Federal Emergency Management Agency May 16, 2008 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The 9/11 Heroes Stamp Act of 2001 directed the United States Postal Service to issue a semipostal stamp and distribute the proceeds through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to the families of emergency relief personnel killed or permanently disabled while serving in the line of duty in connection with the terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001. In response, FEMA issued interim regulations that governed the distribution of those funds. Now that all funds have been distributed and all appeals resolved, FEMA is issuing this Final rule to remove the interim regulations from the Code of Federal Regulations.

Section 107 of the Bunning-Bereuter-Blumenauer Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2004 requires that geospatial digital flood hazard data distributed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), or its designee, or the printed products derived from that data, be interchangeable and legally equivalent for the determination of the location of 1-in-100-year and 1-in-500-year floodplains, provided that all other geospatial data shown on the printed product meets or exceeds any accuracy standard promulgated by FEMA. This is required for the purposes of flood insurance and floodplain management activities conducted pursuant to the National Flood Insurance Program under the National Flood Insurance Act of 1968. The FEMA Mitigation Directorate has developed a policy to implement this requirement. The policy states: To which FEMA products it applies; that ``printed products'' refers to both printed paper products produced by FEMA and by others; and that the horizontal location of the special flood hazard area on new products is defined by geographic coordinates.