Massachusetts' New Climate Law and the Crucial Role of Flood Maps in Protecting Our Future
On November 21, Massachusetts took important steps to fortify its future in the face of climate change when Governor Healey signed new climate legislation, An Act promoting a clean energy grid, advancing equity, and protecting ratepayers into law. The law includes several critical clean energy provisions, but equally crucial is the bill’s requirement that the state provide communities with updated flood maps.
Currently, development decisions in Massachusetts are made based on FEMA flood maps which are decades out of date, and not being updated. Too often, we are still allowing building to happen in flood zones, increasing personal and property damage risks. Instead, we should be following the science and letting floodplains do their work to absorb flood waters during storms.
This bill requires the Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs to review existing flood risk maps and support additional mapping resources as necessary within six months of passage.
In our watershed, CRWA worked with our watershed cities and towns to build the Charles River Flood Model (CRFM), which is a watershed-scale computer simulation (or model) demonstrating when and where it will flood under different conditions. The CRFM can be used to predict flooding in various storms today and decades into the future. The CRFM can also be used to test out various flood mitigation strategies and projects, and in fact several of our communities are moving ahead with flood mitigation projects based on learnings from the model.
Across Massachusetts we have already seen how heavy rainfall and intense storms can overwhelm the state’s infrastructure and communities, disrupting lives in catastrophic ways – Leominster, for instance, received over ten inches of rain from a single storm in September of last year, bringing devastation to this central Massachusetts city. In 2023, Williamsburg experienced 10 inches of rainfall in a single day, sparking emergency rescues by boat and destroying and washing away roads and homes.
For coastal communities and inland towns alike, the updated flood maps made available thanks to this legislation will be a lifeline for safeguarding lives, property, and livelihoods.
Massachusetts has 1,500 miles of coastline and diverse ecosystems. Coastal flooding, compounded by sea-level rise, is already a pressing concern. Extreme weather events have shown how devastating floods can be, even in places not traditionally considered flood-prone. Updating flood maps and making them public, as we have done in the Charles River watershed, will ensure that municipalities across the Commonwealth can better prepare for and mitigate the impacts of flooding—before the next storm hits.
The future is uncertain, but with proper planning, accurate data, and the political will to act, we can make our communities more resilient, safer, and better equipped to thrive despite the changing climate.
