3 comments
I have concerns with the current Virginia Floodplain Management Standards as adopted. While they are framed as a step forward, they fail to address the most critical gaps in Virginia’s flood resilience and risk management. These standards read more like administrative guidance than a functional framework for protecting people, property, and infrastructure from today’s and tomorrow’s flood threats.
The standards apply primarily to state-owned or leased properties, leaving the vast majority of Virginians’ homes, businesses, and local infrastructure outside their direct reach. Flooding doesn’t respect property boundaries, and rules limited to state facilities won’t meaningfully reduce statewide risk.
Also, the standards rely heavily on FEMA-style flood maps and historical rainfall data. This is dangerously outdated. They do not require climate-adjusted precipitation, sea-level rise allowances, or compound flood event analyses. By ignoring non-stationarity, these standards will lock Virginia into under-designing critical infrastructure for decades.
There is no clear funding mechanism tied to these new requirements. Agencies are told to comply, but without guaranteed capital, they will value-engineer resilience out of projects. There’s also no strong accountability framework, no measurable performance metrics, no public scorecards, and no meaningful consequences for noncompliance.
Local governments remain on a separate, patchwork system of ordinances and voluntary programs. State standards don’t compel local alignment, which guarantees uneven application and gaps right where flood risk is highest.
These standards miss an opportunity to target investments and protections for the most flood-vulnerable communities, which are often lower-income or historically underserved. Without clear priorities and requirements, the communities most at risk remain least protected.
In short, the Virginia Floodplain Management Standards is document is long on process and mapping tools, but short on enforceable, future-focused design requirements. It neither funds nor mandates the level of action Virginia’s growing flood risk demands. If adopted as-is, it will amount to little more than a policy collecting dust while storms intensify, sea levels rise, and communities bear the cost.
I urge DCR and the Administration to revise these standards to:
Anything less is not resilience.
November 14, 2025
Angela Davis
Division Director, Floodplain Management
Department of Conservation and Recreation
600 East Main Street
Richmond, VA 23219
RE: Virginia Floodplain Management Standards for State-Owned Property
Dear Angela Davis,
I appreciate the effort that the Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) has made to create Standards for development on state-owned properties in floodplains. These Standards are critical to the Commonwealth’s National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) compliance, as well as ensuring the Commonwealth develops in a flood resilient manner. Below are several concerns I have regarding the proposed Standards that I hope you will consider before making the proposed Standards effective.
The proposed Standards identify in Section 2.1 and Section 3.1.B that the requirements are only applicable to FEMA Special Flood Hazard Areas (SFHA). This is concerning for two reasons.
First, FEMA SFHA data is limited across the Commonwealth, and based on FEMA guidelines, is only established for drainage areas of one square mile or larger. Flood risk does not simply stop because the drainage area is smaller than one square mile, and some localities, like Henrico County, have established and adopted Community SFHAs that identify flood risk in these smaller drainage areas to account for the missing data from FEMA. These flood risk areas should be utilized by state agencies conducting work within our locality. These flood risk areas, including the models used to create them, are publicly available.
Second, this is concerning because language throughout the proposed Standards is inconsistent. In Section 2.2.A, requirements have been identified for Shaded X Zones, also known as the 500-year floodplain. By definition, these areas are not part of the FEMA SFHA, so these proposed Standards would not apply to those areas. Additionally, Section 2.4 mentions using FATHOM data to establish flood risk, but as proposed, this data cannot be used for regulatory purposes. Additionally, the definition of “FATHOM data” in Appendix A says that FATHOM data has been established where FEMA SFHAs have not been identified. However, when viewing the Virginia Flood Risk Information System (VFRIS), FATHOM data appears to overlap with existing FEMA SFHAs.
Additionally, in Appendix A, the definition for “Special flood hazard area” states that it is “determined in Article 3, Section 3.1 of this standard.” I did not see a definition of “Special flood hazard area” in this Section.
RECOMMENDATION: I recommend the following:
The proposed Standards incorporate the NFIP minimum requirements by referencing 44 CFR 60.3-60.6 instead of writing out those requirements. This is problematic for two reasons.
First, the definitions used in the proposed Standards are not all consistent with NFIP definitions identified in 44 CFR 59.1. Most notably, the definition of “structure” is not the same. Throughout the proposed Standards, the term “building” is used in place of the NFIP “structure” term. This is problematic because the NFIP requirements in 44 CFR 60.3-60.6 are based on the NFIP terms not the proposed Standard terms. If a state agency goes to 44 CFR 60.3, they will see requirements to elevating the lowest floor of a structure, which would not be applicable to something like a culvert, which is considered a “structure” in the proposed Standards. The proposed Standards do not reference 44 CFR 59.1, so those definitions would not be applicable to clarify that a “structure” in CFR generally means a building. This is made even more confusing because the definition of “building” in the proposed Standards refers to it as a “structure”.
