Washington County, Maryland Climate risk & resilience profile

FEMA's model puts Washington County's expected hazard losses at $26.9 million a year, and inland flooding accounts for 54% of it. Its record of FEMA mitigation grants is the thinnest in Maryland: $214 thousand in federal share since fiscal 1996, including a $75,000 grant in fiscal 2022 to model Hagerstown's storm drains.

What drives the risk

The Potomac River forms the county's southern boundary, and its tributaries run through the towns. The county's 2023 plan counts 59 properties with repeated flood insurance losses, 42 of them outside town limits, and lists Hancock's downtown along the Tonoloway creeks among the places at risk. The plan's list of major floods includes March 1936, Hurricane Agnes in 1972 and November 1985, and in May 2018 storms washed out roads and bridges in Washington and Frederick counties, bringing a federal disaster declaration.

Hurricanes rank second at 15% of modeled loss, the largest hurricane share of any inland Maryland county. Moderate social vulnerability (44.6) and relatively high community resilience (73.2) pull the overall risk score of 68.8 slightly below the loss score of 69.6.

Where the mitigation money has gone

Two of the five funded projects paid for hazard mitigation plans. The largest, $70 thousand, paid for protective measures on Hancock's water and sewer system under the January 1996 flood declaration, and Hagerstown received $15 thousand for minor flood control in fiscal 2010. The 2022 Hagerstown grant came through FEMA's Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program.

The May 2018 declaration covered Washington County, but the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program projects funded under it went to other counties. Some towns have bought out flood-prone property anyway. The plan reports that Funkstown turned acquired flood-prone properties into Jerusalem Park and Clear Spring made a flood-prone property into a town park; neither appears in OpenFEMA's mitigation grant records for the county.

The mitigation plan

The 2023 update covers the county, Hagerstown and eight towns, and added dam failure to its hazard list. The commissioners adopted it on December 5, 2023, and FEMA's approval runs to December 4, 2028. FEMA's plan status data still lists Clear Spring, Funkstown and Sharpsburg as approvable pending adoption. The plan ranks flooding a Medium risk, behind the opioid epidemic, structural and industrial fires, and severe winter weather.

What we'd look at next

With 59 repeatedly flooded properties and a plan approved through 2028, Washington County has the makings of a project pipeline and almost no FEMA-funded projects to show for it. We'd turn the plan's town flood actions, starting with Hancock's Main Street, into a short list of buyout and floodproofing projects, each matched to a funding route before the next declaration. We'd also get the three towns still pending to adopt the plan, since FEMA requires an adopted plan before it funds a community's projects.