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Health & Science

Flood risk will rise with climate change, experts say

By Juliet Eilperin,November 01, 2012

(Page 2 of 2)

It is unclear how FEMA will implement these policies. The agency commissioned a study that concluded two years ago that the size of the nation’s flood plains could increase by 40 to 45 percent by the end of the century because of rising seas and more intense precipitation, but the agency has not released the analysis publicly. A FEMA spokesman said the study is “under review by federal agencies with expertise in climate sciences.”

“The key agencies charged with managing floods and disasters in this country have had their heads in the sand for many years when it comes to climate change,” said the National Wildlife Federation’s vice president for wildlife conservation, John Kostyack, whose group has sued FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers for failing to take climate change into account when making policy decisions.

By contrast, the Federal Highway Administration issued a Sept. 24 memo saying federal dollars can be spent on adapting transportation infrastructure to climate change and extreme weather.

Officials in Vermont, which has experienced a flooding disaster every year for the past quarter-century and suffered widespread damage from Hurricane Irene in 2011, have sparred with FEMA on several fronts. The agency recently denied Townsend, Vt., the funds to build larger culverts to manage the level of flooding it recorded last year. FEMA also does not take into account the erosion Vermont is experiencing with more powerful storms, since it only considers inundation floods.

“We already know they are undersized, and we know they will be destroyed in the next flooding event,” said Deborah Markowitz, secretary of Vermont’s Agency of Natural Resources, referring to the culverts. Markowitz added that since the state requires communities to take the latest river science into account when rebuilding infrastructure, “That’s a major source of tension right now.”

Other facilities that have met federal guidelines have also been overwhelmed by extreme weather events: in March 2010 a water treatment plant in Warwick, R.I., that had been built to meet FEMA’s flooding requirements shut down after having no plan to cope with the extreme flooding it experienced.

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