Effective May 18, 2009, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) new Flood Insurance Rate Map (FIRM) for the City of Palo Alto will take effect, resulting in revised permit submittal requirements for planning and building permit applicants.  The FIRM designates the flood zone for properties throughout the City and identifies those properties that are within the Special Flood Hazard Area (SFHA).  Properties in the SFHA are projected to be subject to flooding in the event of the 1% (100-year) flood event and are subject to the City’s Flood Hazard Regulations (Palo Alto Municipal Code Chapter 16.52).  The following is a summary of the impacts of the issuance of the new FIRM on permit submittals:

• The new FIRM has an effective date of May 18, 2009.  After this date, the existing FIRM can no longer be used to identify the flood zone designation of properties in the City of Palo Alto.

• The new FIRM is primarily a conversion of the existing paper-based FIRM to a digitally-based product.  As a result of the conversion, no additional properties have been added to or removed from the Special Flood Hazard Area

• The conversion of the FIRM to digital format also includes the conversion of the vertical datum of the mapping and the Base Flood Elevations from the National Geodetic Vertical Datum of 1929 (NGVD29) to the North American Vertical Datum of 1988 (NAVD88). 

View a handout summarizing the revised permit submittal requirements