As flood risk changes and homeowner's flood insurance premiums are recalculated, sticker shock is a sticking point

More accurate flood data has changed insurance rates.
(Photo by Kellly Sikkema, Unsplash)

As the Federal Emergency Management Agency recalculates national flood insurance premiums to include more accurate data, insuring property in places like Valley City, Illinois, which was recently underwater because of another flood from the Illinois River, may not be financially possible for some residents," reports Kery Murakami of Route Fifty. "After FEMA made changes to how it sets premiums for the 5 million policyholders in its National Flood Insurance Program, homeowners in Valley City, an area that's hit a major flood stage seven times since 2002, will be seeing a major jump in their premium to cover their damages. . . . Over roughly the next ten years, the 91 single-family homeowners in Pike County, where Valley City is located, will see their premiums rise six-fold from $699 to $4,933."

FEMA's new way of setting flood insurance premiums will "more accurately reflect how much flood risk properties are facing. But in many areas around the country, homeowners will see their premium payments multiply several times," Murakami writes. "Up until now, the premiums had not considered how often an area was expected to flood in the future and didn't consider many types of flooding, like that from heavy rainfall. That's led to an unfair situation in which many owners of properties at risk of flooding have been paying 'peanuts,' said Chad Berginnis, executive director for the Association of State Floodplain Managers. And indeed, Pike County's single-family homeowners had been paying among the lowest rates of any county in the country, according to FEMA data examined by Route Fifty."

Lawmakers say flood insurance only helps if homeowners can afford to buy it. "Some members of Congress from areas where premiums will jump are balking at the prospect of NFIP policyholders paying thousands more for federal flood insurance. Raising premiums so sharply, they say, could discourage people from buying insurance and leave them vulnerable if a flood damages their home," Murakami reports. Federal law caps premium increases at 18%. "Those who are not paying as much as FEMA's new risk assessment says they should be paying will be on what the agency calls a 'glide path' until they reach their new premium level. . . . The agency estimates that the percentage of people paying the amount FEMA believes they should be paying will rise from about a third to 90% over the next decade."

Using a more accurate picture of where flooding has or is likely to occur to set premium costs has supporters. "Some changes should be made, said Berginnis. . . . The new premiums, for example, will not take into account steps property owners take to reduce the threat of flood damage," Murakami writes. "Still, he said, the new flood insurance rates will 'send people the correct signals about flood risk.'

Native plants have oodles of benefits, but there's a shortage of native seeds; getting more begins with planning

Switchgrass is native to the Northeast. (Peganum photo via The Conversation)

When spring arrives, it's "planting time for home gardeners, landscapers and public works agencies across the U.S. And there's rising demand for native plants – species that are genetically adapted to the specific regions," report Julia Kuzovkina and John Campanelli for The Conversation, a platform for journalism by academics. "Native plants have evolved with local climates and soil conditions. . . . . They generally require less maintenance ... after they become established. They are hardier than non-native species. . . . Many agencies rank native plants as a first choice for restoring areas that have been disturbed by natural disasters or human activities like mining and development. Repairing damaged landscapes is critical for slowing climate change and species loss."

Using more native plants sounds easy enough, but it's not. "There aren't enough native seeds. This issue is so serious that it was the subject of a recent National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine report. The study found an urgent need to build a native seed supply," Kuzovkina and Campanelli write. "As plant scientists who have worked on ecological restoration projects, we're familiar with this challenge." Kuzovkina and Campanelli are working to restore New England roadsides with native plants. Their problem-and-solution approach can be applied in most areas of the country.

They explain some of the challenges: "Restoration projects require vast quantities of native seeds – but commercial supplies fall far short . . . . Developing a batch of seeds for a specific species takes skill and several years of lead time to either collect native seeds in the wild or grow plants to produce them. Suppliers say one of their biggest obstacles is unpredictable demand from large-scale customers, such as government and tribal agencies, that don't plan far enough ahead for producers to have stocks ready."

Getting enough seeds takes cooperation and planning. "To tackle this problem, our team launched a project in 2022 with funding from the New England Transportation Consortium. Our goals are to increase native plantings and pollinator habitats with seeds from local ecotypes and to make our recommendations for roadside restoration with native grasses more feasible," The Conversation reports. "This led to the launch of the regional Northeast Seed Network, which will be hosted by the Massachusetts-based Native Plant Trust, a nonprofit that works to conserve New England's native plants. We expect this network will promote all aspects of native seed production in the region, from collecting seeds in the wild to cultivating plants for seed production, developing regional seed markets and carrying out related research."

