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This story was originally published by Circle of Blue.

Since its creation in 1979, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has been charged with protecting communities from natural disasters. Central to that mission is curtailing serious flooding, the most prevalent and severe weather threat to people and property across all 50 states.

That objective, though, is impeded by an old and obscure federal regulation — overseen and enforced by FEMA itself — that is actually making flooding worse.

That result was felt in December, when a powerful storm hit the Pacific Northwest. Flooding along Washington’s Nooksack and Skokomish rivers destroyed homes and inundated roads, prompting evacuations and the declaration of a state of emergency. Some losses may have been alleviated, experts assert, had planned flood mitigation work along these same rivers’ banks not experienced significant delays and cancellations as a direct result of the rule’s powerful reach, which extends nationwide.

Here in Wisconsin in the past year, watershed conservationists in Walworth and Ashland counties — located in the state’s south-central and northern regions — were forced to abandon two water quality and flood mitigation projects in local streams after discovering they would be subject to the regulation.

Known within FEMA as the “no-rise” rule, the directive prohibits any earth-moving activity in low-lying, flood-prone areas if water levels during a storm would rise above what was present before the construction started. In other words, any project — defined as “development” by the agency — must not increase the volume of water in flood-prone areas by any amount.

The rule, written in 1976 as a feature of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), and described in detail for the first time by Circle of Blue, was enacted with good intentions to restrict development in floodplains. Its initial focus was population centers: Even an incremental increase in the volume of water that might overflow into a street or neighborhood can have perilous effects on basements, utilities, infrastructure, and human lives.

At the time it was enacted, restoring floodplains and watersheds was a novel pursuit. A half century later, these efforts are recognized for their environmental and human benefits. But as the no-rise rule is currently written and interpreted, “development” is an all-encompassing term that pertains equally to the paving of a new downtown road, as it does to the restoration of wetlands in a remote field. In the eyes of FEMA, a project to address pollution or flooding in a stream is held to the same “no-rise” standards as the construction of a new building.

FEMA’s enforcement of the rule is producing unintended effects. Meeting the “no-rise” standards, project managers say, adds tens of thousands of dollars to project costs and causes years of delay. As a result, land planners — from small nonprofits to federal agencies — routinely abandon efforts to improve water quality and restore watersheds before they even hit the ground.

By barring “development” in floodplains, the no-rise rule allows for the degradation of habitat, lowering of water quality and flooding to persist and worsen.

Viewed broadly, the rule’s compounding outcomes could not be felt at a more consequential time for the nation’s waters. The Trump administration is eliminating environmental safeguards, scaling back protections for the majority of the country’s wetlands and proposing limits on states’ power to issue water quality reviews.

Bipartisan lawmakers have developed legislation in both the U.S. House and Senate to amend FEMA’s no-rise rule in order to remove barriers to restore floodplains and watersheds. The agency has worked with legislators in writing these proposed policies, but did not respond to Circle of Blue when asked for a comment.

“It was never an NFIP goal to see rivers and floodplains restored, which might be why these policies are so antiquated,” says Jennifer Western Hauser, a policy liaison at Wisconsin Wetlands Association. “We understand now that restoring floodplains can reduce flood risks and damage, so it’s long overdue to restore common sense.”

A case in point in Wisconsin’s Driftless Area

Addressing risks and recovery in flood-prone areas is an exhaustive undertaking. FEMA invests tens of millions of dollars each year in projects to reduce threats where storms are likely to hit.

But the agency spends significantly more in their aftermath. Since its launch in 1968, the agency’s National Flood Insurance Program has fulfilled north of $88 billion in property damage claims.

The economic realities and the extreme human cost of floods mean that flood control remains a heavily regulated effort codified within dozens of federal statutes, mandates and supplemental acts. Among this tangle of federal regulation is the no-rise rule that is producing unwelcome effects in rural regions, where efforts to reduce flood risks and improve the quality of long-polluted waters are routinely stymied. The dairy farms and modest homesteads that mark the snowy fields of Barre Mills, Wisconsin, offer a case in point.

