As Trump Phases Out FEMA, Is It Time to Flee the Floodplains?

As federal agencies like FEMA, which the President has expressed a desire to dismantle, pull back on disaster assistance and other federal funding, the need for managed retreat from areas at high risk of flooding is becoming more urgent.

As Ella Hanson explains in an opinion piece in Governing, “States and localities will never be able to fill the void left by the federal government. But as governors, mayors and county leaders make difficult decisions about how to allocate their limited resources, there is an underutilized strategy that can significantly reduce the cost of future disasters: relocating residents from floodplains through voluntary buyouts.”

According to Hudson, managed retreat, not a common tactic in the United States, could “prevent the most devastating consequences of the disasters that inevitably lie ahead.” Until now, the federal government funded buyouts after disasters which have been “extremely effective” but “slow to deploy and limited in scale.”

Pointing to examples from New Jersey, North Carolina, and Texas, Hudson notes that states and cities can act faster than federal agencies to process buyouts and help residents relocate. Because convincing people to relocate requires a lot of information and trust, “Permanent buyout programs with full-time case managers are uniquely positioned to form relationships with homeowners, raise awareness about flood risk and help communities reimagine the use of newly acquired public land.”