Public Meeting
This session will discuss the City's efforts to update regulations to maintain compliance with FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program minimum requirements and bring Portland’s regulations into greater compliance with the Endangered Species Act. A question-and-answer session will be included.
12:00 pm
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1:00 pm
Available Online
More information about these proposed changes, and a link for providing written comments, can be found here.
If adopted by the City Council, the proposed changes would:
- Increase flood storage requirements in critical areas close to rivers to better protect salmon and steelhead in the event of a flood,
- Initiate updates to the City’s February 1996 Flood Inundation Area map to better reflect flood risks based on hydraulic data from the February 1996 Flood and updated river bathymetry and ground surface elevation data,
- Create provisions to allow the use of off-site mitigation to compensate for lost flood storage due to construction,
- Require a development permit for the construction of buildings within the floodplain that current building code regulations exempt from building permits, and
- Require a covenant limiting the uses of enclosed spaces within the floodplain to reduce the risk of these spaces converting to uses not allowed by the floodplain regulations.
A copy of the full set of proposed changes to Chapter 24.50 of Portland City Code can be found at the link below.
Public comments on the proposed code amendments will be received through August 1.
The Portland City Council is expected to consider proposed code amendments in late August.