The common-sense changes included updating floodplain maps, improving the habitat value of levees, and requiring stronger minimum floodplain protections to qualify for flood insurance.
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In 1985 Rod Emmer, the long-time director of the Louisiana floodplain managers' association, gave a stunningly prescient presentation to a national gathering of floodplain managers in New Orleans.
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In Houston, for example, the city's current Hazard Mitigation Plan calls to discourage people from building homes in the 100-year floodplain, but it doesn't say anything about the 500-year floodplain.
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For Knobloch, staying on the floodplain wasn't worth the risk.
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Chad Berginnis, CFM, executive director of the Association of State Floodplain Managers, had previously been a local and state floodplain manager and community planner with nearly 25 years of experience working in flood disasters.
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The same holds true for floodplain regulations: once a home is substantially damaged by a flood, during rebuilding it must come into compliance with any regulations on elevation or other building requirements in the floodplain.
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Others did the same on the floodplain of the Tennessee river.
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Dr. Kjær ventured to the floodplain via helicopter and collected sediment.
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Harris County has purchased more than 3,000 floodplain homes since 1985.
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"Obviously, there will be some relocations, particularly in floodplain areas," Marrero said.
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An insurance product for compliance with updated floodplain regulations should have three key features: it is paid quickly, it covers the full costs of all upgrades to be compliant with current floodplain regulations, and it is triggered by a flood claim.
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Image: NASANearly 21990 years ago, the Pathfinder spacecraft explored a suspected floodplain on Mars.
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Hand-tended fields of potatoes and maize covered the floodplain, fringed by dazzling wildflowers.
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Harris County, which includes Houston, started using new floodplain maps from FEMA in January.
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About 40 percent of homes damaged by Hurricane Harvey were outside the 100-year floodplain.
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The Association of State Floodplain Managers crowed a little about the success of Beatrice, Neb.
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Just a third of all Americans living in a floodplain have flood insurance, according to FEMA.
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The bank was built on a floodplain over the ocean, and water swelled up from below.
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Floodplain experts wrote to Trump this week, urging him to rethink his reversal of Obama's order.
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Matthew Garner is one of the California Conservation Corps workers restoring a floodplain in Modesto, Calif.
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Of course, there's a lot more to making a floodplain than just knocking down a levee.
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Gerald Galloway, a specialist on flood risk and floodplain management at the University of Maryland, agreed.
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Waters from the Congaree and Wateree Rivers sweep through a floodplain, creating wetlands, oxbow lakes and sloughs.
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"It's not like someone who builds in a floodplain intentionally, knowing that there's this chance," Schulte said.
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Farms in the 100-year floodplain were bought out, and more than 100 hog lagoons shut down.
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This was a comfort to the millions of people who had settled (and resettled) in the floodplain.
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The Association of State Floodplain Managers recommends a 500-year standard as a minimum for urban areas.
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Ramalho says that understanding this behavior is further evidence supporting the need to preserve the Amazon floodplain.
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Ed Thomas is a Floodplain Manager, and Disaster Response and Recovery Specialist, who is also an Attorney.
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While other towns built ever-higher levees, the city of Davenport bought up property on the floodplain.
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Did your mayor greenlight major development in a floodplain and destroy wetlands that could have absorbed flood waters?
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According to the Corps, 21986,226 acres of floodplain and river habitat were converted to farmland or otherwise lost.
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Nationwide, only about a third of all homes in the floodplain have flood insurance, according to Dr. Kaniewski.
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Living outside the floodplain also made them ineligible for different types of loans and federal grants, she said.
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It hovers above the floodplain on V-shaped columns; sloping ramps provide access to the elevated main floor.
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And there is simply no space in the already-cramped urban metropolis for new government housing outside the floodplain.
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By allowing water to sweep over its acreage, a floodplain can reduce the river level in a nearby community.
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Of the households in the floodplain that have flood insurance, about one-quarter are low-income, the data show.
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While this work has already begun, a reauthorized NFIP must ensure that a floodplain mapping program is fully funded.
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"We're in a floodplain but a hundred-year one," he said as floodwaters lapped at the house's front steps.
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Because the maps are not kept up to date, properties supposedly outside the 100-year floodplain are being flooded repeatedly.
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Mnyamawamtuka lived along a floodplain or river delta that experienced wet and dry seasons, according to the associated geological research.
