FEMA had earlier advised insurance companies that offer federal flood insurance policies to suspend sales and renewals under the program. Many FEMA maps are several decades old. Photo: Shutterstock)

A standard part of due diligence before real estate transactions is ascertaining whether the property is prone to flooding. The usual method has long been to rely on the 100-year-old flood maps of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

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Michael B. Gerrard

Michael B. Gerrard is a professor at Columbia Law School and founder and faculty director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. Among his books is Global Climate Change and U.S. Law (3rd ed., co-edited with. Jody Freeman and Michael Burger, 2023).

Edward McTiernan