Calvert County, Maryland Climate risk & resilience profile

Calvert County's mitigation money has followed its cliffs more closely than FEMA's loss model does. The National Risk Index expects $16.0 million a year in hazard losses, led by inland flooding and hurricanes, and ranks landslides 15th of 18 hazards at $9 thousand. Yet about a quarter of the county's FEMA mitigation money, $1.9 million, has gone to buying properties at landslide risk, a risk the county's plan ties to its eroding bayfront cliffs.

What drives the risk

Inland flooding accounts for 36% of expected losses and hurricanes for 25%. Calvert sits between the Chesapeake Bay and the Patuxent River, and the county's plan counts 5,859 address points within 500 feet of the shoreline.

The model barely sees the cliffs: coastal erosion isn't among the 18 hazards FEMA scores. In 2013, Capital News Service reported that some 200 bayfront homes sat on unstable cliffs, and that owners had been unable to get permits to armor them since the 1980s because the work would endanger the threatened Puritan tiger beetle.

A social vulnerability score of 10.6, the lowest FEMA gives, and very high community resilience at 93.8 hold the overall risk index to 28.9, very low.

Where the mitigation money has gone

FEMA lists 23 funded projects in Calvert County from fiscal 1994 to 2023, worth $8.0 million in federal share. The Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, which pays out after disaster declarations, supplied $7.0 million of it. The largest grant, $3.2 million under the December 2009 winter storm declaration, bought nine properties in Chesapeake Beach, and $1.5 million under the Tropical Storm Isaias declaration was approved to buy three at landslide risk. Calvert holds 6% of Maryland's federal mitigation dollars against 2% of the state's expected losses.

Pre-disaster money for cliff buyouts has been unsteady. After FEMA canceled its Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program in April 2025, The BayNet reported that no recurring FEMA program remained to buy high-risk cliff houses. Under a court order, FEMA reopened the program to applications in March 2026, but the county's grant page still tells cliff owners that funding isn't available.

The mitigation plan

The Calvert County 2023 Hazard Mitigation Plan also covers the towns of Chesapeake Beach and North Beach. FEMA approved it for February 28, 2024, through February 27, 2029. The update added coastal erosion and landslides to the hazard list; neither appeared in the 2017 plan. The county has since adopted an updated flood mitigation plan in July 2024 and approved a high-tide flood plan in September 2025.

What we'd look at next

Calvert's cliff buyouts have leaned on post-disaster money, and the pre-disaster program that could fill the gaps was cut once and revived by a court. We would look at keeping appraisals, engineers' threat letters and owner interest current for the highest-risk cliff properties, so applications are ready whenever either kind of money opens. Inland flooding is still the largest modeled loss and deserves the same readiness.