WASHINGTON–President Trump’s first budget, the “Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again” eliminates the National Flood Insurance Program’s (NFIP) mapping effort by proposing to eliminate “the discretionary appropriation for the NFIP’s Flood Hazard Mapping Program.
The budget proposal says the move will save $190 million and says the government will “explore other more effective and fair means of funding flood mapping efforts.”
The proposal has been criticized by the Consumer Federation of America.
“The maps are a critical aspect of the flood insurance program, the basis for both actuarial rates for each structure in a flood plain and for the implementation of land use policies to assure that unwise construction does not occur in high-risk flood plains,” said J. Robert Hunter, CFA’s director of insurance and former administrator of the NFIP.
According to a statement from the CFA, as to mitigation of risk, the loss of funding to create new maps will lead to either of two extremely undesirable outcomes:
- The maps will not be updated. As maps age they become more and more inaccurate, always on the low side because new construction fills the flood plain and water levels during a flood rise as a result, the CFA said. “We know the devastation that old maps can cause.”
- The flood insurance rates will be surcharged to pay for mapping. “This is likely the only way to pay for mapping if the budget does not pay for it. The problem with this is that this will exacerbate the unaffordability problem that led to the pullback of many of the Biggart-Waters Act prices,” the CFA said. “If affordability is a problem and the hope for repaying the debt is a vanishing, adding another layer of cost onto flood insurance buyers is problematic at best.”
The CFA is calling on Congress to reject the plan.