Despite aggressive rules to limit N.M. gas flaring, it goes on

Incomplete combustion in a flare, as pictured, generates
more emissions. (Photo from WildEarth Guardians)

“Laws without enforcement are just good advice.” --Attributed to Abraham Lincoln

In New Mexico, when Michelle Lujan Grisham became governor in 2019, she issued an aggressive executive order that "set a goal of reducing the state’s greenhouse-gas emissions by 45 percent from 2005 levels by 2030," reports Martha Pskowski of Inside Climate News. "In May 2021, New Mexico’s Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department adopted new rules that prohibit routine flaring and venting and require operators to achieve a 98% gas-capture rate by 2026." But state records from December and January "show venting and flaring increasing, not decreasing. According to the division, from November to December 2022 flaring increased 39 percent and venting increased 161 percent."

Delaware Basin is a rich section of the Permian Basin.
(Map by C. Cunningham, Albuquerque Journal)

Pskowski visited Carlsbad, N.M., in the heart of the Permian Basin, the nation's most productive oil patch, to see examples of how methane regulation is failing. "Transmission lines and flare stacks dot the horizon. . . . One flare sent off dark smoke, a sign that it wasn’t burning efficiently," Pskowski explains. "Flares are designed to eliminate methane from natural gas. But unlit flares and inefficient combustion mean that flaring still emits large amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas . . . . The Environmental Defense Fund’s Permian MAP project found that the Permian was the highest methane-emitting oil and gas basin in the nation. . . . advocates say that in the absence of rigorous state field enforcement, companies are continuing wasteful methane flaring and venting."

Environmental advocates aren't the only ones who have noted the lack of compliance. "Recent flyovers by the federal Environmental Protection Agency, independent monitoring by environmental advocates and NASA satellite imagery have documented significant methane releases," Pskowski adds. "To date, only two companies have been fined for unauthorized flaring since the rules went into effect. . . . industry watchdogs warn that counting on operators to self-report flaring and venting is a failing strategy." A state spokesman "said that the agency relies on inspections, audits and internal reviews to verify the data companies report. But its capacity for on-site inspections is severely limited. Funds are allocated for only 14 inspectors statewide, with two of those positions currently vacant."

After viewing videos of apparently bad flaring, Pskowski contacted four companies involved. "In one case, the company acted," and another said it "eliminated routine flaring at its U.S. operations in 2022 and met the 98 percent gas capture rules," she reports, adding that other companies didn't respond to her requests for comment. 

Rural counties have been trying to ban renewable-energy projects, so Illinois and Calif. legislatures banned the bans

Solar panels in Illinois (Photo by Youngrae Kim, The Washington Post)

Rural Illinois has long stretches of flat land, ideal for installing solar and wind projects, but not all rural residents want those projects; some local governments moved to ban them. "Two years ago, Illinois had adopted a landmark clean-energy law that called for building vast amounts of renewable power," reports Dan Gearino and Aydali Campa of Inside Climate News. "At the same time, 15 counties with some of the most land available for wind and solar had passed, or were about to pass, restrictions on new development that made the state’s goals more difficult to reach."

"Something had to give," ICN reports. "That something came last month, when Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed HB 4412 that took away the ability of local governments to limit or ban wind and solar power, a measure that follows similar actions in California and New York. . . . Now, officials from places that had restricted development of renewables projects — like Ford County, located in the rural area between Chicago and Champaign-Urbana — are livid about what they view as a power grab by majority Democrats."

Clean-energy advocates said the law was necessary because rural counties were not relying on fact-based research when vetoing renewable projects, ICN notes. "While there is agreement that rural resistance to wind and solar is an impediment to development," ICN writes. "Experts disagree about whether it’s a good idea to deal with this opposition by yanking power away from local officials." Sarah Mills, a University of Michigan renewable-energy-conflicts writer, told ICN, "This is not the way you build bridges between urban and rural areas. It’s making that chasm even wider.”

Jen Walling is executive director of the Illinois Environmental Council. "She said some county requirements were so restrictive that they were essentially bans on clean energy developments," reports Tim Shelley of WCBU in Peoria, Illinois. Walling told Shelley, "A number of these counties weren't representing their constituents and were taking away individual property rights."