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Nashville has mandated that level for residential properties since 1979, said Roger Lindsey, a Nashville storm water and floodplain manager.
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The first night's camp, called Puerto Rico, was Mile 8, river right, a broad floodplain of sand, stones, and grass.
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"They think they can gamble and avoid buying flood insurance," said Paul Osman, chief of state floodplain programs for Illinois.
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This indicates that they liked the forest-covered floodplain of the ancient Australian-Antarctic rift valley millions of years ago.
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It begins on the floodplain of the Mississippi, close to Arkansas's border with Louisiana, in the turmoil after the civil war.
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It features a wide array of habitats, including terra firme ("solid ground") and várzea (seasonal floodplain) forests, palm swamps, and wetlands.
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Weak rules and regulations Houston is a low-lying city in a coastal floodplain that's a frequent target for Gulf hurricanes.
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"Houston is somewhat legendary for having no real zoning," said Chad Berginnis, executive director of the Association of State Floodplain Managers.
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Diluvicursor roamed a forested broad rift valley floodplain between Australia and Antarctica, which remained connected until about 45 million years ago.
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That could mean frequently reevaluating evacuation zones, updating floodplain maps and reassessing wildfire risk -- and always sharing that information with residents.
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Much of the land along the Rio Grande is privately owned, and an international treaty bans construction on the river's floodplain.
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Protesters have moved to other camps, including the Sacred Stone camp, which was not evicted and is not on the floodplain.
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They say they need to clean up campsites that lie in the floodplain ahead of anticipated high waters in the coming weeks.
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The rich soil of a river floodplain is ideal for planting, and in times of drought, the river is the farmer's savior.
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A várzea forest, the region is largely inaccessible between December and March when its floodplain absorbs enormous discharge from the adjacent rivers.
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Baton Rouge, the state capital and largest city in the region, and Denham Springs modified their floodplain building standards to reduce risk.
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On conventional maps, simple lines marking a floodplain boundary often are interpreted as separating safe zones and those at risk, Bledsoe said.
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No floodplain would help in such a disaster, but projects like Dos Rios can lessen some of the impacts of smaller floods.
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And you're on a lower floodplain than the Wall Street Journal, and by the way, it's going to hit the Journal too.
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These infrastructure failures are prompting a look at how nature can help—through oyster reef restoration along coasts or floodplain restoration along rivers.
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Dan Delich co-founded the Floodplain Alliance for Insurance Reform and worked previously as a congressional staffer and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency analyst.
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Dan Delich co-founded the Floodplain Alliance for Insurance Reform and worked previously as a congressional staffer and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency analyst.
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Then, as the fish swim around the floodplain, they pass the seeds inside those fruit, which often remain intact, as part of their faeces.
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Vowing to never let that happen again, Valmeyer made a difficult decision: to move most of the town off the floodplain to higher ground.
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The two hurricanes could cost US taxpayers around $200 billion, estimated Larry Larson, a senior policy adviser at the Association of State Floodplain Managers.
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The program was designed to provide federally backed coverage for homeowners and small businesses, while reducing risk through the adoption of floodplain management standards.
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The camp lies across the floodplain of Cannonball River, which feeds into the Missouri River to form the northeast boundary to the Standing Rock reservation.
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But homeowners living in a 500-year floodplain don't typically have to purchase flood insurance — after all, 500-to-1 odds are pretty long odds.
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A lack of sufficient drainage in the city of 6.5m people, which is built on thick clay soil on a floodplain, has exacerbated the flooding.
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In Houston much of the damage occurred outside the floodplain, so many properties may be completely uncovered, and left relying on ad hoc federal relief.
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Critics say it will displace subsistence farmers, is at risk of inundation due to being built on a floodplain, and will cost more than planned.
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Rampant vines and flowering bushes give the area a fantastical aura, as if this old state park had become a floodplain of the Amazon River.
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In 2010, the value of property within the 19003-year floodplain was $58.7 billion, according to a report by Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller.
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A Virginia county cannot enforce its 2017 floodplain regulation against Dominion Energy's Atlantic Coast Pipeline, Senior U.S. District Judge Norman Moon ruled Monday in Charlottesville.
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Their home was not in the floodplain and it had survived flooding in April 2016, making the Sotolongos think they did not need flood insurance.
