Studies sound alarm on ‘badly out-of-date’ FEMA flood maps
In addition, many of the flood maps that FEMA has drawn “are badly out-of-date,” according to a separate study by the R Street Institute, a free-market think tank in Washington.
The outdated flood maps fail to account for climate change and “do not reflect the degree to which climate change and sea-level rise are expected to heighten the risk of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.
A November 2017 report by the Congressional Budget Office found that exactly half of the 166 counties with the highest flood risk used flood maps that were more than 5 years old. Forty-two of the counties used maps that were more than 10 years old, the CBO found.
