Flood Insurance

Coastal adaptation planning focuses primarily on issues several years or decades into the community's future. However, vulnerable coastal communities are already threatened today in a variety of ways. Managing the complex physical challenges of climate change requires that it be understood together with a similarly complex web of economic pressures and governmental regulations from the local to federal level. One example of this is the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) managed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The affordability or otherwise of flood insurance for homes and business in flood-prone areas can have a major effect on determining what type of community can be sustained in those areas. As such, a topical understanding of NFIP is important for coastal adaptation planners. Resources to aid that understanding are documented here. On the other hand, the management of municipal NFIP procedures for a particular mapping cycle, such as FIRM appeals or CRS certification, while critical to the immediate needs of coastal communities, is not itself part of long-term adaptation planning. Timely response to these immediate needs should be addressed through a separate dedicated effort. In Marshfield, NFIP response is handled by the central administration in Town Hall, notably aided by the commendable efforts of the Marshfield Citizens Coastal Coalition citizen advocacy group.

General NFIP resources

• Until such time as a listing of references for helping understand NFIP is developed in this space, the Marshfield Citizens Coastal Coalition may be the best source of information for local citizens seeking information on this issue.

2013 Mapping Cycle

News Coverage

• FEMA flood maps online as neighborhoods approach appeals Marshfield Mariner 31 July 2013.
• Flood insurance rates rising Cape & Plymouth Business 30 July 2013.

Maps and Documentation

• MCC's pdf 2013 Draft FIRMs downloads
• 2013 Draft FIRMs from Town Marshfield, slightly different form above.
• Community Rating System Resources. See also the 2013 CRS Coordinator's Manual.

Statistics

Although a public, federally funded program, individual properties and payouts from NFIP are considered private information for the protection of home owners. However, aggregate statistics by community are available:

• Loss Statistics since 1978 Jan 1, including total payments. Note, Marshfield has the second highest total payments in Massachusetts. (Scituate has the highest payments in Massachusetts by a margin of more than 200%.)
• Policy Statistics for policies currently in force.

This definition of terms may be useful in understanding the above statistics. It is also important to keep in mind that NFIP is an insurance program for mitigating risk against property loss. Like all property insurance, it should not be thought of as an investment program intended to provide positive returns for the insured property owner. There should be no expectation for a community's total payments to exceed its time-integrated premiums. By the accumulated vagaries of fate, some communities will be net positive and others will be net negative at any given time, and all communities are only one major flood event away from being net positive.