Cities Fight to Get Off FEMA's Flood Maps. One Montana Town Shows the Risk.
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Livingston is one of hundreds of communities across the U.S. that have successfully fought FEMA’s proposed (flood zone) maps through an appeals process that researchers say is widely gamed by local officials and property owners. The motive is usually money, since homes moved into high-risk zones typically lose value, and developments in high-risk zones are also usually more expensive, if they are allowed at all. Despite the rising toll of flooding, exacerbated in part by climate change, thousands of properties are removed from flood zones each year.
The risks were underscored by the devastating flooding that killed 27 people at Camp Mystic in Texas in July. FEMA granted appeals by camp owners years earlier to remove dozens of its buildings from a high-risk flood zone, records show.
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FEMA flood maps highlight high-risk areas known as the 100-year flood plain, where the chance of flooding is 1% a year, or 26% over the typical 30-year life of a mortgage. Congress has mandated that FEMA review the maps every five years, although in practice updates can take far longer. Communities and homeowners can appeal proposed new flood maps, or ask for properties and zones to be taken out of existing ones.
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Thousands of properties are removed from high-risk flood zones every year following appeals, federal data show. More than 6,700 appeals to take properties out of a zone—86% of the total—were approved between October 2024 and late August this year, according to FEMA. Another nearly 2,900 requests—93% of the total—to remove areas elevated by fill, typically in new developments, were also greenlighted over the same period, FEMA said.
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In 2011—by which time Livingston had spent about $270,000 on its appeals efforts, according to city documents—FEMA gave final approval to the new map that incorporated the hydrologist’s analysis. Then came the flood of June 2022. Heavy rain combined with enormous snowmelt sent a wall of water surging down the Yellowstone River. Some areas on the east side of the city that had been removed from the floodway were inundated. At the hospital, floodwaters approached the facility and swamped the main entrance road, said Stacy Kohler, chief nursing officer. The hospital was elevated with fill when it was built so it remained dry, but access to it was cut off.
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