FEMA Flood Mitigation Assistance Grant to Fund Marsh Restoration

For the first time, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has used its Flood Mitigation Assistance grant funds for a major nature-based marsh restoration project targeted at reducing hurricane storm surge flood damage, according to an article from the Insurance Newsnet. Typically the program is used to underwrite the cost of “nonstructural” projects like elevating, acquiring, or relocating homes or floodproofing businesses. The FEMA grant will fund $14.8 million of a $21 million wetland restoration project in an area of St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, where homeowners have had to file repeated severe flood insurance claims totalling $1.23 billion, reports Mark Schleifstein. State and local funding will make up the rest, and the project is expected to reduce future flood damage by millions of dollars.

“The project targets an area of open water and broken marsh outside the levee system between the northern rim of Lake Lery and the villages of Poydras and St. Bernard inside the southernmost part of the east bank hurricane levee,” according to the article. It will involve dredging the lake to create 400 new acres of wetland and building a 2.4-mile armored embankment. “​​By closing the broken part of the lake shoreline and recreating wetlands in the new open water area, officials hope to reduce the effects of surge and waves on the levee system.” The article also discusses additional investigations by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to look into further hurricane risk reduction in Louisiana.