The small unincorporated community recalls a typical Midwestern landscape, save for the towering bluffs and rocky cliffs that wreathe around it, rising hundreds of feet. This unique stretch of southwestern Wisconsin, part of a wider region known as the Driftless Area, was left untouched by heavy ice sheets and retreating glaciers during the most recent Ice Age. Cold-water streams, waterfalls and deeply carved river valleys abound as a result. Both the Mississippi and Wisconsin rivers flow through La Crosse County.

But when managed unsustainably, this steep terrain can accelerate watershed degradation. In rural Barre Mills, a legacy of tilling, deforestation and livestock grazing atop tall bluffs has left the town’s low-lying areas with floodwaters polluted with fast-moving farm runoff.

Bostwick Creek, which stretches for 13 miles through 30,000 acres of woods and farms, is one prime example.

The creek’s final four miles are severely impaired. Destructive storms and flooding, fueled by a changing climate, have exacerbated the erosion of its vulnerable banks. Non-point pollution from local farms has poured into the channel. Since 2014, the waterway has held unsafe concentrations of phosphorus, fecal matter and suspended solids.

These unwanted pollutants are not contained to just the creek. The Wisconsin DNR has issued fish consumption advisories after detecting high concentrations of forever chemicals in the La Crosse River, into which Bostwick flows. Duckweed and green algae, a side effect of nutrient spillage, has inundated downriver marshlands.

The county has identified the creek’s water quality woes as a high-priority issue. From a conservation approach, its restoration portends to follow a straightforward plan of soil stabilization and the addition of new vegetation, which will make its floodplain more durable. Local farmers have even pledged crucial support for the effort, agreeing to give up precious land and private fishing access and commit to no-tilling practices near its banks.

But FEMA’s “no-rise” rule is throwing a wrench in the entire operation. Creek restoration requires navigating a mountain of costly and time-consuming engineering, modeling, mapping, and permitting requirements that “seems to end up in a drawer, if anyone even looks at them at all,” says Jacob Schweitzer, La Crosse County’s lead watershed planner.

The rule has delayed the creek’s restoration by months and added roughly $8,000 in expenses so far.

Floodzones AE, floodways and maps

FEMA reaches its conclusions about development projects in rural valleys, like the one drained by Bostwick Creek, after three stages of formal consideration.

First, the agency defines the valley as a floodplain, which is broadly defined as an area that is susceptible to being inundated by water during a storm. Second, FEMA designates land directly adjacent to Bostwick Creek with the more specific distinction of being a “Floodzone AE,” which is identified as a “high-risk” area within a floodplain. And third, within Floodzones AE are other pockets of land called regulatory floodways — the highest-risk area within a floodplain to flooding.

Herein lies the culprit and its burdensome penalty.

All “development” done inside regulatory floodways, whether related to construction or conservation, is subject to the “no-rise” rule. Failure to comply with the regulation, Schweitzer says, would result in the entire county’s population losing access to federal flood insurance.

Adding to the frustration is the agency’s lethargy in upkeeping current records. Most flood zones were set decades ago when FEMA drew its inaugural set of flood maps for the NFIP. But these landscapes have changed vastly over the past half-century, and most of these maps and designations no longer reflect today’s terrain. Despite this, the agency does not systematically work to ensure its digital records match the risks or non-risks present on the ground.

“It’s a long, complicated and political process,” says Brandon Parsons, director of river restoration at American Rivers. “Landowners and farmers living on thousand-acre ranches, with nobody in sight, might have to pay $50,000 to go through this conditional process with FEMA to restore banks on their own land.”

The responsibility of updating maps thus falls on project planners, who must demonstrate that their work will follow the “no-rise” requirements. At Bostwick Creek, original flood maps have not been touched since 1982. Months of work to bring these maps up to date, Schweitzer says, has cost thousands of dollars, all to prove that the water level will remain unchanged.

“Restoration work in zone AEs is frequently avoided,” Western Hauser adds. “That can only lead us to untenable conclusions. If zone AEs are degraded, they’ll remain degraded, or get worse because no one will work on them.”

