Updates to Virginia’s flood plan aim to help communities prepare for future flooding

by Shannon Heckt, Virginia Mercury
September 15, 2025

Major flooding that battered the commonwealth last year after Hurricane Helene and the Presidents Day flooding earlier this year, showed that communities across the state — not just on the coast — need to know the potential impact of storms. As a result and because of recent legislation, the state is working to update its flood protection plan, 20 years after the last update to it, for how communities can tackle flooding.

The first iteration of the Virginia Flood Protection Master Plan is due by the end of next year. The Flood Resiliency Advisory Committee was created through recent legislation and is made up of representatives focused on housing, environmental quality, emergency management, and transportation. The committee’s aim is to fill in gaps in data between federal and local agencies to help localities make long-term plans for flood resilience.

“The risk is managed across multiple programs and policies, and a lot of that then flows down to local governments to implement,” said Matt Dalon, program manager for the Office of Resilience Planning. “We’re looking for opportunities to coordinate and enhance our work so we’re more efficient and effective in our policies and programs to manage the flood risk across the Commonwealth.”

This work is being done in tandem with the second phase of the Coastal Resilience Master Plan to use future rainfall projections to aid in long range plans. The first phase of the coastal plan was released in 2021. Over 70% of Virginia’s population calls the coastal region home.

FEMA currently does not take into account future rainfall projections when formulating its flood maps, according to Dalon. On the local level there is often not enough resources or funding to conduct rainfall projections when making city or county resiliency plans.

“But historically, precipitation and rainfall driven flooding has been absent from a lot of the planning process because it’s not included entirely in the FEMA data. So there’s been kind of this gap,” Dalon said.

The plan will not have directives or specific projects laid out for flood mitigation. It will focus on connecting agencies, training on how to respond to flooding, and reliable data for localities to use in their own planning. 

“I mean, it’s just not realistic to think we’re going to have zero flood risk. But start making changes now and sticking to it and continue to build that momentum so that we are seeing these long term reductions while also dealing with the more immediate items that come up,” Dolan said.

State agencies are currently working with stakeholders and communities who are heavily impacted by flooding, or are projected to be in the future, to gain ideas of how localities can look at how other areas of the state are mitigating flood risks that may be similar to what they may face in the future.

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