A critical federal agency that helps prepare for flooding could be at risk

Flooding has been a persistent threat to homes in Ralph Martinez’s neighborhood, but the worst he’s ever seen was in 2021 during Hurricane Ida. Water was coming into the basement floor of his Bronx brownstone through the windows and up through the drains. 

“It got so bad, I think it was up to my knee level of water,” Martinez said. “The fridge was floating.”

Martinez, a 30-year-old high school counselor, lives a few blocks from Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, close to – but not on – the Harlem River. His basement was one of many that flooded during Ida in New York City, a disaster that took the lives of 11 people who drowned in basements during the storm. 

Communities along New York’s shorelines and many waterways rely on accurate federal flood maps to best assess their current and future flood risk to build long-term solutions. For the Federal Emergency Management Agency to produce accurate federal flood maps, they need the most up-to-date climate and ocean research and modeling from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which studies and models changes in the climate, ocean and weather. 

2024’s presidential election will determine the level of investment in NOAA over the next four years, as well as how the agency addresses risks posed by climate change. That informs the local public policy designed to protect New Yorkers, and ultimately has an impact on how much information communities vulnerable to storms like Ida will have to help them prepare as the floodwaters rise. 

Over 1 million New Yorkers across the city’s five boroughs live in or directly next to a 100-year floodplain, an area that has at least a 1% chance of flooding in any given year. Flooding costs the city on average $5 million per event. The frequency of flooding events is also increasing – FEMA predicted in 2023 that areas of the Bronx will likely begin experiencing almost six events per year, up from one or two predicted in 2020.

According to Christopher Zimmerman, the senior program manager for the Center for New York City Neighborhoods, flooding in New York City can be particularly damaging – and in the case of severe events like Ida, even fatal. In 2017, the median building age in New York City was 90 years, meaning the majority of the city’s 8 million residents aren’t living in housing designed to withstand a growing flood risk.

“It is such an enormous population, there's the housing crisis happening and we have this housing stock that is decades older than the average in the country and hooked into an infrastructure that is also aged,” said Zimmerman. 

FEMA-produced flood maps, officially known as Flood Insurance Rate Maps, are the most well-known guide to flood risk in the United States. The maps rate everywhere in the country on a spectrum from low to high risk for flooding. This information is explicitly used to determine insurance rating for the National Federal Insurance Program, to ensure that builders – at the local, state and federal levels – are adhering to minimum standards for coastal resiliency and inform local government policy for high-risk zones. 

CNYCN platforms like FloodNYC, which helps New York homeowners and renters assess their flood risk and federal insurance rates, rely on continuously updated FEMA maps. Without them, Zimmerman says the platforms wouldn’t exist in their current form. 

“Without that data, all we could do is be months, weeks, years behind,” he said. “It would be aiming in the dark.”

The more specific the information, Zimmerman said, the more money on insurance New Yorkers save. When maps are more vague, they risk recommending undercoverage, which means massive bills and more damage when places do flood. It can also mean that areas overcorrect, assuming the risk is higher than it is everywhere to avoid undercoverage, and overcharging residents who often don’t have the money to spare. 

Coastal resilience projects by the city work directly with federal agencies, relying on funding and modeling from NOAA that predicts short- and long-term sea-level rise across the country’s coasts. According to Jordan Salinger, the deputy director of the New York City Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice, the city relies on the flood risk determined by the FEMA flood maps, along with records of where Hurricane Sandy left coastal damage, to plan the locations of their coastal resilience projects. 

“We need to have the latest science and understanding of where the risk is most acute, where neighborhoods are most vulnerable, because resources are not unlimited,” said Salinger. 

NOAA Sea, Lake, and Overhead Surges from Hurricanes data – known as “SLOSH” data – is the main data source used to create the FEMA flood maps, alongside information from the U.S. Geological Survey, according to a hearing charter from the Congressional Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.

NOAA also produces its own coastal-flood exposure maps, which show flood hazards as a result of incremental sea-level rise. Agencies like New York City Emergency Management depend on NOAA for real-time updates on potential storm-surge impacts and to determine whether to deploy temporary flood-protection measures. 

Outdated flood maps are only becoming more dangerous as hurricanes become more severe due to climate change, and updates will require significant investment. Andrew Rosenberg, the former Northeast regional administrator and deputy director at NOAA, says that the states don’t have the technology or the personnel to pick up the slack, underscoring the need for federal investment. 

“It’s not like the state of New York or Pennsylvania, or even the region has its own NOAA capability,” said Rosenberg. “They're not running end post satellites. They just don't have that capacity, and never will.”

According to Salinger and Zimmerman, New York City currently relies on information from federal agencies for a variety of local programs. 

“Within the past two years, we've been really deepening our connections with them,” said Zimmerman. “They have really been repositioning themselves to be more entrenched in the community and more locally involved than perhaps they had been in the past.”

But a high level of federal-local interdependence is not always popular on both sides of the aisle. 

Project 2025, the political initiative published by allies of former President Donald Trump as a suggested blueprint for his presidency, advocates for an unprecedented decimation of NOAA, a nonpartisan federal regulatory and research agency that is more than 50 years old. “The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) should be dismantled,” the document states, “and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories.” 

Rosenberg doesn’t think a full dismantling of the agency is likely, though, primarily because it would be very difficult for a president to do. 

“Maybe if Republicans controlled … the White House and both houses of Congress,” he said. “Even so, they can do a lot of damage.”

Trump has denied his involvement or engagement with Project 2025 – in September’s debate, he denied having read the document, stating that he had heard proposed policies were “some, some bad.” Still, if Trump wins the presidency, NOAA could see cuts regardless of whether the Project 2025 initiative is fully implemented. He repeatedly attempted to slash the agency’s budget during his first term. Trump also has expressed unprecedented disregard for the integrity of NOAA’s research. He made headlines in 2019 for altering the map of Hurricane Dorian’s path produced by NOAA with a Sharpie and in 2020 for appointing climate change deniers to the agency.

Meanwhile, under the Biden-Harris administration, NOAA received $3.3 billion dollars through the landmark Inflation Reduction Act, and the Democratic Party Platform for 2024 criticized the Project 2025 proposal. A Harris presidency is more promising for NOAA, but according to climate advocates, there is plenty of room for improvement and more aggressive action on climate change. While the Democratic Party highlighted climate change in its 2020 platform, the issue has taken a backseat in 2024.

“I’m reasonably optimistic that (a Harris administration) will try to continue to take action, depending on how Congress goes,” said Rosenberg. “I’m also not terribly optimistic it will be fast enough.”

And the clock is ticking as storms grow more severe and sea levels rise. Though he and his family have become accustomed to dealing with flooding over the years, Martinez said Ida changed the game. “Water was falling down the stairs on the side entrance for the basement, and directly in, which is something that usually doesn't happen,” he recalled. “It never builds up that much for it to come from directly outside through the door. But on that day … all hell broke loose."

"We are just surrounded in all directions by water, and being able to direct that safely, and be able to cohabitate alongside water has always been a challenge in New York,” Zimmerman said. “(But) it is becoming a bit more existential as time's passing."