Queen Anne's County, Maryland Climate risk & resilience profile

Queen Anne's County's flood risk has two faces. FEMA's model puts inland flooding first, at $4.5 million of the county's $12.7 million in expected annual losses, and prices coastal flooding at $1.0 million. The county's own plan finds its sharpest exposure on and around Kent Island, where four feet of sea level rise would inundate about 19% of the western island's land and cut the road to its southern end.

What drives the risk

Inland flooding accounts for 35% of expected losses, drought for 18% and hurricanes for 14%. Drought's $2.2 million is entirely agricultural in FEMA's model and rates relatively high, and agriculture carries 26% of the county's expected loss.

On the water side, the county's 2025 hazard plan names Stevensville, Chester, Kent Narrows and Grasonville as the areas most vulnerable to sea level rise. In its four-foot scenario, water would cover MD 8 near Broad Creek and effectively cut off southern Kent Island. The plan also cites a state assessment that found very high erosion rates on the windward northern and southern ends of the island.

Social vulnerability is relatively low at 25.6 and community resilience very high at 90.4, which keeps the overall risk index at 35.6, very low.

Where the mitigation money has gone

FEMA lists 12 funded projects from fiscal 1999 to 2021, worth $1.05 million in federal share. The post-disaster Hazard Mitigation Grant Program supplied $603 thousand, Flood Mitigation Assistance $238 thousand and Pre-Disaster Mitigation $96 thousand, and in fiscal 2021 the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program added $116 thousand to scope flood fixes for the Cloverfields neighborhood. The largest grants were small: the Flood Mitigation Assistance award elevated two coastal homes, and $233 thousand under the Hurricane Sandy declaration paid for a flood acquisition in Millington covering eight properties.

Buyouts have since stalled. The plan says the county no longer keeps a list of potential flood acquisitions and bought no properties in the five years before the update, though it was working to acquire one severe repetitive loss property. Queen Anne's counted 35 repetitive loss properties in June 2024, the same number as in 2018.

The mitigation plan

County commissioners adopted the 2025 Queen Anne's County Multi-Jurisdictional Hazard Mitigation Plan on June 24, 2025, and FEMA approved it for August 18, 2025, through August 17, 2030. It covers eight towns, and FEMA's records show four have adopted it so far. Its sea level change chapter draws on the county's 2018 coastal vulnerability study and Maryland's 2023 sea level projections. The plan also lists scoping work for Cloverfields, a Kent Island neighborhood with five repetitive loss properties and more than 106 flood-prone homes.

What we'd look at next

Queen Anne's knows where its flood risk sits and has already used Flood Mitigation Assistance to elevate homes. What's missing is a pipeline. We would rebuild the buyout and elevation list, starting with Cloverfields and the county's other repetitive loss properties, so the county has scoped projects ready as each grant round opens.