Chellie Pingree: “Mr. Speaker, today the House will consider H.R. 5114, the Flood Insurance Reform Priorities Act. In Maine, FEMA is…”

“Mr. Speaker, today the House will consider H.R. 5114, the Flood Insurance Reform Priorities Act. In Maine, FEMA is remapping York and Cumberland counties. The new maps will help homeowners and businesses assess the flood risk they face. In Portland, the initial models FEMA used showed much of the city's waterfront would be damaged by waves during a bad storm. FEMA's models turned out to be more appropriate for exposed or standing shorelines. Portland Harbor is not a barrier island nor is it a community built on shifting sand or even walled off from the sea by levees. Rather, Portland Harbor is a working, thriving waterfront that has endured for hundreds of years. After working with the city, FEMA recently improved the accuracy of their model, taking into account the impact of the city's working waterfront on the wave action as well as new data provided by the city. In the next few weeks, FEMA will issue preliminary maps that are a result of hard work by the city and the Maine congressional delegation. Together, we were able to save Portland's working waterfront, but other communities in York and Cumberland counties in my State face similar issues and do not have the resources to hire engineers and collect new data. Our working waterfronts are the economic and cultural hearts of our coastal communities. We need to make sure they are treated fairly in assessing the risks they face.”