Second, by not including the NFIP minimum requirements in the proposed Standards, state agencies may not understand the requirements that apply to their project, so requirements may be missed. This places additional burden on the state agencies conducting development to have to search through multiple locations to find the applicable requirements. Additionally, if changes are made to 44 CFR 60.3-60.6, that will impact the proposed Standards.
RECOMMENDATION: I recommend the following:
Again, I appreciate DCR’s work on this proposed Standard, and I hope that you will consider these recommendations to revise the proposed Standards before making them effective. I am happy to meet with you to discuss my comments.
Sincerely,
Kristin Owen, AICP, CFM
Assistant Division Director
DPW Design Division
November 14, 2025
VIA ELECTRONIC SUBMISSION (angela.davis@dcr.virginia.gov)
Angela Davis
Division Director, Floodplain Management
Department of Conservation and Recreation
600 East Main Street
Richmond, VA 23219
Dear Angela Davis,
We appreciate the work the Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) has undertaken to date to develop standards governing development activities on state-owned land in floodplains (hereafter, “proposed Standards”). In addition to promoting the safe and responsible development of the Commonwealth’s real property resources, the development of robust floodplain management standards for state-owned floodplains is necessary to ensure the Commonwealth complies with the requirements of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) as outlined in 44 C.F.R. §60.11-13. Below, we raise several concerns about apparent discrepancies between the proposed Standards and the Virginia Code, as well as the weakening or elimination of resilience requirements previously applied to state-owned properties in flood-prone areas. We recommend and request that you address the concerns we raise below prior to making the proposed Standards effective.
A. The proposed Standards do not properly incorporate Va. Code §10.1-603(C)’s required showing regarding feasible alternatives.
The proposed Standards do not adequately reflect what we read as a fundamental provision in Virginia Code §10.1-603(C) that prohibits DCR from issuing a permit for development activities proposed on state-owned property located in a floodplain unless “no feasible alternative to development in a floodplain exists.” Instead, Section 3.1(B)(8) of the proposed Standards merely includes whether “[a]lternative siting of proposed development outside of the state-managed floodplains is unavailable or unfeasible” among a list of potentially applicable “additional factors” that DCR must “consider” during permit application reviews. There is no language in the proposed Standards that clearly limits DCR’s authority to grant a permit to those situations in which no feasible alternative exists. We respectfully request that you address this apparent inconsistency with the Virginia Code prior to effectuating the Standards.
B. The proposed Standards do not properly incorporate the limited grounds for issuing a permit established in Va. Code § 10.1-603(C)(1) through (C)(4).
In addition to limiting DCR’s authority to issue a permit to those situations in which there is no feasible alternative to locating the development activity in the floodplain, Va. Code §10.1-603(C) makes clear that a proposed development activity must fit into one of the four categories enumerated in (C)(1) through (C)(4) in order for DCR to issue a permit. Yet similar to the feasible alternative determination discussed above, Section 2.1(B) of the proposed Standards appears to downgrade each of the four permitting categories from a prerequisite that must be met to justify issuance of a permit to one of eight “additional factors” that DCR must merely “consider” during permit application reviews. Since DCR needs only to “consider” such factors, the proposed standards would seem to allow the agency to grant a permit even if none of the permitting prerequisite categories in Va. Code §10.1-603(C)(1) through (C)(4) are met. As with the concern voiced above, we believe this issue needs to be addressed to ensure the proposed standards are consistent with the Virginia Code.
C. The proposed exemptions in Section 3.2 threaten to undermine the effectiveness of the proposed Standards.
We are concerned with the proposed exemption of six categories of activities and projects in Section 3.2 of the proposed Standards. As an initial matter, it is unclear that the Virginia Code even provides the authority to establish exemptions for categories of development activities; Va. Code §10.1-603 does not include any such language. Further, at least two of the proposed exemption categories (Routine Maintenance and Small Projects) are extremely broad, and neither the text of the Proposed Standards nor the Glossary included as Appendix A provides parameters or definitions for these terms. This creates significant potential for confusion and inconsistency among agencies and could result in risky projects being deemed to fall within a poorly defined exemption. In addition, Section 3.2 lacks instruction on what it means for a project to have an “insignificant effect on flooding characteristics and water conveyance” or on how agencies are to make that determination. In short, the exemptions provided create significant potential to undermine the purpose and value of the proposed Standards, and we believe they should either be eliminated or clarified.
D. The proposed standards do not effectuate the need for proactive planning before committing state funds for state development projects.
