Wyoming, MI Environmental Rules: Flood Zones (2026)

Chapter 38, Floodplain Regulations, applies to all land in the city within the boundaries of the floodway and floodway fringe areas (Sec. 38-3), incorporating FEMA's Flood Insurance Rate Maps and the Kent County Flood Insurance Study dated February 23, 2023, along with Appendix G of the 2015 Michigan Building Code (Sec. 38-2). Sec. 38-9 bans four uses in a floodway outright: buildings intended to be residences, with no substantial improvements allowed to any existing building; landfill, dump or junkyard; storage or processing of buoyant, flammable, explosive or injurious materials unless inside a building existing since June 19, 1990 with a floor elevation at least one foot above the regulatory flood level; and sewage disposal systems.

Sec. 38-7 permits agricultural uses, industrial or commercial parking, recreational uses, public utility facilities, navigational and drainage aids, water-related uses approved by the state's DEGLE water resources unit, and residential support uses limited to lawns, gardens, parking and play areas, but only where the applicant shows through a hydraulic analysis that the use will not raise flood stages during a 100-year flood event. Encroachment such as fill or new construction in a floodway additionally requires DEGLE permission under Sec. 38-8. Land in the floodway fringe outside the floodway itself may carry any use the zoning district allows, subject to the elevation standards in Sec. 38-11.