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South of Samarra, residents would likely have to get farther away to avoid flooding, since the land begins to flatten out, making the floodplain wider.
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That standard provides that when federal taxpayer dollars are used to build or rebuild in or near the floodplain, the structure must be built higher.
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As well, the funds should be enough to cover the full costs of all necessary upgrades in order to be compliant with current floodplain regulations.
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A 100-year floodplain is land with a 1% chance of flooding each year over the next century, generally before taking climate shifts into account.
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Instead, she envisions the park as a floodplain, slowing and absorbing rising waters with salt-tolerant Juniper and sumac trees her volunteers have already planted.
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Around 2300,2000 years ago, this region started to change, converting from a floodplain to a region that fluctuated wildly between very wet and very dry conditions.
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The shift from floodplain to grasslands had a profound effect on the flora and fauna that lived there, and thus the humans who depended on both.
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The road cut through the floodplain east of the Mississippi River, passing yellowing farm fields, yards filled with auto parts, and wooded ravines barren of leaves.
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"Houston is not designed to handle this kind of rainfall," said Professor Sam Brody, an expert on urban and floodplain management at Texas A&M University.
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"It's the life-saving mode: Trying to save as many lives as possible," said Larry Larson, senior policy adviser at the Association of State Floodplain Managers.
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About 90 percent of this multi-billion-dollar aid package will likely go to restoring public infrastructure, according Larson, of the Association of State Floodplain Managers.
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In Asunción, over 2000,290 people still live in an assortment of plazas, roadways, and parks that extend along the coast above the floodplain in the capital.
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But in addition to recreating the past, floodplain restoration is increasingly seen as a way of coping with the future — one of human-induced climate change.
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That number is expected to grow significantly since California voters last month approved Proposition 68, which includes $300 million for floodplain projects in the Central Valley.
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Mr. Osman, the Illinois floodplain manager, said it could also be hard to get older people to accept buyouts, as well as people in poorer neighborhoods.
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Johnson and his colleagues identified 40,000 square kilometers (15,400 square miles) of U.S. land likely to be developed by mid-century within the 100-year floodplain.
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Agencies were directed to apply nebulous floodplain requirements in federal planning, licensing and regulatory permitting actions, and these Carter-era instructions remain codified in agency regulations.
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The well-drained soils of a floodplain are more likely to result in trees that are good for basketry: straight, supple, and relatively free of knots.
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Building in the very areas that will predictably flood creates two problems, according to Larry Larson, senior policy adviser with the Association of State Floodplain Managers.
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Building in the very areas that will predictably flood creates two problems, according to Larry Larson, senior policy adviser with the Association of State Floodplain Managers.
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The second determinant is the beautiful but challenging site in Whistler which, although blessed by magnificent evergreen forest vegetation, is located within the floodplain of Fitzsimmons Creek.
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But it is also located on a floodplain, built on a former salt marsh that was filled in the nineteenth century to accommodate the city's growing development.
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A draft of the study was released in June, which recommended that the U.S. government should buy 70 out of the 229 structures located in the floodplain.
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Meanwhile, locals living near the park — built in a floodplain — complained that it was regularly spilling water into the surrounding area, flooding their front yards and driveways.
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Plus, the river's natural floodplain would require the wall to be built well north of the border, leaving some land on the Mexican side of the wall.
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For example, the relatively new incorporated community of Central in East Baton Rouge Parish reports that 75 percent of its territory is in the 100-year floodplain.
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And that number is expected to grow significantly since California voters last month approved Proposition 68, which includes $300 million for floodplain projects in the Central Valley.
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This is despite the fact that mitigation has a 4-1 payback, [Larry]Larson, a [a senior policy adviser at the Association of State Floodplain Managers] said.
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Many mortgage lenders require any homeowner living in a 100-year floodplain to buy flood insurance (homeowners with federally backed mortgages have to have flood insurance, as well).
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The Trump National Golf Club in northern Virginia was slapped Wednesday with zoning violations after Loudoun County officials determined the property improperly removed trees from a designated floodplain.
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Risks can vary greatly within a given zone so these averages are of limited use, and the floodplain maps determining the zones are often decades out of date.
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Ubirr, a rock formation that juts out over the Nadab floodplain, is home to a collection of stunning Aboriginal rock paintings, many of them thousands of years old.
