Salt Lake County, UT Environmental Rules: Flood Elevation Requirements (2026)

73, Flood Damage Prevention, applies only to unincorporated Salt Lake County parcels within a FEMA-mapped special flood hazard area, adopted under Ordinance No. 1903 on November 22, 2022 to keep the county eligible for the National Flood Insurance Program. 080(E) sets the residential freeboard standard: new construction and substantial improvement of any residential structure must have its lowest floor, including any basement, elevated to one foot above the base flood elevation, and a registered professional engineer or land surveyor must submit certified elevations to the floodplain administrator, a role assigned to the director of planning and development services or a designee.

Nonresidential buildings get an alternative under subsection F: instead of elevating, they may be dry-floodproofed below that same one-foot-above-BFE line, with an engineer certifying the design resists hydrostatic and hydrodynamic loads, though a floodproofed building that later converts to residential use loses that floodproofing credit and must retrofit to the residential elevation standard. 080(B) as work whose cumulative cost equals or exceeds fifty percent of the structure's market value excluding land, and 'substantial damage' under subsection C uses the same fifty percent threshold. 070(E); variances are generally limited to lots of a half-acre or less surrounded by existing homes built below base flood level, cannot be issued within a designated floodway, and come with written notice that flood insurance premiums will reflect the lower elevation. 040.