Purpose
It is the purpose of the City of Meadowlakes to promote the public health, safety and general welfare and to minimize public and private losses due to flood conditions in specific areas by provisions designed to:
  • Ensure that potential buyers are notified that property is in a flood area
  • Help maintain a stable tax base by providing for the sound use and development of flood-prone areas in such a manner as to minimize future flood blight areas
  • Minimize damage to public facilities and utilities such as water and sewer mains, electric, telephone and streets located in floodplains
  • Minimize expenditure of public money for costly flood control projects
  • Minimize prolonged service and access interruptions
Regulations
In order to accomplish these tasks, the City of Meadowlakes has adopted a Flood Damage Prevention Ordinance which follows these regulations:
  • Require a floodplain development permit for any development on property located within a FEMA designated floodplain
  • Control filling, grading, dredging and other development, which may increase flood damage
  • Control the alteration of natural floodplains, stream channels, and natural protective barriers, which are involved in the accommodation of flood waters
  • Minimize the need for rescue and relief efforts associated with flooding and generally undertaken at the expense of the general public
  • Prevent or regulate the construction of flood barriers which will unnaturally divert flood waters or which may increase flood hazards to other lands
  • Protect human life and health
  • Require that uses vulnerable to floods, including facilities, which serve such uses, be protected against flood damage at the time of initial construction
  • Restrict or prohibit uses that are dangerous to health, safety or property in times of flood, or cause excessive increases in flood heights or velocities
Hazards
The flood hazard areas of the City of Meadowlakes are subject to periodic inundation, which may result in loss of life and property, health and safety hazards, disruption of governmental services, and extraordinary public expenditures for flood protection and relief, of which adversely affect the public health, safety and general welfare.
 
These flood losses are created by the cumulative effect of obstructions in floodplains which cause an increase in flood water heights and velocities, and by the occupancy of flood hazard areas by uses vulnerable to floods and hazardous to other lands because they are inadequately elevated or otherwise protected from flood damage.

National Flood Insurance Program
The City of Meadowlakes regulates the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) designated Floodplains to maintain the City’s enrollment in the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). NFIP enrollment provide eligibility for Meadowlakes land owners to obtain more affordable flood insurance policies, without enrollment in the NFIP or if the City failed to enforce and regulate the identified floodplains then property/home owners would not be able to get the more affordable flood insurance policies.

Current Floodplain maps for the city may be viewed at city hall or on the FEMA map service center website here.