The Floodplain Enhancement and Recovery Act

On a blustery December afternoon, Jacob Schweitzer navigates shin-deep snow near a chicken farm along the Bostwick, where more than 50 feet of sediment has fallen into the creek in just the past few years. Further downstream, fallen trees zig-zag and soils slump into the channel.

Hardly a dozen farmhouses fill the view, and yet the project is held to the same standards as the construction of a new office building along the Milwaukee River in downtown Milwaukee.

Policy experts agree that a significant amount of restoration work can be unlocked if FEMA regulations are updated with more nuance. This winter, a pair of bipartisan bills have been introduced on Capitol Hill to remedy this sticking point.

Senate Bill 1564 — the Floodplain Enhancement and Recovery Act, authored by Sens. Patty Murray, D-Washington, and Steve Daines, R-Montana — and a companion House bill, co-authored by Wisconsin Rep. Bryan Steil, a Republican, would add a definition of “ecosystem restoration” to the NFIP, differentiating it from other forms of development. States and communities would have the flexibility to allow up to a one-foot rise in a regulatory floodway’s water level, so long as no nearby insurable infrastructure is affected.

“In other words, we’re talking about less-developed areas,” Western Hauser says. “We’re talking about areas upstream of development, where you might want to get your river working in tandem with your floodway.”

Barre Mills is the exact kind of community where this legal nuance could make a big difference for water quality. If the act becomes a law, FEMA would have 180 days to develop guidance for how communities can work in compliance with this new rule. The agency would also be obligated to collaborate with natural resources agencies when drafting these directions.

Floodplain managers, conservation groups, insurers, and tribes across the country continue to voice their support for the legislation. Supporters say its passage is most likely if it is attached to a larger congressional package.

“Bureaucratic red tape should not stall common sense restoration projects,” Rep. Steil said in a statement. “The Floodplain Enhancement and Recovery Act eases administrative burdens and empowers Wisconsin communities to make our waterways healthier, strengthen our resilience to floods, and enhance ecosystems across the nation.”

This article first appeared on Circle of Blue and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

This little-known FEMA rule may be making flooding worse in rural Wisconsin is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Reading Time: 7 minutes

A version of this story was originally published by Circle of Blue.

On a warm fall afternoon, dairy farmer Chris Kestell pushes through prairie brambles taller than himself, tracing a path overgrown with thickets and swarming with bees as he hikes toward a hidden waterway.

Though the route is unidentifiable to the untrained eye, Kestell, 47, has lived here, in the small town of Waldo, Wisconsin, for nearly all his life. His father first walked this path 70 years ago, and his two young boys, 8 and 10 years-old, mark the third generation to follow this practiced journey.

After several minutes, he comes to rest beside a fallen tree. In its petrified tangle of roots, guarded by a tiny plastic gnome, a collection of spoons, bowls, and mugs fit like perfect puzzle pieces. Kestell takes a silver ladle from the snarl and kneels over a wall of dirt, from which a steady trickle emerges.

These are the headwaters of the Milwaukee River, known locally as Nichols Creek. According to Milwaukee Riverkeeper data, it is the “most pristine” monitored waterway in the entire 900 square-mile rivershed, and one of the only regional waters where brook trout reproduce naturally. 

As he has done since he was a young boy, Kestell brings the water to his lips. “By a certain age, everybody drinks here,” he says. “The creek is a landmark for this area. When you’re a kid, you’re like, ‘Wow, this is pretty awesome.’ It’s a special place.”

Deep in this quiet wooded alcove, Nichols Creek is a cultural touchstone and habitat of ecological importance. Safe and secure for generations, residents fear it is suddenly at risk of severe damage from a new era of energy transition in Wisconsin. 

The waterway — along with drinking water wells, protected woods and wetlands, and newly restored floodplains — is caught in the spreading network of high-voltage power lines. 

According to Wisconsin Public Service Commission (PSC) documents, more than 400 miles of new high-voltage power lines are either under review or approved in Wisconsin. Similar projects have also been greenlit in Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, and the other three Great Lakes states in recent months, together totaling well over 1,000 miles. 

