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Newport News Program for Public Information
STEP 2: ASSESS THE COMMUNITY’S
PUBLIC INFORMATION NEEDS
I. COMMUNITY DESCRIPTION
Newport News is a coastal community located in the Hampton Roads region of
Virginia. The City’s location at the confluence of the James River, Hampton Roads
waterway, and the Chesapeake Bay makes it susceptible to riverine and coastal
flooding, while excessive rainfall can lead to urban flooding almost anywhere in the
City. These main flooding types in Newport News are characterized as follows:
• Riverine Flooding: occurs when streams and rivers exceed the capacity of
their natural or constructed channels to accommodate water flow and water
overflows the banks, spilling over into adjacent low-lying, dry land.
• Coastal Flooding: occurs when water inundates or covers normally dry
coastal land due to storm surge and nuisance flooding. Storm surge is an
abnormal rise of water over and above the predicted tide and is generated by
a storm such as a hurricane. Nuisance flooding is characterized by temporary
minor inundation of low-lying coastal areas that happens during exceptionally
high tides and is sometimes referred to as sunny-day or tidal flooding. Sea
level rise is intensifying the impacts of coastal flooding.
• Urban Flooding: the accumulation of floodwater that results when the influx
of stormwater exceeds the capacity of a drainage system to infiltrate water
into the ground or carry it away (NRDC, 2020).
FEMA Flood Insurance Rate Maps (FIRMs) identify areas within the City that are at
risk of flooding known as the Special Flood Hazard Area (SFHA). The SFHA is defined
as the area that will be inundated by the flood event having a 1-percent chance of
being equaled or exceeded in any given year. The City has 1,112 acres of land within
its SFHA. Figure 2 depicts the SFHA as well as the 0.2-percent-annual-chance (or
500-year) floodplain. Currently, a total of 3,818 properties are located in a flood zone
within the City, and more specifically, 987 buildings are located within the SFHA.
The mapped SFHA and 0.2-percent annual chance flood hazard areas in Figure 2
represent the best available data from FEMA but do not represent all sources of
flood risk. This can be demonstrated by looking at the City’s 311 calls for flooding
complaints for locations outside of the SFHA, mapped in Figure 3.
STEP 2: ASSESS THE COMMUNITY’S PUBLIC INFORMATION NEEDS 7Jump to an indexed page (59 of 59)