Warren, MI Environmental Rules: Flood Zones (2026)

Section 9-18 commits the city to continued participation in FEMA's National Flood Insurance Program, listing duties that include obtaining and using the best available flood elevation data, ensuring all permits necessary for development in a designated floodplain are issued prior to a building permit being issued, applying the State Construction Code's floodplain regulations, tracking flood hazard area boundaries, notifying FEMA of community boundary changes, keeping construction records, and adopting current flood insurance rate maps. 3. The operative permit bar is § 9-21: the code official shall not issue a building permit for construction within the floodplain area unless all necessary permits for development have been issued, including a floodplain permit, approval, or letter of no authority from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality under the floodplain regulatory provisions of Part 31, Water Resources Protection, of the Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Act.

Once a building permit does issue for floodplain construction, § 9-22 requires the work to follow the floodplain provisions of the Michigan Residential Code, the Michigan Building Code, and Appendix G. Development includes any manmade change to the land under § 9-26's definitions, covering grading, filling, mining, dredging and paving, not just new buildings, so site work in a mapped floodplain triggers the same permitting sequence.