Stronger Flood Protection Standards Are Coming for New Hospitals, Schools and Apartments
The International Code Council has approved stronger building codes to protect hospitals, schools and other structures from flooding
The Barker Reservoir and Buffalo Bayou Dam are shown August 30, 2017 in Houston, Texas. The city of Houston experienced severe flooding in some areas due to the accumulation of historic levels of rainfall.
CLIMATEWIRE | Many new hospitals, schools, apartment buildings and other structures would be built with extra flood protection under a major revision to an international building code approved Friday.
A nonprofit that writes model building codes widely used in the U.S. took a step toward requiring that some newly built structures are constructed well above local flood level — and expanding the areas where elevation is required.
“This is transformative,” said Oregon State University engineering professor Daniel Cox, who led an expert panel that wrote and proposed the new flood standards. “It’s going to change how we mitigate floods in the U.S.”
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The standards were approved overwhelmingly Friday at a hearing in Orlando by a committee of the code-writing group, the International Code Council, despite building industry opposition.
The council will take a final vote in 2026 and the new standards would take effect in 2027.
The standards would apply only to states and other jurisdictions that adopt them. States are often slow to adopt new building standards. Some are facing pressure from building groups to reject updated standards that would modernize new buildings while increasing construction costs.
“Right now, a hospital and fire station are built to the same level of protection as a hot dog stand.” —Rob Moore, senior policy analyst
The council committee approval was a victory for flood specialists, environmentalists and insurance groups, who say added construction costs will more than pay for themselves by reducing future flood damage.
“This represents a sorely needed critical leap forward in flood resilience,” Aaron Davis, deputy executive director of BuildStrong America, told the committee Friday. The group is a coalition of consumer groups, architects, insurance groups and other advocates of modernized building codes.
Chad Berginnis, executive director of the Association of State Floodplain Managers, said the flood standards would curb growing flood damage worldwide as climate change intensifies storms and development increases in flood zones.
The standard was opposed by the National Association of Home Builders, the National Multifamily Housing Council and the American Society for Health Care Engineering.
“Our concern with this is that these will increase the cost of construction for new construction,” Jonathan Flannery, the society’s senior associate director of regulatory affairs, told the committee.
East Houston Medical Center and Gonzalez Family & Occupational Medicine on I-10 still has water standing during Hurricane Harvey, Wednesday, August 30, 2017.
Juan DeLeon/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
One of the standards approved Friday would expand local flood zones so that more structures are subject to elevation requirements.
Flannery said the requirement would discourage health care facilities from locating inside flood zones, where elevation requirements would increase construction costs.
“If a community is looking at building a facility … and it can be built for 1 percent less outside the flood zone, they’ll do that. Yet the need may be in the flood zone area,” Flannery said.
Louisiana State University construction expert Carol Friedland told the committee that the flood standards would increase the number of buildings in flood zones by five percent. They also would impose “modest cost increases” of between 0.5 percent and 2 percent in construction.
But the standards would sharply reduce the chances of a building being damaged by flooding, Friedland said.
The standards would apply to basic buildings such as residential or commercial structures and to “somewhat critical facilities” such as schools and “critical facilities” including hospitals. The flood standards would be higher for buildings that are more critical.
“Right now, a hospital and fire station are built to the same level of protection as a hot dog stand,” Rob Moore, a senior policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told the committee.
The committee approved the flood standards three days after a separate council committee rejected a proposal to increase standards for newly built homes.
The homebuilders association strongly opposed requiring higher elevation of more homes because of the added construction cost.
The association has opposed similar efforts in states and by the federal government under former President Joe Biden. A Biden-era policy that required the elevation of structures built with federal disaster aid was canceled by President Donald Trump.
Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2025. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.