes into much fuller detail about these flood insurance changes.

Many people have recognized that the original bill had issues in implementation and execution of the stated goals and objectives, specifically that the phase in of higher rates happened at a relatively fast rate, that some home or other building owners may go right from a subsidized rate directly to a full actuarial rate overnight and while many policy holders may not want to pay the higher premiums for many reasons, there was a definite contingent of people who would not have an actual ability to pay for the higher rates. 

Despite the myriad of issues with the implementation of BW12, the reasons for the passage of BW12 still remains - trying to have the National Flood Insurance Program be able to be fiscally solvent and support itself by the premiums that are paid into the program and to keep general taxpayers for funding flood recovery efforts.  A third very compelling reason for BW12 focused on having people in a flood hazard area recognize and pay for the true cost and risk of living in a hazard area, especially as we have been seeing more frequent and intense flood events and sea level rise starting to impact properties that may have been less vulnerable in the past.  The idea was that if a person living or working in a hazard area had to pay the actuarial flood insurance rate for living in this risky zone, then more structure owners would undertake mitigation efforts to help reduce their yearly premiums.

The Association of State Floodplain Managers (ASFPM) released a Policy Paper in October of 2013 that included 9 recommendations of how BW12 could be altered to improve implementation but cautioned against repeal.  This was in order to help keep moving the NFIP towards fiscal solvency as well as continue to focus on the growing demand for mitigating homes and other infrastructure that is located within the FEMA-mapped Special Flood Hazard Area. Many of the 9 ASFPM recommendations that had been made focused on continuing to promote and encourage meaningful mitigation of flood prone homes in a variety of ways.  This included:

• finding more ways to fund mitigation projects and existing hazard mitigation grant programs;
• exploring ways to better incentivize mitigation efforts through tax incentives or long-term flood insurance policy benefits;
• recognizing partial mitigation efforts by homeowners; and
• making loans more available to home and other building owners who may be looking for ways to mitigate their structure from future floods. 

At this time, it looks like it is uncertain how such a BW12 reform/delay bill will fair in the US House of Representatives, but we will surely hear more of this debate in the near future. 

Property-Owner's Guide to Rebuilding for Flood Resilience workshop

Here is an opportunity that we wanted to pass along.  It is a evening and following full day event in November that is targeted to individual property owners who are looking to get ideas and discuss flood resistant reconstruction techniques.  The intent of this workshop is to incorporate many different topics that can help a homeowner rebuilding after a flood, such as energy efficiency, historic preservation, stormwater management and landscape design.  Registration and additional information can be found at the website listed at the bottom of the post.

DON'T MISS the Property-owners' Guide to Rebuilding for Flood Resilience: a DESIGN CHARETTE to Generate Ideas for Adapting Flood Resistant Reconstruction Techniques to Our Climate and Culture

Integrating Practical Ideas for Flood Hazard Mitigation with Landscape Design, Energy Efficiency, Stormwater Management and Historic Preservation

THURSDAY NOVEMBER 7^TH from 6:30PM – 8:30PM

FRIDAY NOVEMBER 8^TH from 8:30AM – 3:00PM, luncheon provided

REGISTER NOW:

 https://rebuilding-for-flood-resilience.eventbrite.com

 

Upcoming Web Training Events from STARR

From Alex Sirotek, STARR : Hello all,

I’d like to present the upcoming free, online trainings available through STARR. These trainings cover a variety of topics, from the NFIP basics through specifics of elevation certificates, and are presented by STARR staff, FEMA, and State organizations. Many of the courses are eligible for CEC credits for Certified Floodplain Managers.

Please feel free to register for any courses you are interested in attending, and invite or pass information on these courses on to potentially interested communities or organizations in your states. Also, if you are interested in using this online platform for any trainings that your state would like to present, STARR can support you in that effort. Please let me know if you’d like additional information on hosting online trainings.

To register for a course or to check on upcoming courses, navigate to http://j.mp/starrwebtraining and click the “Upcoming” tab. Below are the courses offered in September:

September 11, 1:00 pm Eastern – NFIP Basics
This one-hour session will cover the history of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), basic terminology, governing authority, and provide an overview of the community’s role in floodplain management through the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). The target audience are state and local officials who need a general understanding of the ins and outs of the program and guidance on where to go for more training and answers. Continuing Education and Professional Development Credits are available.

September 18, 2:00 pm Eastern – Preparing for Post-Disaster Responsibilities
Early disaster preparedness is crucial for the efficient and effective administration of any Floodplain Administrator's duties. This one-hour long webinar, presented by the Missouri State Emergency Management Agency, highlights the local floodplain administrator's tasks and offers guidance for a quick and well-organized response. Continuing Education and Professional Development Credits are available.

September 24, 2:00 pm Eastern – Floodplain Development Plan Review
This 90-minute session will highlight eight basic steps to reviewing development inside the Special Flood Hazard Area (SFHA). This is beginner training, recommended for those new to the role of floodplain administrator. 1 CEC for ASFPM Certified Floodplain Managers.

September 25, 1:00 pm Eastern – Inspecting Floodplain Development
This beginner two-hour session will highlight special considerations for plan reviewers and building inspectors when evaluating and inspecting development inside the Special Flood Hazard Area, including basic concepts and terminology, minimum construction standards (from the IBC/IRC), and conducting inspections. 2 CECs for ASFPM Certified Floodplain Managers

September 26, 1:00 pm Eastern – Elevation Certificates
Training on the proper way to complete FEMA Form 81-31 and best practices for using the Elevation Certificate in the floodplain development review process. 2 CECs for ASFPM Certified Floodplain Managers (CFMs) that register and attend individually and pass the learning objectives quiz at the end of the session.

In addition, here is a summary of courses currently scheduled in October and November. Additional courses may be added, so check http://j.mp/starrwebtraining for the current list:

 Oct 2, 2013 , 2:00 PM Eastern-  Substantial Damage Estimation
 Oct 9, 2013 , 1:00 PM Eastern-  Determining a Base Flood Elevation
 Oct 10, 2013 , 12:00 PM Eastern-  Elevation Certificates for A Zones
 Oct 16, 2013 , 2:00 PM Eastern-  CRS Basics
 Oct 17, 2013 , 1:00 PM Eastern-  Hazus and the Community Rating System
 Oct 23, 2013 , 1:00 PM Eastern-  Elevation Certificates
 Oct 24, 2013 , 12:00 PM Eastern-  NFIP Basics
 Nov 6, 2013 , 1:00 PM Eastern-  Floodplain Development Plan Review
 Nov 7, 2013 , 1:00 PM Eastern-  Inspecting Floodplain Development

Please let me know if you have any questions.
Thank you!
Alex

Alex Sirotek, CFM
STARR
FEMA Region 1 Regional Service Center
99 High Street, 3rd Floor
Boston, MA 02110
617-574-4402
SirotekAR@cdmsmith.com