Charles County, Maryland Climate risk & resilience profile

Inland flooding drives nearly half of Charles County's modeled hazard losses, yet flood projects have drawn about 9% of its FEMA mitigation money. The National Risk Index puts inland flooding at $10.9 million of the county's $22.5 million in expected annual losses. Of the $2.8 million in federal mitigation grants recorded since fiscal 2000, $2.0 million bought generators for the Town of La Plata.

What drives the risk

Inland flooding accounts for 48% of expected losses, followed by hurricanes at 11%, heat waves at 10% and strong wind at 8%. The county's nuisance flood plan says Charles is seeing flooding outside mapped floodplains with increasing frequency. Its hazard plan counted 33 repetitive loss properties in November 2023, only one of them mitigated and fewer than half insured through the National Flood Insurance Program.

The county's planning committee still ranks extreme weather, which includes tornadoes, first. On April 28, 2002, an F4 tornado cut through La Plata, killing three people in Maryland and injuring 122, and the plan says 65% of downtown buildings were heavily damaged or destroyed. FEMA's model spreads rare events like that across the long run, so tornadoes register at $785 thousand a year.

The social vulnerability score of 10.6 is the lowest FEMA gives, and community resilience rates very high at 88.3. Together they hold the overall risk index to 44.1, relatively low.

Where the mitigation money has gone

FEMA lists nine funded projects from fiscal 2000 to 2021, worth $2.8 million in federal share, and the post-disaster Hazard Mitigation Grant Program supplied $2.7 million of it. La Plata received $2.4 million: $2.0 million for generators under the Hurricane Sandy declaration and $395 thousand under the 2002 tornado declaration to retrofit a public building against wind. Flood work amounts to one property acquisition and one elevation, about $194 thousand combined, both under a 2012 severe storm declaration. Most of the remainder paid for mitigation plans, including $89 thousand from Maryland's COVID-19 declaration for a plan update.

The mitigation plan

The 2024 Charles County Hazard Mitigation Plan covers the county, La Plata, Indian Head and Port Tobacco Village. FEMA approved it for December 10, 2024, through December 9, 2029, though its records do not yet show Port Tobacco Village adopting it. The plan folds in the county's 2024 nuisance flood plan update, which lists roads and neighborhoods prone to nuisance and urban flooding. It also notes that commissioners created the Resilience Authority of Charles County in December 2020, the first in Maryland, with power to finance resilience projects.

What we'd look at next

Charles was the first Maryland county with a resilience authority that can finance projects, and its plan already names the flood-prone sites. We would start with the 33 repetitive loss properties, pairing federal buyout and elevation grants with the authority's financing for the local share. Generators keep La Plata's facilities running in an outage, but they don't reduce flood damage, which is the county's largest modeled loss.