Pawtucket, RI Environmental Rules: Flood Elevation Requirements (2026)

Section 410-19B(2) sets Pawtucket's baseline elevation standard for Zone AO on the FIRM: new and substantially improved residential structures must have the top of the lowest floor at least as high as the depth number shown on the map, measured above the highest adjacent grade, and nonresidential structures must be elevated or floodproofed to that same height. Where the FIRM does not print a depth number for an AO zone, § 410-19B(2) falls back to a flat two-foot minimum above the highest adjacent grade. Section 410-19C requires base flood elevation data for any subdivision or other development of more than 50 lots or five acres, whichever is smaller, within an unnumbered A Zone, and where FEMA has not published BFE or floodway data, the best available federal, state, or local data must be used to set the elevation instead.

Separately, the Zoning Ordinance's building-height definition at § 410-132 gives owners in mapped special flood hazard areas, or areas the Coastal Resources Management Council's three-foot sea-level-rise map shows as inundated in a 100-year storm, an incentive to add freeboard: the base flood elevation shown on the FIRM plus up to five feet of any proposed freeboard, minus the average existing grade, can be excluded entirely from the structure's height calculation, so raising a foundation above BFE does not consume the zone's height allowance. CRMC is directed to reevaluate its suggested design elevation map for this purpose every 10 years.