Flood Resilience

Definition

Flood insurance claims

Why is it Important?

Prepared communities protect themselves from known risks, such as flooding. All areas have the potential to flood; however, some areas are more at risk of flooding than others. Flooding can cause substantial damage to buildings, infrastructure, crops and livestock, and even loss of life. Communities can protect against this risk by using low impact development (LID) practices that enable stormwater to infiltrate into the ground instead of pooling and flooding and by minimizing new development in highly flood prone areas. Heartlands Conservancy notes that “[o]ne study estimates each acre of upstream LID development results in $380 – $590 in savings from mitigated flood damage for private and public property downstream”.¹

This indicator measures the financial cost of flooding in the St. Louis region. The best available data is from FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), and represents all of the payments through the NFIP for flood losses. Therefore, flooding costs for property owners without insurance through the NFIP are not captured in this indicator.

How are we Doing?

Since 1978 $384 million in payments have been made for flood insurance claims in the St. Louis 8-county region.² In 2015 $4.2 million in payments were made for 736 claims. In 2014 $1.6 million in payments were made for 118 claims. In 2015 payments were made for claims in every county. A total of $4.2 million in payments were made for 206 claims. An additional 459 claims were made but have not been closed as of December 2015.

Geographic Level

St. Louis eight-county bi-state region, including Franklin, Jefferson, St. Charles, and St. Louis counties and the city of St. Louis in Missouri and Madison, Monroe, and St. Clair counties in Illinois. View map.

Notes

¹Heartlands Conservancy, Sustainable + Attainable: Low Impact Development Best Management Practices for Greener, Affordable Living in the St. Louis Region, 2012; accessed on 15 January 2014 at http://www.onestl.org/media/site/documents/reports/environment/BMP%20Booklet%20small%20size.pdf

² FEMA reports the total flood insurance claims since January 1, 1978 and updates the data about once a year. OneSTL began tracking the data in 2013 and subtracts the total reported since 1978 to December of each year. Therefore annual data is not available prior to 2014.