Sequestration and Stupidity

It's obvious that we are experiencing a lot more tornadoes, hurricanes and other forms of extreme weather.  A good share of the damages caused by these storms is attributed to flooding.  FEMA produces flood insurance maps which are used to calculate the premiums we pay for flood insurance. The maps also give homeowners and buyers the latest understanding of how likely their communities are to flood.

Recognizing the value of these maps for a revitalized insurance program, Congress authorized the government to spend $400 million a year for the next five years to update these maps.  Unfortunately, our brilliant Congress appropriated just a quarter of that for this fiscal year.  Sequestration has cut another $5 million, leaving $95 million for flood mapping this year.  As recently as 2010 the map budget was $221,000,000. Obama would like to cut it to $84,000,000 for next year.

It's not as though we have plenty of up-to-date maps.  FEMA's goal is to get only 80% of the country’s flood hazard data up-to-date.  Many of the maps go back to the 1970s and 1980s.  There are obvious benefits to updating the maps. New maps can guide development toward areas that are less likely to flood. They also tend to be far more accurate. Today’s mapmakers can take advantage of technologies including lidar, or laser radar, and ADCIRC, a computer program that’s used to model hurricane storm surge. They can also incorporate more years of flooding data into their models.