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Extending these requirements to the 500-year floodplain, areas protected by levees, or properties receiving disaster recovery assistance can reduce the need for payments to uninsured property owners.
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An area of West Houston called Memorial City, for example, was outside Houston's 500-year floodplain but flooded three times in the past decade: in 2009, 2015, and 2016.
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Designating especially vulnerable areas in the floodplain as protected open spaces — which often requres buying property back from owners — could also save a lot of money for communities overall.
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A United States-Mexico treaty prohibits building a wall or levee in the Rio Grande floodplain, so the map shows the wall being built well north of the river.
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An area of West Houston called Memorial City, for example, was outside Houston's 500-year floodplain but flooded three times in the past decade: in 2009, 2015, and 5003.
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When I tried to make a map of my study area in the Logone Floodplain of Cameroon, I assumed that places had boundaries, as the one separating Ohio from Michigan.
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"More planning, I think, would have really reduced the impact (from Harvey)," Sam Brody, a professor at Texas A&M University and an expert on urban and floodplain management said.
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There are 62 industrial hog farms within North Carolina's 100-year floodplain, environmentalists estimate, and Duke Energy Corp has four coal ash sites in the coastal area touched by Florence.
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"Communities and states often want to allow as much development as possible, because they reap the tax revenue," said Larry Larson, director emeritus of the Association of State Floodplain Managers.
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One necessity is building above the 500-year floodplain, according to Gary Wojtaszek, president of CyrusOne, whose facilities include a data center in the mostly flooded Galleria area of Houston.
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About a half-dozen states, including Illinois and Wisconsin, have adopted floodplain building rules tighter than federal ones, and a few dozen communities have prohibited building on floodplains altogether, he said.
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Details: Nationally, only 1/3 of homes in the floodplain have corresponding insurance, per NYT, and no more than 15% of those in Central states plagued by recent flooding are insured.
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But experts in floodplain and storm water management say its damage could have been lessened if authorities in Houston had paid more attention in recent years to three big factors: 22010.
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The golf club must cease all developmental activities on the floodplain, retroactively submit its plans for approval and obtain proper zoning permits once local officials conduct an assessment of the land.
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"You don't want to live in a floodplain, and you can live on the coast in the near term, but that's maybe not a long-term investment," she tells Business Insider.
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But inside the floodplain, average annual premiums in 2015 were $1,098, with costs several times that much for homes facing the greatest risk, according to data released by FEMA last year.
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The weir, something between a dam and a levee, lets dangerously high water spill over its top into a long, narrow, floodplain filled with rice paddies, grain fields, and other row crops.
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The next area for development, Mr. Ginther said, is Franklinton, one of the city's oldest neighborhoods and across the river from downtown in the 200-acre floodplain along the Scioto's western bank.
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Yet nearly all federal programs fail to "adequately value the future development potential of land that will be tomorrow's subdivisions," said Chad Berginnis, executive director of the Association of State Floodplain Managers.
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In Hamilton City, California, The Nature Conservancy is working with the Army Corps of Engineers to reduce flood damage and restore ecosystems through levee setbacks and reconnecting 85033,400 acres of Sacramento River floodplain.
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In Rampara Kisana, one of the last settlements before the road vanishes into the floodplain of a Ganges tributary, Singh was the first farmer to buy a television after power arrived in March.
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Highly touted and with financing from the city, the 28-acre, $25 billion Hudson Yards development in Manhattan and the $2 billion Cornell Campus on Roosevelt Island both sit in the city's floodplain.
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There has been no effort to deflect development or require safe construction practices within the 500-year floodplain, even though the region's flood history suggests that broader flood mitigation efforts would be prudent.
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That means many homeowners with water now up to their knees, or higher, were never required to buy flood insurance, because their property was not listed as being on a 100-year floodplain.
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"At some point, there's got be an acknowledgement that this area is subject to frequent flooding," Chad Berginnis, executive director of the Association of State Floodplain Managers, based in Madison, Wisconsin, told BuzzFeed News.
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Congress now has the golden opportunity to better protect the public from devastating floods and safeguard floodplain habitat by reforming the broken NFIP before it expires July 31 — at the height of hurricane season.
