Floodplain management documents and Publications

• NYS DEC & FEMA - Floodplain Management Quick Guide: Provides community officials with essential information about floodplain development standards and floodplain permitting requirements. Lists technical resources available to community officials, developers, and residents. Use resource as a reference during the implementation of the NFIP within their community. - Download Quick Guide PDF
  
  
• FEMA Elevation Certificate and Instructions - View LInk
  
  
• Managing Floodplain Development Through the National Flood Insurance Program - View Link
  
  
• FEMA Fact Sheet: Elevation Certificates: Who Needs Them and Why, FEMA, April 2015. Fact sheet for homeowners about elevation certificates and flood insurance - View Link
              
  
• Floodplain Management Bulletin on the Elevation Certificate, FEMA 467-1, May 2004. Supplements the instructions included with the Elevation Certificate. - View Link 
  
  
• Openings in Foundation Walls and Walls of Enclosures, FEMA Technical Bulletin 1, August 2008. Provides guidance on the NFIP regulations concerning requirements for openings in foundation walls and walls of enclosures, which are documented on the Elevation Certificate. - View Link
  
  
• FEMA NFIP Floodplain Management Requirements Study Guide and Desk Reference (2005), Unit 7 Ordinance Administration. Unit 7 discusses the steps needed to administer a floodplain management ordinance. Section C describes Development Permits, Section G describes Recordkeeping, including a community's permit file. - View Guidebook PDF
  
  
• FEMA Local Officials Guide for Coastal Construction (2009), Chapter 4 Permits and Inspections. This chapter describes coastal specific building permit process, presenting important regulatory facts, management tools, and organizational techniques to assist in developing or modifying a local permit-processing program. - View Link
  
  
• FEMA Substantially Improved/Substantially Damaged Desk Reference. Local floodplain management regulations and codes contain minimum NFIP requirements that apply not only to new structures, but also to existing structures which are “substantially improved (SI)” or “substantially damaged (SD).” This Desk Reference provides practical guidance and suggested procedures to implement the NFIP requirements for SI/SD.- View Link
  
  
• FEMA Answers to Questions about SI/SD Buildings. Provides guidance for many concerns regarding Substantial Improvement (SI) and Substantial Damage (SD) of buildings in Special Flood Hazard Areas. The publication answers questions about pertinent definitions and regulations and some general questions about SI/SD and determining when buildings are Substantially Improved or have incurred Substantial Damage. - View Link
  
  
• A handout on managing floodplain development in Zone A areas without Base Flood Elevations (from Southern Tier Central Regional Planning and Development Board). - View PDF
  
  
• Managing Floodplain Development in Approximate Zone A Areas: A Guide for Obtaining and Developing Base (100-Year) Flood Elevations, FEMA 265 (1995) provides engineering guidelines for determining Base Flood Elevations using simplified and detailed methods - View PDF
  
  
• Effectively Managing Coastal Floodplain Development, includes model local laws - View PDF
  
  
• Coastal Construction Manual (FEMA 55) Vol. 2 - View Link
  
  
• Free-of-Obstruction Requirements Technical Bulletin 5 (2008) - View Link
  
  
• Design and Construction Guidance for Breakaway Walls Below Elevated Coastal Buildings Technical Bulletin 9 (2008) - View Link
  
  
• A position paper by the Association of State Floodplain Managers on "Natural and Beneficial Floodplain Functions: Floodplain Management—More than Flood Loss Reduction". Gives reasons for the focusing on multiple floodplain functions, how they are handled in federal regulations, and how they can be monitored, protected, and restored. Also links to other useful resources. [2008. p.8] - View PDF
  
  
• "Living in Harmony with Streams: A Citizen’s Handbook to How Streams Work" is a good, general guidance document about how floodplains and their watersheds function and what influence changing part of the system can have on other parts. - View PDF
  
  
• The Natural and Beneficial Functions of Floodplains: Reducing Flood Loss by Protecting and Restoring the Floodplain Environment (2002) report to Congress by the Task Force on the Natural and Beneficial Functions of the Floodplain - View PDF
  
  
• The FEMA Preparedness Grants Manual helps guide applicants and recipients of grant funding on how to manage their grants.  FEMA provides funding for communities looking to increase their flood resiliency and planning efforts. - View PDF
  
  
• Application forms for MT-1s (Letters of Map Amendment, Letters of Map Revision based on Fill, and Conditional versus of LOMAs and LOMR-Fs) - View Link
  
  
• Application forms for MT-2s (Letters of Map Revision and Conditional Letters of Map Revision) -View Link
  
  
• Coastal No Adverse Impact Handbook Association of State Floodplain Managers No-Adverse Impact floodplain management guidance document that presents factors for effective planning and a range of planning tools - View PDF