By Nicholas Pinter

A US federal government shutdown is looming, potentially starting Oct. 1, with broad impacts across the government and across the country.  The scope of these unfolding events is beyond the wheelhouse of the California Water Blog.  But pulled into the slipstream of this potential budget impasse is an important water issue.  If Congress does not – or did not – act by midnight on Sept. 30, the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) will lapse, with impacts on floodplain residents, real estate, and financial markets nationwide.  

There’s no need and no desire to suspend the NFIP.  I was part of a group that recently travelled to Washington to meet US Senate, House, and Committee staffers, and what we found was broad bipartisan support for the program and for robust federal disaster management in general.

The NFIP was established in 1968 as a result of spiraling disaster losses and the exit of private insurers from national flood-insurance markets.  NFIP today is more than an insurance program – it is the foundation of flood-risk in the US.  Since the program’s establishment, the federal government has underwritten flood insurance policies in communities that agree to steer development away from flood-prone land.  The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) currently runs NFIP and supports its flood-risk management role through mapping, mitigation funding (to fix existing exposure), and support following floods and other disasters.  

In 2025, NFIP insured 4.6 million properties nationwide, including almost 180,000 in California.  In recent years, NFIP has been repeatedly reauthorized by short-term Continuing Resolutions (CRs), 33 of them to date.  Congress could now extend the NFIP through a stand-alone CR, but more likely would include it in broader stopgap legislation to fund the federal government.  If not, a lapse in NFIP means that no new flood insurance policies could be written and future NFIP payouts could be restricted (Horn, 5/21/2025a).  Mortgage lenders require insurance, and flood insurance is legally required for properties in FEMA’s mapped “100 year” floodplain.  During a lapse in NFIP in 2010 “over 1,400 home sale closings were canceled or delayed each day” (Horn, 5/21/2025a).  

This year has been a turbulent one for federal disaster management, and for FEMA and NFIP in particular.  FEMA has lost an estimated 25% of its employees, and restrictions on FEMA activities have delayed and curtailed the federal responses to multiple disasters this year.  In the most dramatic example, FEMA search-and-rescue teams could not deploy to Texas until at least 48 hours after the last living victims of flash flooding were recovered (e.g., Washington Post, 7/10/2025).  Nonetheless, Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, stated that “What you saw from our response in Texas is going to be a lot of how President Trump envisions what FEMA would look like in the future” (Labowitz, 2025).  Since mid-March, no FEMA mitigation grant has been approved.  More sweepingly, the Administration has convened the FEMA Review Council, with the mandate to assess “Abolishing FEMA.”  The Council’s report is due in November.

Back in February, California water experts began to see the thunderheads on the horizon and decided to convene an expert panel to help the state navigate these challenges to disaster management.  It was decided that these issues are too important to California, and the state is too forward-thinking to be caught flat-footed by policy surprises from Washington.  The “California Flood Future” panel met in June and issued its initial scoping report in early September (https://tinyurl.com/FloodFuture).  The recent DC meetings were part of a stakeholder outreach and fact-finding effort which will help educate solutions-focused options to be presented to California leaders moving forward.  

Federal budget shutdowns result in severe and widespread impacts to federal workers and to the public.  The impacts of this year’s likely lapse in NFIP will be part of a tsunami of such impacts and news headlines during coming weeks and, who knows, maybe months.  But the current threats to NFIP, FEMA, and US disaster management are more persistent.  The US has learned from past errors and developed a system integrated across local, state, and federal partners to deal with the growing number of disasters experienced nationwide.  The current system is not perfect, but House and Senate leaders, both Republicans and Democrats, have proposed or are working on thoughtful disaster-management legislation. 

In the short- (hopefully) term chaos of a federal shutdown, it is important to not lose sight of long-term disaster management issues.  Neither FEMA nor NFIP is perfect, but they are the products of decades of experience in US disaster management.  Almost all experts agree that the goal should be to support these programs, reforming them as needed, rather than eliminating them.  

Author Bio

Nicholas Pinter is the Roy J. Shlemon Professor of Applied Geosciences and Associate Director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California Davis. Prof. Pinter and his students study earth-surface processes, including coastal geomorphology and geodynamics as well as river systems, flood risk management, and adaptation to climate-driven changes. Prof. Pinter leads the World Water at UC Davis initiative and is the Co-Chair of the Securing California’s Flood Future panel.

Further Reading

Horn, D.P., Congressional Research Service, 3/21/2025a.  What Happens If the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) Lapses?  https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IN10835

Horn, D.P., Congressional Research Service, 3/21/2025b.  Issues for Reauthorization and Reform of the National Flood Insurance Program.  https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF12810

Labowitz, S., 2025, Trump has turned FEMA itself into a disaster, The Washington Post.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/07/23/texas-fema-response/

Pinter, N., Kousky, C., Conrad, D., Fugate, C., Ghilarducci, M., Neal, A., Serra-Llobet, A., and Watkins, N. (Sept. 2, 2025). Securing California’s Flood Future. [Policy White Paper], U.C. Davis. Available from https://tinyurl.com/FloodFuture. 

Washington Post staff, 7/10/2025, Budget limits at DHS delayed FEMA’s Texas deployment, officials say;  https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/07/10/fema-texas-flooding-dhs-search-rescue/

Wright, S., 9/30/2025. Here’s a look at federal agencies’ shutdown contingency plans, Federal News Network, https://federalnewsnetwork.com/government-shutdown/2025/09/heres-a-look-at-federal-agencies-contingency-plans-as-shutdown-looms/