Like Illinois, California has stretches of open land primed for renewables, but counties often said, "No, thank you." California's Gov. Gavin Newsom got his legislature to ban the bans, reports Julie Cart of CalMatters. Alex Jackson, director of California state affairs for American Clean Power, an association of renewable-energy companies, told Cart, "In general we work really well with local government. We have invested a lot in those relationships. We prefer to work with them rather than strong-arm them. Overall we don’t see this as unlocking the path to accelerating clean energy.”

ICN reports, "Kevin Semlow, Illinois Farm Bureau’s director of state legislation, said his larger concern isn’t about the loss of local control; it’s about how the law seems to occupy an uncomfortable middle ground between local and state control, with counties remaining in charge but severely limited in what they can do." Semlow asked ICN, "Since you’re basically having a statewide system, why don’t you have a statewide agency that would be over it, so there’s just more cohesiveness and uniformity?"

‘Right to repair’ farm equipment pushed in 11 states; makers cite intellectual-property and environmental issues

A combine harvests grain in northeastern Colorado.
(Photo by Danny Wood via Associated Press)

A big thunderstorm blows through, and your electricity goes out. You wait. You can't fix the electricity on your own and some waiting is expected, but do you want to wait three days? Five days? Should the wait cost you thousands of dollars?

That's the bind many American farmers face when their equipment needs repairs, reports Jesse Bedayn of The Associated Press. Bedayn introduces Colorado farmer Danny Wood as an example: "Wood scrambles to plant and harvest proso millet, dryland corn and winter wheat in short, seasonal windows. . . until his high-tech Steiger 370 tractor conks out. . . . The tractor’s manufacturer doesn’t allow Wood to make certain fixes himself, and last spring his fertilizing operations were stalled for three days before the servicer arrived to add a few lines of missing computer code for $950. . . . [this common plight] has pushed lawmakers in Colorado and 10 other states to introduce bills that would force manufacturers to provide the tools, software, parts and manuals needed for farmers to do their own repairs — thereby avoiding steep labor costs and delays that imperil profits." Wood told Bedayn, “That’s where they have us over the barrel, it’s more like we are renting it than buying it." Wood spent $300,000 purchase his used tractor.

"Right to repair" laws have gained traction, "In 2021, the Federal Trade Commission pledged to beef up its right to repair enforcement at the direction of President Joe Biden," Bedayn writes. "And just last year, Rep. Brianna Titone sponsored and passed Colorado’s first right to repair law, empowering people who use wheelchairs with the tools and information to fix them."

But there is the other side: "Manufacturers argue that changing the current practice with this type of legislation would force companies to expose trade secrets. They also say it would make it easier for farmers to tinker with the software and illegally crank up the horsepower and bypass the emissions controller — risking operators’ safety and the environment," Bedayn reports. "Similar arguments around intellectual property have been leveled against the broader campaign called ‘right to repair,’ which has picked up steam across the country."

Bedayn notes, "Rep. Richard Holtorf, the Republican who represents Wood’s district and is a farmer himself, said he’s being pulled between his constituents and the dealerships in his district covering the largely rural northeast corner of the state. He voted against the measure because he believes it will financially impact local dealerships in rural areas and could jeopardize trade secrets. Holtorf told Bedayn, "I do sympathize with my farmers. I don’t think it’s the role of government to be forcing the sale of intellectual property.”

"The bill’s proponents acknowledged that the legislation could make it easier for operators to modify horsepower and emissions controls," Bedayn reports. "But argued that farmers are already able to tinker with their machines and doing so would remain illegal."

Growers unconvinced that carbon-capture farming can be profitable; agribusiness execs remain focused on investment

Soil can retain carbon for years if left undisturbed. (Photo by
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds, Agence France-Presse via Getty Images)

Fact: Undisturbed soil can safely retain converted carbon for years. But farmers are skeptical that it is a profitable use of farmland, reports Patrick Thomas of The Wall Street Journal: "Agriculture companies are investing millions of dollars to develop farming programs designed to capture more carbon dioxide in fields, as a possible solution to mitigate climate change. "The challenge: convincing farmers that it is worth their time, the costs of new farming practices and potentially losing out on some of their harvest in the process."

Thomas cites Iowa corn farmer Chris Edgington, chairman and a former president of the National Corn Growers Association, who "said he has looked at various carbon programs over the past year, calculating the risk of reduced crops as he adjusts the way he manages his crops and the potential compensation for the carbon his fields could capture. So far, he said, he hasn’t signed up." Edgington told Thomas, "At the current economics, it will be a real challenge to grow."

