Watermark Report

On Sept. 30, 2022, the NFIP made a semi-annual interest payment of $300 million to the U.S. Treasury. With this payment, the NFIP has now paid over $5.7 billion in interest since Hurricane Katrina hit the United States in 2005.

There is a Benefit-Cost Analysis (BCA) requirement to access funding through FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Assistance (HMA) grant programs. The BCA is the method used to calculate the future risk reduction benefits of a hazard mitigation project and compares those benefits to its costs.

This section outlines the current state of the NFIP’s debt to Treasury and proposes potential reforms to address this accumulation of debt.

An overview of FEMA’s Flood Mitigation Assistance program that provides a summary of the program’s results for FY 2021. Relevant details of the program for FY 2022 are also provided. This program is key to FEMA’s resilience efforts as catastrophic flooding persists.

The 2021 OFIA Annual Report highlights affordability issues across the NFIP and makes recommendations for programmatic improvements.