Happy New Year!!!!!! Yes, it is actually February, but it is a new year for this blog as we turn our attention to a world full of flood risk reduction actions in the second year of the Trump Administration. We are hearing that on February 6 the Corps will be
August 15, 2017 was a busy day for the Trump Administration. While interacting with the press and other politicians regarding the protests and counter-protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, the White House was also issuing an Executive Order with potentially far-reaching effects on flood management.
A June 21, 2017 Memorandum issued by James Dalton, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Director of Civil Works, is designed to streamline a number of USACE processes, including:
This is a follow-up to our blog post last week, “FEMA Issues Draft Regulatory Amendments To Implement President Obama’s Executive Order 13690 And The Federal Flood Risk Management Standard; Comments Due By October 21, 2016.”
Many of the proposed amendments to the regulations focus on the details for the implementation methodologies as well as the inter-relationship between them. For example, what should one do when there are contradictory scientific approaches? What should one do when the best available science indicates a flood elevation that is lower than would be used under the freeboard value approach? Is it practical to use the .2 percentage approach when only 18% of FEMA’s maps contain data on the .2% event? Based on these and other questions, on page 35 of the proposed amendment package FEMA proposes to make the freeboard value approach the standard approach for all events that are not critical actions, and to make the freeboard value approach the chosen approach for critical actions unless the agency finds that the climate-informed science approach results in a higher elevation.
IntroductionExecutive Order 11988 (EO 11988) requires Federal agencies to avoid, to the extent possible, the long- and short-term adverse impacts associated with the occupancy and modification of floodplains where there is a practicable alternative. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is now proposing to amend its regulations (found in 44 CFR Part 9) which describes the traditional 8-step process that FEMA uses to implement EO 11988. The amendment is being driven by Executive Order 13690 (EO 13690), issued by President Obama in 2015 to address increased risks as a result of climate change, which changed the definition of “floodplain” for projects that are “Federally funded” (defined as actions involving the use of Federal funds for new construction, substantial improvement, or to address substantial damage to a structure or facility). In these cases, the new broader definition of floodplain (developed under one of three approaches described below) will likely result in a larger floodplain and a requirement to design projects such that they are resilient to a higher vertical elevation. However, for actions that don’t meet the definition of a Federally funded project, FEMA will continue to use the historical definition.
A little more than a year after the passage of the Water Resources Reform and Develop Act (WRRDA), the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has issued the draft guidance required by section 1018. And, from a local perspective, the draft guidance is quite good and appears to reflect a softening on some crediting issues that have plagued locally constructed projects for nearly five years.
If we climbed into the “wayback” machine we would find that over the past decades Congress has passed a number of provisions that allowed non-Federal sponsors to do work in advance of Federal planning or construction and then treat those costs as a credit toward the non-Federal sponsor’s cost share on the related Federal project. One of the most popular provisions for this was Section 104 of the Water Resources Development Act of 1986. Section 104 was highly liberal in its ability to lock in potential credit, with very few limitations. Unfortunately for aggressive non-Federal sponsors, the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army (ASA) became concerned that as non-Federal sponsors were able to “lock in credit” for planning or construction activities, each of those investments made it harder and harder for USACE to ultimately recommend a project which didn’t align perfectly with the already-constructed and locally-performed work. In other words, USACE awarding credit was actually driving USACE decisions to be made later. As a result, the ASA decided that credit could no longer be issued under Section 104, and instead should be evaluated under Section 221 of the Flood Control Act of 1970 (as that section was amended by section 2003 of WRDA 2007).
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) issued a new engineering circular (EC 1165-2-216) to provide policy and guidance for processing requests to alter USACE civil works projects pursuant to 33 U.S.C. section 408. This new circular collects existing guidance from several informal documents, codifies USACE practice from some USACE Districts that process many 408 requests, and expands the guidance to cover other objectives beyond flood risk reduction, such as water supply, hydroelectric, and ecosystem restoration. Section 408 (33 U.S.C. section) is a decades old provision of Federal law that prohibits a non-Federal interest from altering a Federally authorized water resources development project without advance permission from the Secretary of the Army. That authority has been delegated to the Assistant Secretary of the Army, then to the Chief of Engineers, and then to the Director of Civil Works. This new Engineering Circular provides the rules associated with that delegation.