The National Flood Insurance Program- Why the Program is Flawed
The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) was established with the passage of the National Flood Insurance Act of 1968, as a federal program requiring property owners in communities designated as being in a floodplain to purchase insurance as protection against flood losses.

 

FEMA originally designated 2,700 properties in the City of Buffalo as falling within a flood zone.  Under federal law, owners of these properties were required to purchase flood insurance if they had a mortgage or other bank financing secured by these properties.  This mandatory insurance costs home and business owners in Western New York hundreds of dollars annually.
 
By including communities that are at little or no risk of flooding, the flood insurance requirement has the unintended consequence of creating a “tax” on Western New York homes and businesses that will never need the flood insurance.  It creates “economic dead zones” by forcing already struggling communities in Western New York to subsidize the cost of flood insurance in areas of the country that are wealthier and, more importantly, much more prone to flooding.  This led Brian to tell a congressional committee in April 2008 that the “The National Flood Insurance Program is, both in its design and execution, the worst federal program I have encountered in my time in the United States House of Representatives.”
 
Victory For Some Western New Yorkers, but the Fight Continues
Last year Brian uncovered a 1972 study by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers which flatly stated that if the City of Buffalo undertook certain mitigation efforts, those projects would “protect the floodplain from a stage having a recurrence interval of 100 years.”  Brian also discovered that the City of Buffalo and neighboring municipalities had already completed all of the flood mitigation measures proscribed in the 1972 report and even more mitigation efforts, so they were fully protected from flooding. 

FEMA answered Brian’s demand that it redraw the floodplain map to reflect mitigation efforts, and it revised the floodplain map to exempt 90% of the former floodplain in the City of Buffalo from having to purchase flood insurance. While this was a victory for many families who have been shouldering this unnecessary burden for too long, it did not go far enough in providing relief to Western New Yorkers as the new map actually expanded the 100-year flood plain in Buffalo’s Old First Ward, Cobblestone District, Inner Harbor, and Waterfront Village. 
 
Upon learning that FEMA preliminarily included the Old First Ward and other neighborhoods along the Buffalo River in the 100-year flood plain for purposes of the NFIP, Brian has been working with FEMA to continue to fight for the exclusion of these neighborhoods from the flood plain.  
 
Below you will find the latest on Brian's efforts to reduce and eliminate the onorous flood insirance requirement on Western New York communities.