Floodplain executive order is latest Obama power grab

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Flooded streets of Key West 2013. It happens. Then it dries out.

    

Another ille­gal action unlikely to be chal­lenged in court?

Mil­lions of Amer­i­cans liv­ing and work­ing in flood­plains and other low-lying areas are at acute risk of being inun­dated - not by ris­ing water, but by a tidal wave of fed­eral reg­u­la­tions - cour­tesy of the Obama Administration.

With pub­lic atten­tion riv­eted on the chaotic devel­op­ments in the Mid­dle East and the severe cold weather that gripped much of the nation over the win­ter, the White House on Jan­u­ary 30 qui­etly issued Exec­u­tive Order (EO) 13690, "Estab­lish­ing a Fed­eral Flood Risk Man­age­ment Stan­dard and a Process for Fur­ther Solic­it­ing and Con­sid­er­ing Stake­holder Input." http://1.usa.gov/1HNuLP9 -

Vio­lat­ing exist­ing law

The exec­u­tive order is more than just a mouth­ful; it is the lat­est fed­eral intru­sion into what have tra­di­tion­ally been pre­dom­i­nantly self-governing com­mu­ni­ties. In defi­ance of exist­ing law, the EO rede­fines the term "flood­plain" to expand the area of the coun­try to be reg­u­lated as such. The Obama EO was issued of lan­guage Con­gress included in a FY 2015 appro­pri­a­tions bill that until it had solicited and con­sid­ered input from gov­er­nors, may­ors, and other affected parties.

In a March 30 "Dear Col­league" let­ter, Rep. John Rat­cliffe (R-TX) pointed out that, "To date, there has been no pub­lic dis­clo­sure on the basis of the alter­na­tives included in the EO, how they were devel­oped and decided upon, or a cost-benefit analy­sis of them." Rat­cliffe fur­ther noted that the EO calls for the National Water Coun­cil "to issue Guide­lines to pro­vide guid­ance to agen­cies on [the EO's] imple­men­ta­tion," even though the National Water Coun­cil hasn't received a cent of fed­eral fund­ing since 1982.

Fed­eral Flood Risk Man­age­ment Standard

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The cen­ter­piece of the Obama exec­u­tive order is some­thing called the Fed­eral Flood Risk Man­age­ment Stan­dard (FFRMS). Under the exec­u­tive order, the FFRMS applies to new con­struc­tion and sub­stan­tial improve­ments to exist­ing struc­tures in flood­plains and other low-lying areas. Speak­ing for the Admin­is­tra­tion, the Fed­eral Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (FEMA) has claimed repeat­edly that the FFRMS will not affect pri­vate devel­op­ment. Noth­ing could be fur­ther from the truth.

Indeed, the new fed­eral stan­dard will "in fact sub­stan­tially limit pri­vate devel­op­ment," says Rep. Rat­cliffe. "Because fed­eral agen­cies must avoid or min­i­mize actions that impact flood­plains when tak­ing 'fed­eral action' - includ­ing when they issue fed­eral per­mits, licenses, and approvals - the EO is expected to impede or dra­mat­i­cally increase the cost of con­struc­tion and labor in low-lying com­mu­ni­ties."

Fail­ure to adopt the new stan­dard could make com­mu­ni­ties inel­i­gi­ble for fed­eral pro­grams, includ­ing port devel­op­ment projects, haz­ard mit­i­ga­tion grants, flood con­trol projects, Brown­fields rede­vel­op­ment, Com­mu­nity Devel­op­ment Block Grants, fed­er­ally backed mort­gages, and fed­eral trans­porta­tion projects.

While the EO is vague on the details of the FFRMS, it says that incor­po­rat­ing the new stan­dard "will ensure that [fed­eral] agen­cies expand man­age­ment from the cur­rent base flood level to a higher ver­ti­cal ele­va­tion and cor­re­spond­ing hor­i­zon­tal flood­plain to address cur­rent and future flood risk and ensure that projects funded with tax­payer dol­lars last as long as intended.
New reg­u­la­tory regime

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The FEMA Flood Elevation Certificate - another money-maker based on "liquidity."

    

Deter­min­ing what con­sti­tutes "future flood risk" is closely tied to, in the President's words, "a national pol­icy on resilience and risk reduc­tion con­sis­tent with my Cli­mate Action Plan." In other words, the administration's poli­cies to "com­bat cli­mate change" will serve to jus­tify the myr­iad rules, reg­u­la­tions, and stan­dards Wash­ing­ton will impose on com­mu­ni­ties through­out the coun­try in the name of pro­tect­ing them from flood­ing. A reg­u­la­tory regime is being put into place that will give Wash­ing­ton final say over what can and can­not be built and how struc­tures - res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial - are to be con­structed and where.

In tak­ing its micro­man­age­ment of Amer­i­can soci­ety down to the level of writ­ing local build­ing codes, the Obama Admin­is­tra­tion is bypass­ing both Con­gress and the fed­eral rule­mak­ing process. The goal is very sim­ple: Make the pop­u­lace, and the elected offi­cials who sup­pos­edly rep­re­sent them, sub­servient to Washington.