As part of its Plymouth Reliability Project, the American Transmission Company (ATC), a local electric utility, plans to install seven miles of high-capacity lines through the Waldo area. Part of the route would pass directly over Nichols Creek, raising concerns over deforestation around the county’s only stream designated as “outstanding” by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

Meanwhile, a second ATC expansion, the Ozaukee County Distribution Interconnection project, proposes the construction of five new energy substations and corresponding transmission lines just southeast of Waldo. The preferred route would require the clear-cutting of old-growth forest and intersect the Cederberg Bog Wilderness — “the most intact large bogs in southeastern Wisconsin,” according to the Wisconsin DNR, and a registered National Natural Landmark by the U.S. Department of the Interior.

“Our entire business is based on people coming away from the city and spending the weekend here in the trees,” said Katy Rowe, who co-owns Abloom Farms, a resort and wedding venue located on the northern edge of the bog. “Eminent domain should not be used as a weapon against normal American citizens that have decided to live a quiet life in the country.”

According to ATC’s website, these projects are “needed to ensure electric reliability and address current and future energy needs in the community and the surrounding area.” But those needs aren’t due from the smattering of dairy farms, lonely county roads, and modest old homes that comprise rural Waldo, population 467. 

Nearly two dozen data centers in southeastern Wisconsin alone are either proposed, built, or in-development, but the two newest are not like the others. More than 20 miles away, in the city of Port Washington, a 672-acre campus built by Vantage Data Centers broke ground on Dec. 17. Even farther, some 70 miles south, Microsoft is building a 315-acre facility near Racine. 

Though seemingly far enough away to be irrelevant to Waldo, the new sites’ thirst for power knows few bounds. When fully built, the Vantage and Microsoft locations will together require a 24/7 electricity supply totaling 3.2 gigawatts — greater than all of Wisconsin’s homes combined. 

Power generated by natural gas, nuclear, coal, solar, wind, and battery storage stations across the state’s central and eastern regions are all in the mix to bring data center campuses online. Transmission lines, running through Waldo, will transport the electricity they demand.

When reached, ATC declined to comment on the Plymouth Reliability project.

But the company in public testimony has downplayed the project’s potential effects on wetlands and says it will take measures to minimize the impact. 

The project as proposed “will not directly impact stream channels or have direct discharges to streams,” Erika Biemann, senior environmental project manager for ATC, wrote in testimony before Wisconsin’s PSC.

Waldo’s story is not a one-off. New state and federal legislation are incentivizing data center development and encouraging power lines’ rapid rise across the region, potentially running roughshod over other communities. 

In February, Illinois — which by one count leads the Great Lakes region with more than 200 data centers — enacted a law allowing tax incentives for the construction of new battery storage facilities and high-voltage transmission lines. A month later, lawmakers in Indiana (75 data centers) enacted a law aiming to make transmission lines more efficient and cost-effective to construct. Similar legislation went into effect in Ohio (192 data centers) in August.

On a national scale, President Trump signed an executive order this January declaring an energy emergency and ordering agencies to “expedite the completion of all authorized and appropriated” energy infrastructure. The order directs the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to speed up their review of permit applications to develop wetlands for transmission lines and other energy projects. The Corps is reviewing such permits for new lines in Wisconsin and other states. 

In late October, U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright directed the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to change permitting and rulemaking procedures to “significantly reduce” the amount of time and oversight required to bring data centers onto the grid. 

Literally caught in the middle of a new epoch of surging energy demand and supply in the Great Lakes region, residents say they are contending with powerful economic trends that could be devastating to the environment, and already are weighing on their spirits. 

Back at his family home, Kestell points to a large rock on his front lawn. The new power lines, Kestell said, would run right over his uncle’s final resting place.

“This is not rural electrification anymore, bringing power to poor farms” said Kestell’s father, Tom, also a farmer in Waldo. “This is an elite, wealthy class of people who are invested in these power stations and data centers, who are going to make probably trillions of dollars off this. And the people who they infringe on in the meantime? They’re just collateral damage.”