Carbon-capturing crops use photosynthesis to push carbon back into the soil via their roots after harvest. "The agriculture industry, which has come under increased environmental scrutiny in recent years, has said that paying farmers to maximize those natural processes can help make them part of a potential solution. Carbon programs also give companies a potential new revenue stream, as they project farm-generated carbon offsets will draw demand from food manufacturers, airlines and tech companies seeking to offset their own carbon emissions."

So far, farmer participation has not matched investor enthusiasm: "Less than 5% of the more than 1,300 U.S. farmers surveyed by McKinsey Consulting in 2022 said they participated in a carbon program, and more than 50% of farmers said an unclear return on investment was one of their top reasons for not participating," Thomas writes. "Agriculture executives said their farmer sign-ups are on track or exceeding expectations.  . . . Corteva officials said the seed supplier’s program is on track and that demand for carbon credits is expected to rise along with the price farmers are paid."

Thomas reports, "Farmers generally are paid $15 to $20 per ton of carbon sequestered under agriculture companies’ current programs, Bank of Montreal senior analyst Joel Jackson said. He estimated that farmers need to earn more than $50 a ton to make carbon programs economically viable for their operations."

FEMA's flawed hazard maps are unable to predict pluvial flooding driven by climate change, Washington Post reports

Water reached the tops of cars in South Dallas,
Texas, in August. (Photo by Dkamreen Jones)

Destructive flooding ambushed sections of the U.S. throughout 2022, leaving areas waterlogged and people homeless. The Washington Post has completed an "analysis of videos taken by people who endured destruction from flooding pinpoints how federal maps are failing to reflect the growing peril that Americans face," Samuel Oakford, John Muyskens, Sarah Cahlan, and Joyce Sohyun Lee report. "Government flood-insurance maps often left residents unprepared for the threat."

In July 2022, "Brandon Jones’s St. Louis home was hit by major flooding for the second time since 2008. Cars were barely visible under several feet of turgid storm water, as record rainfall fell on the city. . . . Two days later, the area flooded all over again."

The flooding took Jones by surprise: "Jones’s Penrose neighborhood isn’t designated as a high-risk location on the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s flood maps," the Post reports. "These high-risk zones, which lie in what’s called the Special Flood Hazard Area, cover properties that the agency considers to have at least a 1 percent annual chance of flooding. This 100-year flood plain designation requires property owners with federally backed mortgages to buy flood insurance, and it influences how communities regulate development."

The Post reports that part of the reason Jones was not prepared is that FEMA's maps need an overhaul: "They capture river and coastal flooding, not inundation caused by intense bursts of rainfall, known as pluvial flooding — a particularly dangerous problem in cities, where many porous surfaces have been paved over. This makes FEMA’s designated flood hazard zones a bad match for the intense weather events that scientists say U.S. communities will face."

Daniel Swain, climate scientist at UCLA, told the Post, “It is precisely that type of flooding, urban flooding and flash flooding from shortish duration but very high-intensity downpours, that is expected to increase the most in a warming climate."

Fast-rising sea slowly erasing coastal Virginia communities

Most of Hog Island has eroded into the Atlantic
Ocean. (Photo map by The Washington Post)

In 1892, the town of Broadwater, on Virginia's Hog Island, was a bustling community with hunting and fishing clubs, families and plenty of oysters. By the early 1900s, the effects of erosion could be seen along the coastline of the southern Delmarva Peninsula, and now "The remains of Broadwater have been lost to the Atlantic Ocean," and the town residents moved to is being threatened by rising sea level, report Chris Mooney, Zoeann Murphy and Simon Ducroquet of The Washington Post.

Buddy Bell, born on Hog Island, told the writers, "I was the next-to-last kid born on there. At one time the island was two miles wide, and now you can throw a shell across it." His family, like many on the island, barged their homes to Oyster, Va., and started over.

Now Oyster is "threatened by a fast-rising ocean, as is much of the U.S. East Coast," they write. "The menace today is different: human-caused climate change. But for some in Oyster, the question of the past echoes today: stay or go?"

Global warming is expanding the ocean, and it's impossible to know how high it will rise. Tide gauges have measured sea levels since 1927, and readings in places like nearby Hampton Roads have been grim. The Post reports, "Seas there rose by more than six millimeters annually over the past 30 years, compared with four millimeters per year during the three decades before."