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These can include storm surge risk maps that reflect sea-level rise, better water management to reduce the effects of longer and more intense droughts, and improved floodplain management in increasingly flood-prone areas.
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If some property owners who live near the ocean or in a river floodplain can be convinced to sell their homes, and the land is returned to open space, the entire community will benefit.
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"They are particularly problematic because they would be the first walls built inside the Rio Grande floodplain, and thus are likely to cause floods in the populated areas where they are planned," he says.
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But Scott Nicol, with the Sierra Club in McAllen, Texas, says he's worried that CPB intends to act unilaterally and will build new fence in the floodplain of the Rio Grande, despite Mexico's objections.
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Some state legislatures and municipalities have put in place their own more stringent restrictions on building in low-lying areas, said Chad Berginnis, executive director of the Association of State Floodplain Managers, a non-profit.
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Using geographic information system mapping, Dahl combined floodplain data and Superfund site data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Office for Coastal Management to show just how many sites were at risk from flooding.
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Paul Osman, the chief of statewide floodplain programs for the Illinois office of water resources, said his state's program, which has bought some 20.2,22012 structures and properties, made all the difference in this year's floods.
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For construction in a floodplain, the general aim is to elevate occupied floors above the expected flood level and to keep lower floors fairly spartan, ensuring they can survive inundation with little or no permanent damage.
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"My husband and I own our one and only 2,000-square-foot house, which is in the 500-year floodplain," said retired middle school teacher Emily Wilkins to former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro.
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Only later, after multiple interviews and observations, did I learn that it is better to think of places in the floodplain as points in an open system, like Columbus and Ann Arbor, without any boundary between them.
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In March, the county warned that the golf course could be fined hundreds of dollars for improperly removing trees, but it later concluded the tree clearing had no impact on the floodplain, The Loudoun Times-Mirror reported.
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Congress wanted to insure older, existing houses in flood-prone areas, while incentivizing new houses and development to be built elevated above the floodplain, so they wouldn't get continuously flooded and keep costing the federal government money.
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Rising insurance rates threaten to price many people out of coverage; outdated floodplain maps fail to adequately reflect changing flood risks; and cities don't have the funds they need to take actions to mitigate their flood risks.
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"The set of floodplain maps that we had were really done between the 1930s and the 1950s were done with surveying techniques that had been accurate and state of the art then, but not accurate now," said Aggarwala.
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Since 1993, over $3 billion in federal funding has been used for the voluntary buyout of over 38,000 floodplain properties nationwide, including more than 1,500 homes in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut after Hurricanes Irene and Sandy.
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Floodplain restoration measures are being adopted in communities from Louisiana to Washington to work with nature to not only save lives and property but also restore wildlife habitat, improve water quality and make communities more resilient to flooding.
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In a study published this week in Archaeometry, Mahaney and his colleagues describe a floodplain bog near the Col de la Traversette, a mountain pass perched a dizzying 3,000 meters above sea level on the French/Italian border.
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Even the things the city of Houston was trying to do weren't working — the mitigation plan called to discourage building within the 100-year floodplain, but 7,000 homes were built since 2010 in low-lying areas of the city.
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These animals lived along the Texas Gulf Coast between 11 million and 12 million years ago in a mixed woodland-grassland environment featuring a broad floodplain and meandering rivers—so the comparison to today's African Serengeti is quite apt.
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And while FEMA flood maps let people know if they are "in or out" of high hazard areas, they do little to explain the gradations of flood risk and how flood risk continues past the 100-year floodplain line.
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NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Indian environmentalists are aghast that a huge cultural festival is to be held on the floodplain of Delhi's main river from Friday, warning that the event, and the 3.5 million visitors expected, will devastate the area's biodiversity.
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An Associated Press team that visited Gorongosa in April flew over the park in a helicopter, spotting hippos and crocodiles splashing in a floodplain, a herd of more than 100 buffalo and numerous waterbuck (a 2016 census counted more than 45,000).
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They defined the flood risk as the floodplain of a storm surge with a 100-year return period, and calculated how such flood footprints and frequency would shift depending on different scenarios involving low, medium to high greenhouse gas emissions.
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William Stiles, the head of Wetlands Watch, a Norfolk-based group that advises local governments and nonprofits on sea level rise adaptation and floodplain management, says local officials are just coming to terms with the staggering scale of the challenge.
