Mitchell Humphrey

Extensive flooding can devastate a community within hours. Think back to late 2024, when Hurricane Milton hit two of Florida’s coasts. Communities on either side suffered from losing properties, infrastructure, and more. While it can’t change the course of hurricanes and other natural phenomena, careful floodplain management can help limit the damage to your municipality, improving the outcome for residents and businesses alike.

What Are the Dangers of Flooding?

According to the National Weather Service, flooding has become a coast-to-coast threat throughout the year in the United States. The agency estimates that about three out of four of all presidential declarations of disaster are associated with flooding. While municipalities in states like Florida may be more prone to flood damage from hurricanes, others are not exempt from the potential dangers of flooding.

Even if your municipality is landlocked, intense rain over a short period of time or debris jamming a river may be all it takes for serious flooding to develop. For a flood to occur, rain simply needs to fall faster than the soil can absorb it. Rivers normally aid in carrying excess water away. However, if they’re blocked or simply overwhelmed by the sheer amount of water, their levels may rise causing them to overflow their banks.

What is Floodplain Management?

Floodplains or bottomlands are the areas of land surrounding the banks of a river. They usually stretch some distance, often to the valleys enclosing major rivers to allow those rivers to expand and overflow during periods of high water. Properties built on floodplains may seem far away from a river, but they can be put at risk once water levels rise.

Managing floodplains conscientiously can help your community avoid or minimize the damage incurred with regular flooding. Put simply, floodplain management makes communities safer and more resilient to changes in weather and unexpected natural disaster.

Elements of Effective Floodplain Management

Municipalities and their employees play a key role in effective floodplain management. Although every community is different, most local government teams will go through a version of these elements of floodplain management:

1. Risk identification: start by mapping the areas that may be prone to flooding. This can be as easy as looking at riverbeds and checking the elevation of the surrounding areas. Historical records will also provide clues.
2. Property management: ideally, no properties would be built on floodplains to prevent their loss or damage. Realistically though, many communities have had some development of their floodplains. As a result, municipality employees need to develop plans to prepare and secure those properties.
3. Development approvals: municipalities may also receive applications for the development of potential floodplains. Those require careful consideration and collaboration with developers to ensure dangers related to flooding are considered.
4. Standard setting and enforcement: insisting on higher standards for flood prevention, for example by ensuring rivers are not obstructed allows communities to lead the way in preventing floods even as weather patterns become less predictable and municipalities across the country are subject to more extreme weather events.
5. Creating a flood response plan: putting in place a solid plan of action if flooding occurs will help your team respond faster and more effectively to protect properties, residents, and businesses.

Effective floodplain management is an ongoing process that requires stakeholders from government agencies and other areas to work together for a common goal.

How Can Communities Benefit from Natural Floodplains?

It can be easy to think that floodplains bring nothing but problems for communities, but that isn’t so. In their natural state or restored to that state, floodplains have many advantages.

Think of well-managed floodplains as natural water resource managers. These areas can help municipalities manage water quantities by storing floodwaters for dry periods and slowing down the flow of water during times of heavy rain.

Floodplains can help your community top up groundwater levels and help you improve the water quality in your area. They’re excellent habitats for birds and other wildlife, and they provide green spaces for your municipality’s residents.

A natural, well-managed floodplain can become a focal point and an asset for your entire community. They’re well-suited for bike paths, hiking trails, or parks. In highly developed and built-up communities, floodplains can also provide much-needed open space.

Where Can Communities Get Help with Floodplain Management?

Floodplain management is a complex process, and very few communities have the luxury of starting from scratch with undeveloped areas. Instead, most municipalities will find that at least some of their floodplains have been developed and built on, making them a little more complicated to manage.

The responsibility for floodplain management doesn’t lie with municipalities alone. Most states have authorities ready to support local communities in flood prevention and after flooding events. In addition, help is available at a federal level from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Part of the Department of Homeland Security, FEMA’s job is to help Americans ‘before, during, and after disasters.’ When it comes to floodplain management, FEMA offers municipalities a wide range of resources and tools, including flood insurance.

The agency’s resources include advice on establishing floodplain management programs from scratch, and financial help is also available. A community rating system allows municipalities to understand how their floodplain management process measures up against other localities and how to make things safer.

FEMA also offers advice on conservation and other opportunities to reduce the risk of flooding and benefit the community by creating additional green spaces. Following this guidance could also reduce your flood insurance premiums.

How Does National Floodplain Insurance Work?

One of the major areas of support FEMA provides to communities is the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). Insurance data states that even one inch of floodwater can cause $25,000 in damage. That’s more than most homeowners can afford without causing financial strain. In addition, flooding is excluded from many standard home insurance policies.

While a solid floodplain management strategy can limit the damage excess water causes, it’s not always possible to prevent flooding entirely. When a flooding event has happened, communities, residents, and businesses focus on recovery. The sooner residents and businesses can get back on their feet, the quicker the community will thrive again.

Collaboration is Key

The NFIP does more than a standard insurance company. The agency works with homeowners and renters as well as communities at the municipal level. Local governments can collaborate with the NFIP to improve and enforce their floodplain management strategy and mitigate the risks and potential damage.

Property owners benefit from the flood insurance policies provided under the program. Those are available to renters and businesses as well, covering a large part of the entire community. Currently, almost 23,000 communities participate in the program, and flood insurance is available to anyone living in those areas.

How Else Can We Protect Our Community?

Floodplain management is a complex process even for small communities. Developing the strategy, securing buy-in from all stakeholders, implementing, and enforcing it requires input from different departments and consistent monitoring.

Tracking these processes in a traditional, paper-based way is simply not efficient for modern municipalities. Community development software like Mitchell Humphrey & Co.’s FastTrackGov® (FTG) has been designed to streamline and simplify every aspect of complex municipal processes.

When it comes to floodplain management, FTG features a dedicated solution that helps municipalities make their operations more effective and manage properties in flood zones proactively. With this powerful software, you can easily manage the approval process, track prior approvals, flag properties within flood zones, process payments, attach elevation certificates, handle FEMA applications, and surveys, and generate detailed reports.

Think of FTG as a one-stop shop. This tool is a centralized repository that provides easy access to all data against each property.

Conclusion

Serious flooding can devastate entire communities in less than a day. Managing floodplains effectively and efficiently is a complex process, requiring input from various departments across a municipality. While help is available at the federal and state levels, community development software like FTG can streamline your community’s floodplain management process.

To find out more about how your municipality can benefit from customized software, schedule a demo today and learn more about leveraging technology to limit the danger of flooding.