Floodplain Administration

Purpose

To promote the public health, safety, and general welfare and to minimize public and private losses due to flood conditions in specific areas by provisions designed to:

• Protect human life and health.
• Minimize expenditure of public money for costly flood control projects.
• Ensure that potential buyers are notified that a property is in a flood area.
• Minimize damage to public facilities and utilities located in floodplains.
• Minimize expenditure of public money for costly flood control projects.

Methods of Reducing Flood Losses

• Control filling, grading, dredging, and other development, which may increase flood damage.
• Control the alteration of natural floodplains, stream channels, and natural protective barriers, which are involved in the accommodation of flood waters.
• Minimize the need for rescue and relief efforts associated with flooding and generally undertaken at the expense of the general public.
• Prevent or regulate the construction of flood barriers which will unnaturally divert flood waters or which may increase flood hazards to other lands.
• Protect human life and health
• Require that uses vulnerable to floods, including facilities, which serve such uses, be protected against flood damage at the time of initial construction.
• Restrict or prohibit uses that are dangerous to health, safety or property in times of flood, or cause excessive increases in flood heights or velocities.

Floodplain Hazards

The flood hazard areas of the City of Marble Falls are subject to periodic inundation, which may result in loss of life and property, health and safety hazards, disruption of commerce and governmental services, and extraordinary public expenditures for flood protection and relief.

These flood losses are created by the cumulative effect of obstructions in floodplains which cause an increase in flood heights and velocities, and by the occupancy of flood hazard areas by uses vulnerable to floods and hazardous to other lands because they are inadequately elevated, flood-proofed, or otherwise protected from flood damage.

National Flood Insurance Program

The City of Marble Falls regulates the Federal Emergency Management Agency Floodplains to maintain the City's enrollment in the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). NFIP enrollment provides the opportunity for Marble Falls land owners to obtain more affordable flood insurance policies. Without enrollment in the NFIP or if the City failed to enforce and regulate the identified floodplains then property/home owners would not be able to get affordable flood insurance policies.