Homes and ponds face risk

What’s developing in Waldo is a case in point. The wetland area through which Nichols Creek flows is the source of local residents’ well water. 

“Water comes, goes back down into the ground, and then becomes a collection of underground springs,” said JoAnne Friedman, the town chairperson of Lyndon, Wisconsin. “When you try to imagine how much water is underground here, it is a phenomenal amount.”

The water recharge process, and the natural filtration trees and other plants provide, is threatened by the right-of-way easements that the 138-kilovolt power lines require. All vegetation between 60 feet and 110 feet to either side of the lines would need to be cleared during their construction. 

The loss of maple and cedar tree cover, Kestell said, threatens both the warming of Nichols Creek and soil erosion on the side of county roads that already slump and flood when storms roll through. 

“With all of these projects, they don’t realize how much mitigation people who have these properties have done to prevent erosion,” said Friedman, who has needed to enlarge her property’s 20-foot-deep retention pond from half an acre to two acres to manage gushing ephemeral streams during springtime snowmelt and heavy rains. 

Living at the bottom of a small sloped valley, she said she has planted so many trees she “lost count,” all to help redirect flows from damaging her home. If ATC’s transmission line route is built, she said, this cover would all be clear-cut. 

Hundred-year-old trees would also be razed from the backyard of Randy Pietsch, a retired dairy farmer who has lived along the banks of Nichols Creek for more than 50 years. The trout pond he keeps on his property has long been open to friends and family for fishing, though he closed it several years ago and has no plans now of reopening. 

“I’m not hopeful for anything,” he said. “Why they have to come through here is beyond me. I can’t imagine that electric line’s good for fish. They just want to steal the land, that’s all. It’s sad, it’s stressful. You lose a lot of sleep at night.”

ATC says the project will not significantly affect the creek. 

“The loss of forested riparian habitat along Nicholas Creek would not be significant, especially considering the large riparian forest buffer both upstream and downstream from the proposed route crossing,” Biemann, the ATC environmental project manager, wrote in public testimony. 

Olivia Poelmann, a PSC environmental analysis and review specialist, testified that the project’s cumulative environmental effects are “not expected to be significant and are mostly temporary, with a large majority of impacts occurring primarily during the construction phase of the project.” 

But most startling, residents say, are the effects of ATC’s preferred route on their properties, many of which have been in their families for multiple generations. 

In some cases, the transmission lines’ right-of-way easements extend several feet inside peoples’ homes. One resident, Nolan Harp, said that the lines would run within 40 feet of his front door, placing half of his house within an easement. As a result, five 40-foot tall trees in his yard would be cut down, and his private well would need to be moved.

“That’s my sole source of water. It’s an old well, but it works, it’s clean, and it’s good,” Harp said. “But you can’t have something like that under power lines.”

Harp said that ATC has offered to dig up the open well, its casing, tank, and pump, and replace them elsewhere on his property. But the headache of additional construction, and the obvious hazard of power lines running above his house, has him considering other options.

“I don’t want to move, but if they insist on putting that power line up, I don’t think I can live here,” Harp said.

In late January, the $33.5 million Plymouth project was approved by the PSC, though it added a condition that prevents ATC from using eminent domain to build their power lines. ATC subsequently petitioned to reopen the application on the grounds that PSC cannot revoke that right, which is protected under Wisconsin state law. In April, this petition was granted. 

Kestell, who founded an organization called Neighbors 4 Neighbors to fight against the project in court, estimates that residents have spent $250,000 of their own money on legal fees.

At the end of the day, their homes and health are the most important concerns. 

“When they put these towers in, some of them are going down 30 or 40 feet, possibly hitting the aquifer when they’re digging foundations,” said Kestell, who estimates his own front door will be within roughly 20 feet of an easement. “We’re just not sure about contamination.”

Wisconsin Watch contributed reporting.

As data centers boom, rural Waldo braces for high-voltage lines over wetlands and homes is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.