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Those living within a 100-year floodplain (ie, with a 1% annual chance of a flood occurring), as defined by the maps of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and holding a government-guaranteed mortgage, are obliged to purchase NFIP coverage.
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In 2012, the EPA said that nearly a third of the nation's federal hazardous waste sites were within a 100-year floodplain (an area with a 1-in-100 chance of a flood event in any given year, according to FEMA).
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He also said the lack of federal guidance has led to deeply uneven enforcement of floodplain building at the state level, with enormous disparities around the country resulting in more resilient states, in essence, subsidizing disaster-prone development in others.
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The state of Assam is about two and a half hours east of Delhi by plane, a sprawling strip of lush jungle and floodplain squeezed between the mountain kingdom of Bhutan to the north and watery Bangladesh to the south.
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In Buglandar, Mohammed Yasin Sheikh led us among the wooden homes, through the razor fence to the wildflower fields by the Kishenganga, then to the floodplain of a side creek, where local men were engaged in a fierce game of volleyball.
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While the floodplain land used to build these developments is often cheap, the houses themselves tend to be expensive: a 2004 study in the Netherlands revealed that floating homes are around 8-16 percent more expensive than their landlubbing counterparts.
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DHS reportedly paid about $25 million for one of these temporary courtrooms — which is really just a series of tents built on a floodplain — even though the city of Laredo offered to lease it an office building for just $1.
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Toward the coast, Brunswick County Sheriff John Ingram said in a Facebook video that officers are going door-to-door in the Waccamaw River floodplain areas to encourage residents to consider evacuating and to get ready in case it becomes necessary.
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Not far from Mr. Eaton's home, the conservancy bought a 500-acre plot along the river, called Oneto-Denier; punched a hole in a levee to turn it into a floodplain; and planted native vegetation as part of the restoration effort.
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After Harvey, Houston passed an ordinance requiring certain dwellings to be raised to the floodplain for the highest flood levels in 500 years to plus two feet (61 cm) as Harvey was the city's fifth 500-year flood since 2010.
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That's created two challenges for federal authorities: The use of eminent domain to acquire private lands is unpopular, slow and expensive; and a wall built north of the floodplain would leave some private lands on the Mexican side of the wall.
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Once it came up for reauthorization in 2008, reformers on both sides of the political divide called for rate hikes to better reflect actual risks, better floodplain mapping, and space for private insurers to compete with the program to drive down costs.
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By the numbers: Rates can fluctuate geographically, but within the floodplain specifically, the Times reports that average annual premiums in 2015 came to nearly $1,100, with costs going up from there for those at the highest risk, per FEMA data released last year.
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It hasn't kept people from building houses on the Houston floodplain and constructing poorly-planned levees along the Mississippi, and it hasn't kept people from building houses up next to forest and letting undergrowth and small trees clump together—all while temperatures rise.
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One of my strongest memories from childhood is my grandfather taking me a block or two from our home on the floodplain of the Allegheny River in Pittsburgh to get a better look at Mount Washington and to see the annual illumination.
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Reforms should include updating antiquated flood maps, increasing protection and restoration of floodplain areas, moving toward risk-based rates and allowing private insurers to participate in the flood insurance marketplace, and investing in mitigation efforts to reduce the devastating costs of major floods.
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Canyon Gate is designed to flood, but it is not part of the 100-year floodplain defined by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, so it is not covered by FEMA rules that require mortgage seekers in flood zones to buy flood insurance.
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"If we were to put our levee systems farther back, we'd be able to accommodate more floodwaters and there would be less breaching, and we'd be able to restore more habitat," said Eileen Shader, the director of floodplain restoration at American Rivers.
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"Without accurate floodplain identification and mapping processes, management, and oversight, FEMA cannot provide members of the public with a reliable rendering of their true flood vulnerability or ensure that [National Flood Insurance Program] rates reflect the real risk of flooding," the report said.
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A possible explanation: as one of the few species able to persist on the floodplain year-round, through low water and high, waterbucks may have stayed out of target range during the war and been well positioned to rebound when the shooting stopped.
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For example, in the Houston metropolitan area there are over 27,000 single-home residences in regulated floodplains, UPI reports, citing the flood control district website, spurred along by a population increase of over 70% in that area's "100-year" floodplain between 2000 and 2010.