Post map shows hotspot is sea-level rise.

Barrier islands change for many reasons, but Virginia's are changing at an accelerated rate. "Just 250 miles off Virginia, one of the world’s most dramatic sea-level-rise hot spots has emerged, revealed by satellite measurements that began three decades ago," the Post reports. "Signaling a shift in the Gulf Stream, a massive current that carries heat northward, it’s the most visible sign of a rapidly changing ocean." Kris Karnauskas, a sea-level-rise expert at the University of Colorado, told the writers, “That hot spot just happens to be the loudest symptom of something large-scale and grand going on."

"Oyster now sits near this emerging sea-level-rise hot spot," the reporters write, "and so does part of the legacy of life on Hog Island." The Virginia Coast Reserve Program for the Nature Conservancy, which owns much of the land around Oyster, is hoping to help the community develop a global warming relocation plan.

Report: industry insiders influence EPA more than ever

The Environmental Protection Agency is on the verge of "regulatory capture," a form of government failure in which an agency advances the interests of the industries it's meant to regulate instead of public interest and impartial research, according to a new study in the American Journal of Public Health, Neela Banerjee reports for Inside Climate News.

The study, based on interviews with current and former EPA staff and reviews of White House and EPA initiatives, found that the agency is closer to regulatory capture than it has ever been in its 47-year history. "New EPA leadership has thus far aimed at deconstructing, rather than reconstructing, the agency by comprehensively undermining many of the agency's rules, programs, and policies while also severely undercutting its budget, work capacity, internal operations and morale," said the study.

The report suggests that EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has enabled this shift toward industry interests by making policy decisions with little input from scientists or longtime staff, and also notes "the extraordinary lengths that Pruitt has [gone to] to preserve secrecy and autonomy from the EPA career staff, such as cordoning his office wing off from career employees, reportedly forbidding note taking at some meetings and employing 24-hour armed guards," Banerjee reports.

The report also chronicled Pruitt's efforts to trash longstanding scientific practices in the agency by dismissing scientific advisory boards and hiring industry insiders. It also noted that the EPA issued 60 percent fewer civil penalties in the first six months of Pruitt's term and an overall decline in enforcement.

Clean Power plan a challenge to Western states, but not a death sentence

The Obama administration's Clean Power plan that calls for a 32 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2030 is not the death sentence Western coal states are making it out to be, mostly because "any shutdowns after 2012 will count toward the 2030 targets" and could go a long way toward helping states meet goals, Cally Carswell reports for High Country News.

For example, the Navajo Generating Station and Four Corners Power Plant, both of which sit on the Navajo Nation in Arizona and New Mexico, were originally required to cut emissions by 6 percent, but that number increased to 38 percent under revised regulations, Carswell writes. That goal is not as hard as it sounds, considering "three units at Four Corners were idled in 2013 and one at the Navajo Generating Station will likely close in 2019." The 38 percent goal is one "that the planned closures at the two plants could still achieve—or at least come close to—under one of the EPA’s proposed compliance options, according to a rough calculation provided by the Natural Resources Defense Council."

"Similarly, New Mexico’s existing renewable energy and efficiency standards, plus the planned closure of two units at the San Juan Generating Station, seem likely to put the state within striking distance of its 2030 goal," Carswell writes. "PNM, New Mexico’s largest utility, agreed this month to reconsider the remaining units’ future in 2018, and environmental groups remain hopeful it will abandon San Juan. Since the EPA is encouraging participation in emissions trading markets under the Clean Power Plan, PNM might even stand to profit from closing more units. If it reduces emissions more than required, it will have credits to sell on the market, explains Steve Michel, an attorney with Western Resource Advocates."

"As the West’s largest coal economy, Wyoming in particular faces big changes," Carswell writes. "Rob Godby, a University of Wyoming energy economist, says the concern is less how Wyoming will meet its own target than how other states—its coal customers—will meet theirs. Godby led a recent study that found that the regulations could reduce Wyoming coal production by 34 to 50 percent. How big the hit will be depends in part on how much coal power Wyoming’s customers will have the option of keeping, which in turn depends on whether emissions can be offset elsewhere, by improving energy efficiency or buying emissions credits." Godby told Carswell, “This isn’t the death of coal," but he said "it is a formidable new challenge." (Read more)