In December of 2017, the Environmental Law Institute and the University of North Carolina Institute for the Environment published Prioritizing Future Floodplain Acquisitions: Maximizing Opportunities for Habitat Restoration, Community Benefits, and Resilience.
This guide provides local governments and communities with ideas for proactively planning floodplain acquisitions and related projects in order to maximize community benefits.
Understanding that mitigating risk and getting people out of harm’s way are the main objectives of such projects, floodplain buyouts also provide opportunities for restoring habitat, improving resilience, and creating outdoor or recreation opportunities.
It provides a summary of prioritization criteria and methods that communities are using to make the most of these buyouts today, and a four-step outline for integrating broader community goals into hazard mitigation and acquisition planning.