Jacksonville Beach, FL Environmental Rules: Flood Zones (2026)

Section 34-772 is titled the Floodplain Management Ordinance of the City of Jacksonville Beach and is administered together with the Florida Building Code. Its scope reaches subdivision of land, filling and grading, utility installations, buildings exempt from the Florida Building Code, manufactured homes, tanks, recreational vehicles, swimming pools and any other development in a flood hazard area.

The flood hazard areas come from the Flood Insurance Study for Duval County, Florida and Incorporated Areas and the accompanying FEMA flood insurance rate maps, adopted by reference as the minimum basis. The studies and maps are on file at City Hall in the Planning and Development Department, 11 North 3rd Street. The floodplain administrator may require extra data to establish flood hazard areas, and the code closes a loophole in both directions. Where a Florida licensed surveyor's topography shows ground below the closest applicable base flood elevation, even outside a mapped special flood hazard area, the area is treated as a flood hazard area. Where ground is above that elevation, the area is still regulated as special flood hazard area unless the applicant obtains a letter of map change removing it.

The planning and development director, or a designee, is the floodplain administrator. That office reviews applications to find out whether development falls in a flood hazard area, interprets boundaries (a person contesting the determination can appeal), issues floodplain development permits for development other than buildings subject to the Florida Building Code, and makes substantial improvement and substantial damage determinations with the building official by comparing the cost of work to the market value of the building.

Other rules inside the section limit what can be built. Nothing is authorized in a regulatory floodway unless an encroachment analysis shows no increase in the base flood elevation. Recreational vehicles may stay fewer than one hundred eighty consecutive days or must be fully licensed and ready for highway use. Where this ordinance and another ordinance conflict, the more restrictive governs.