From Scientific American:

In addition, many of the flood maps that FEMA has drawn “are badly out-of-date,” according to a separate study by the R Street Institute, a free-market think tank in Washington.

The outdated flood maps fail to account for climate change and “do not reflect the degree to which climate change and sea-level rise are expected to heighten the risk of flooding and expand the areas that will be subject to flooding in the future,” the R Street study says.

And the R Street Institute says that some of FEMA’s most obsolete maps are found “in some of the nation’s most flood-prone communities,” according to the study, written by R.J. Lehmann, an insurance expert.

FEMA requires people and businesses that own property in a high-risk flood area to have flood insurance if they also have a federally backed mortgage. FEMA sells almost all of the nation’s flood insurance coverage through its National Flood Insurance Program.

Lehmann says that FEMA should stop selling insurance to new construction in high-risk flood zones, which are defined as areas with a 1% annual chance of being flooded. This policy would reverse a trend of increasing development in the nation’s most flood-prone areas and mark a sharp departure from FEMA’s long-standing policy of insuring any property against flood damage regardless of its flood risk.

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