Department of Conservation and Recreation
Conserve. Protect. Enjoy.
Department of Conservation and Recreation
Anywhere it can rain, it can flood. To ensure Virginia is increasing flood resilience across the Commonwealth, the Department of Conservation and Recreation is developing a statewide Virginia Flood Protection Master Plan (VFPMP).
To provide an actionable plan for state government to use in crafting policies and programs to mitigate the impacts of flooding on people, the economy, and the environment.
The VFPMP will work together with flood resilience plans developed by DCR and others at the regional and local scales. While the VFPMP will focus on directing state government policy to build flood resilience, the regional flood resilience plans will provide a collaborative format for identifying and prioritizing flood resilience vulnerabilities and priorities for state support. As they are updated on a recurring cycle, the regional plans will be more detailed and will provide key inputs to inform the statewide VFPMP.
The VFPMP will be completed and released to the public no later than December 2025. The Code of Virginia requires that it is updated every five years.
The VFPMP was originally established following a Joint Subcommittee Study and Report (House Document No. 64, 1989) that assigned coordinating responsibility for all floodplain management activities statutorily within the DCR. The Code of Virginia (§10.1–602, Powers and duties of the Department) sets forth the requirements of the Plan. This code section states that DCR shall:
Develop a Virginia Flood Protection Master Plan (the Plan) for the Commonwealth. This Plan shall be a place-specific plan for mitigating severe and repetitive flooding and shall, at a minimum:
- base decision making on the best-available science;
- identify and address socioeconomic inequities and strive to enhance equity through the adaptation and protection measures by considering all areas of recurrent flooding;
- recognize the importance of protecting and enhancing natural infrastructure and nature-based approaches to flood mitigation, when possible;
- utilize community and regional scale planning to the maximum extent possible, seeking region-specific approaches tailored to the needs of individual communities; and
- include an understanding of fiscal realities and focus on cost-effective solutions for the protection and adaptation of communities, businesses, and critical infrastructure.
The Plan shall include, at a minimum:
- An inventory of flood-prone areas;
- An inventory of flood protection studies;
- A record of flood damages;
- Strategies to prevent or mitigate flood damage; and
- The collection and distribution of information relating to flooding and flood plain management.
The Plan shall be reviewed and updated by the Department on a regular basis, but at least once every five years, and for each of the items listed in provisions a through e, the plan shall state when that provision was last updated and when the next update is planned. The plan shall be maintained in an online format so as to be easily accessed by other government entities and by the public. The online plan shall contain links to the most current information available from other federal, state, and local sources. All agencies of the Commonwealth shall provide assistance to the Department upon request.
In 2022, legislation (HB516/SB551) required that the Director of the Department of Conservation and Recreation shall prepare the Virginia Flood Protection Master Plan using a watershed-based approach no later than December 31, 2026.
Virginia’s most recent VFPMP was published in 2005. This Floodplain Management Plan for the Commonwealth of Virginia provided comprehensive guidance to federal, state, and local officials in addressing floodplain management issues common to Virginia. It also assessed the floodplain management needs of the communities in the Commonwealth while establishing strategies, measures, and priorities for meeting those needs.
Significant progress has been made to advance these strategies to date. The challenges of flooding today, and those expected in the decades to come, present a greater risk than the Commonwealth has previously seen. A new VFPMP will provide crucial comprehensive guidance and direction for building resilience to flooding in Virginia.