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Conscious of the threat posed to the Hunters Point peninsula by hurricanes and tidal surges, architects and engineers set the base of the library one foot above the 100-year floodplain (an area where the probability of flooding is one percent in any given year).
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In 20163, Pangala published the findings from her Amazon expedition, during which she had travelled its tributaries and flooded forests, taking measurements of methane from surface water, floating aquatic plants, soils, and the stems and leaves of almost 2,400 trees in 13 floodplain locations.
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So, for the life of me, I couldn't figure out why I was hearing it in the penumbra of an old-growth floodplain forest in South Carolina, a forest that once stretched as far north as Upper Virginia and as far west as East Texas.
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In addition to rising costs, candidates include an aging population in the floodplain, who have paid off their mortgages and so are no longer required to carry flood insurance, as well as state buyout programs that reduce the number of homes in flood-prone areas.
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" Norfolk now mandates that new construction be built three feet above current base flood elevation (as if the houses were boats, this distance from the waterline is called freeboard), and 18 inches above what Homewood says is "euphemistically known as the 500-year floodplain.
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"If you elevate your house, you're out of the floodplain," Mr. Silver said, adding that it was his practice to build new homes a foot above the elevation that FEMA expected floodwaters to rise or the high-water mark of the last storm — whichever was higher.
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The designations can get very fine-grained, but the basic three levels are areas that are at risk of waves higher than three feet (Zone V), areas subject to 100-year floods (Zone A) and areas subject to 500-year floods (Zone X). floodplain An area susceptible to inundation.
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As of 2014, and in response to Hurricane Sandy, New York began requiring that mechanical systems be installed above the "design flood elevation" — one or two feet higher than the highest expected flooding — at buildings, like American Copper, that are being constructed or substantially renovated in a floodplain.
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Hand-woven grass fences surrounding the kitchen and en suite bathrooms made the camp blend in with the scrub and trees on the edge of the floodplain, while carpets and leather sourced from artisans throughout the country gave the cozy, open-air common area a distinctly Chadian feel.
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It's now abundantly clear that there have been many terrible land use and zoning decisions made in the Houston area in the last several decades that have turned it into a paved floodplain megacity just waiting for a flooding disaster, as the incredibly timely ProPublica series Hell and High Water shows.
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The Do Nothing policy is supported by the company that maintains the landfill, Republic Services, but not by some researchers and activists, who note that the landfill is unlined, sits inside a floodplain, and isn't far from the Mississippi river, raising the potential to contaminate groundwater if it hasn't already.
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The developer's main rationale for constructing the new Tin Building nearly 230 yards from the site of its progenitor was to raise the structure one foot above the 21995-year floodplain, which would have been impossible on the original site because of the looming obstruction of the F.D.R. Drive above it.
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The camp had expanded onto the floodplain across the river, and grass-roots activists and members of the unelected traditional leadership, which serves as a sort of parallel Oceti Sakowin government, erected a Council Lodge, a large tepee from the tribe's past that the young people had only heard about.
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Kurita said there is a plan to build permanent housing for about 5,000 residents of Asunción in a location outside of the floodplain, though that is far from sufficient aid for the roughly 90,000 who were displaced in December, and there is no schedule for when that project will begin, let alone finish.
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As Nomade's name suggests, its aesthetics match those of the surrounding nomadic communities, and the camp is also mobile, allowing it to move with the wildlife on the Rigueik floodplain — "one of the most beautiful places in Zakouma, and busiest in terms of birds and game," said Matthieu Radot, the camp's current manager.
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The order followed a request in January by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe for protesters to pack up and leave the land, partly because Tribal Chairman Dave Archambault II had said the tribe's battle is now in the courts, and because the camps are on a floodplain that is expected to flood in the spring.
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First reported by E&E News, Trump's order undoes an Obama-era executive order that required new public infrastructure projects—like subsidized housing, hospitals, and fire departments—to be built a few feet above the so-called "100-year floodplain," or the height at which there is a 1 percent chance you'll experience an enormous flooding event.
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Under the National Flood Insurance Program, FEMA maps areas of the country at risk of flooding and requires homeowners in those zones to buy federal insurance polices and communities to enforce minimum construction standards, like elevating new homes above the 19803-year floodplain, the area with a 21980 percent probability of a flood in any given year.
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