In general, the proposed Standards fall short of supporting proactive planning for state-funded projects by reducing or eliminating protective measures that have previously set a strong benchmark for resilience and protected Virginia’s investments. Several functional protective measures that previously guided state decision-making have been reduced or removed, including higher freeboard elevations in riverine and coastal areas, the use of Sea Level Rise Inundation Areas, and technical requirements that encouraged forward-looking engineering, such as adaptive design for future adaptation. The current proposed Standards rely primarily on FEMA Special Flood Hazard Areas, which represent only existing conditions and lag significantly behind current and emerging flood hazard risks. By eliminating predictive tools and datasets from decision-making, and by reducing elevation requirements, adoption of the proposed Standards as drafted would weaken the Commonwealth’s ability to make informed long-term decisions about siting, design, and investment in public facilities and development.
State-funded and state-owned projects, whether roads, buildings, utilities, or non-structural development, have decades-long useful life after construction and are often in service much longer. Designing solely on present-day flood conditions, despite significant statewide investments in resilience, fails to account for the increasing frequency and severity of flooding driven by sea-level rise, changing precipitation patterns, and watershed alterations from human development. The absence of a forward-looking flood elevation benchmark, such as a specific sea-level rise planning scenario or a 50-year useful life assumption, means that agencies may unknowingly commit public resources to locations or designs that will become unsafe or nonfunctional long before the end of their intended lifespan. Reintroducing long-range planning tools and recognizing state-identified areas of high future inundation risk would help ensure that state projects remain viable and resilient over time.
Although Section 2.4 acknowledges that flood hazards extend beyond FEMA SFHAs and encourages agencies to consult the FATHOM dataset, this reference does not meaningfully strengthen the decision-making process. Concurrently, the state has invested in the Coastal Resilience Master Plan (CRMP) and the statewide Virginia Flood Protection Master Plan (VFPMP), both of which include the accompanying flood risk data. Under the proposed Standards, FEMA SFHAs remain the only regulatory boundary for permitting and elevation requirements, meaning agencies are not required to act on broader or more accurate flood hazard information that FATHOM or CRMP data may reveal. Notably, the CRMP data is not even mentioned as an available dataset, and it provides reliable state-owned flood risk data in the coastal zone. Simply noting the availability of this dataset does not require use in a specific manner or prevent risky development decisions outside SFHAs, nor does it substitute for clear, forward-looking planning requirements. Highlighting the existence of supplemental data without providing guidance on how to integrate it into state siting and design decisions leaves agencies without the tools needed to fully evaluate long-term flood exposure and undermines the goal of making prudent, resilient investments with state funds.
It is reasonable and fiscally responsible that when state funding is committed to a development project, whether it be a road, building, or non-structural site improvement, the project should meet standards that protect that investment from Virginia’s most frequent and costly natural hazard – flooding. More robust freeboard requirements and explicit planning for future sea level rise can serve as practical signals that specific locations may pose long-term challenges or require costly adaptation. In particular, where a project is proposed within an area anticipated to experience chronic inundation, a higher elevation standard based on a defined dataset remains a meaningful indicator that additional scrutiny is warranted. Strengthening the proposed Standards by restoring future-condition planning, establishing higher-elevation benchmarks, and imposing limits on exemptions would help safeguard public resources and position the Commonwealth to make durable, cost-effective decisions about state development.
E. It is unclear whether and how the proposed Standards apply to development activities other than buildings.
Finally, we are concerned that the proposed Standards focus almost exclusively on buildings and lack clarity regarding the applicability of the permitting requirement established in Va. Code §10.1-603(B) to projects that involve development activities that do not qualify as buildings.
Specifically, the final paragraph of Section 1.1 of the proposed Standards indicates that the requirement to obtain a “variance permit” from DCR only applies to “state-owned buildings, or buildings constructed on state-owned property.” Although the draft flow chart provided as Appendix B to the proposed Standards suggests that a “[p]ermit may be required as determined by DCR” for non-structural development and state agency acquisitions, neither the flow chart nor the main body of the proposed Standards makes clear the circumstances in which those development activities might require a permit. This lack of procedural clarity could lead to inconsistent implementation, uncertainty about when a floodplain development permit is required, and misalignment with the National Flood Insurance Program requirements. We urge revision of the proposed Standards to provide the needed clarification and explanation.
In closing, we appreciate DCR’s work on the proposed Standards and respectfully urge the agency to address the issues above prior to making them effective. We would be happy to meet with you to discuss our comments.
Sincerely,
Mary-Carson Stiff, Executive Director
Wetlands Watch
Morgan Butler, Senior Attorney
Southern Environmental Law Center
Emily Steinhilber, Director, Climate Resilient Coasts and Watersheds, Virginia
Environmental Defense Fund
Uday Khambhammettu, President
Virginia Floodplain Management Association
Jay Ford, Virginia Policy Manager
Chesapeake Bay Foundation
Pat Calvert, Virginia Director of Conservation
American Rivers
Rebecca Malpass, Director of Clean Water & Land Conservation
Virginia Conservation Network
Karen Forget, Executive Director
Lynnhaven River NOW