Kent County, Maryland Climate risk & resilience profile

Kent County carries less hazard risk than any Maryland county except Garrett, and its losses look like a farm county's. Agriculture accounts for 29% of FEMA's expected annual losses here, the largest share in Maryland, and drought nearly ties hurricanes as the top hazard. The county's new hazard plan doesn't list drought among its hazards, and none of its FEMA mitigation grants has targeted it.

What drives the risk

Hurricanes account for $2.0 million of the county's $8.5 million in expected annual losses, drought for $1.9 million and inland flooding for $1.8 million. In FEMA's model, drought damages only agriculture, and Kent's drought loss rates relatively high. Coastal flooding adds $474 thousand, and the county's plan counts 632 structures in the 1% annual-chance floodplain, most of them homes in Rock Hall and Chestertown.

High-tide flooding already reaches those towns. The county's 2025 nuisance flood plan says flooding begins in Rock Hall and along the Chester River in Chestertown once the Tolchester Beach tide gauge reaches its minor flood level.

Social vulnerability is relatively moderate at 50.3, while community resilience rates very high at 88.6. The overall risk index is 27.5, very low.

Where the mitigation money has gone

FEMA lists four funded projects from fiscal 2000 to 2017, worth $499 thousand in federal share. Nearly all of it, $482 thousand, came from one Pre-Disaster Mitigation grant to the Town of Betterton, which FEMA's environmental review describes as new and repaired riprap along 1,382 feet of the town's eroding shoreline, meant to protect homes and public property. The post-disaster Hazard Mitigation Grant Program has delivered $6 thousand across two projects. Kent has received less than 1% of Maryland's federal mitigation money, and nothing in its grant record addresses drought or farm losses.

The mitigation plan

Kent County's commissioners adopted the 2026 Kent County Hazard Mitigation Plan on August 25, 2026, and FEMA approved it through August 24, 2031. It covers Betterton, Chestertown, Galena, Millington and Rock Hall, though FEMA's records do not yet show any of the five towns adopting it. The planning committee named flooding, extreme temperatures, severe winter weather and emerging infectious disease as its priority hazards. The flood strategy draws on the 2025 nuisance flood plan, which lists roads such as Quaker Neck Road and High Street in Chestertown that flood at high tide.

What we'd look at next

Two gaps are worth closing early. The five towns, including Betterton, still show as pending adoption in FEMA's records, and each needs to adopt the plan to be covered by it. We would also add drought to the plan's risk assessment at the first annual review: it is FEMA's second-largest modeled loss here, all of it agricultural, and leaving it out keeps farm losses off the table when the county sets priorities.