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Coastal Hazards Policy

1. Federal Role in Coastal Resilience

a. Priority: Sustain robust and flexible federal funding to address hazard impacts and build
coastal resilience at the state, regional, and local levels.

i. Robust: Ensure that adequate, sustained funding is accessible for states and
communities to complete necessary, effective mitigation projects, balancing smallscale planning and actions with large-scale infrastructure projects, and build
resilience through vulnerability assessment, feasibility studies, economic analysis,
and adaptation & resilience planning.

ii. Flexible: Ensure that eligibility, selection, implementation, and reporting
requirements for federal funding programs including disaster aid, competitive
grants, and formula/block grants provide adequate flexibility for states and
communities to effectively access and successfully leverage federal resources.

iii. Better integrate the services and missions of federal agencies charged with
protecting coastal infrastructure, including FEMA, USACE, DOT, NOAA, and others,
and improve coordination with state and local partners.

iv. Invest in resilience to minimize future damage, suffering, and recovery costs. Invest
in the stability and prosperity of the national economy by protecting, restoring, and
advancing the coastal communities and infrastructure that drive it.

b. Priority: Build state and local resilience capacity through federal-state collaborations,
planning, funding, data, and technical assistance.

i. Support all phases of resilience strategy development and implementation: hazard
assessment; public engagement & partnership building; planning; project design,
engineering, & implementation; and monitoring.

ii. Sustain federal planning support programs, including USACE Planning Assistance
to States, USACE Silver Jackets, FEMA’s Community Rating System, and the
National Flood Insurance Program.

iii. Sustain federal guidance, training, and technical assistance programs, including
engineering and design guidance and local floodplain management standards.

iv. Continue to offer Coastal Management, Digital Coast, and Knauss fellowships to
provide an important coastal management workforce development pipeline.

c. Priority: Ensure that financially sound, affordable, and reliable flood insurance is available
in coastal communities.

i. Avoid lapses in flood and homeowners insurance coverage.

ii. Improve the effectiveness of flood insurance to help policy holders mitigate
structures’ hazard exposure and comply with state and local standards, such as by
raising NFIP Increased Cost of Compliance coverage.

2. Coastal Erosion

CSO will continue to pursue priorities set out in its separate Coastal Erosion Policy.

a. Priority: Advance a more cohesive federal approach to supporting state management and
mitigation of coastal erosion hazards.

b. Priority: Ensure robust funding for projects mitigating hotspots of rapid or significant land
loss. Enhance state and local capacity to prepare for, mitigate, and respond to coastal
erosion hazards.

c. Priority: Explore options, such as through the NFIP, to address collapsing properties
before they become a casualty.

3. Addressing Risk Across All Federal Activities on the Coast

a. Priority: Ensure that all federal activities in the coastal zone (investment, resource
management, permitting, etc) implement policies and design standards that adequately
account for future conditions and comply with state standards, policies, and priorities,
including under CZMA federal consistency requirements.

b. Priority: Adequately valuate and consider sound nonstructural and nature-based solutions
adapted to future conditions when planning and funding coastal projects.

4. Federal Coastal Data and Research

a. Priority: Fund, coordinate, and maintain national production of actionable climate and
coastal data and research that meet state and local needs.

i. Provide data at sufficient frequency and resolution for use in planning and sitespecific design contexts via standardized, accessible platforms.

ii. Coordinate with states to identify and prioritize data gaps. Actively incentivize and
grow partnerships.

iii. Provide federal funding and technical assistance in support of state mapping and
monitoring of shoreline change and coastal resources.

b. Priority: Sustain the continued funding and delivery of key federal research and data
products and programs.

c. Priority: Coordinate with states to close the backlog of up-to-date flood risk mapping,
including information about compound hazards, erosion, and future risk

Adopted July 18, 2025

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