Lines in the Sand: Flood Mapping and the Contested Boundaries of Environmental Risk

• In Event: 254 - Section on Environment and Technology Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 11. Flooding and Disaster Vulnerability

Abstract

This paper examines how people encounter and contest the boundaries of environmental risk and risk management. Through an ethnographic and interview-based account of the fraught reception of new FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) flood maps on Staten Island after Hurricane Sandy, I illustrate the social and political dynamics of ongoing attempts to map flood risk. As flood zone boundaries interact with existing social and symbolic divides, they create new lines of conflict, as well as opportunities for collective action. After Sandy, Staten Island residents formed neighborhood-based “buyout groups” to lobby the state government to purchase their homes and begin to retreat from the coast. When the government proposed using revised flood maps to set the boundaries of retreat, residents whose streets and neighborhoods were divided by the maps joined together to challenge their scientific credibility, and quickly demonstrated the infeasibility of using the maps in this way. However, the flood maps continued to have persistent and divisive consequences for residents seeking to rebuild their homes in place. As a tool to determine flood insurance rates and home elevation standards, FEMA’s maps have become the target of growing numbers of “flood zone communities” that are mobilizing against their implementation. In this paper, I find that five strategies served to contest these new boundaries of environmental risk in this context. These strategies likely to be applicable elsewhere as risk classifications become a more prevalent basis for allocating resources, and as climate change leads zones of environmental instability to shift and expand.

Author

• Liz Koslov, New York University