Emergency Watershed Protection - Floodplain Easements

Background

Floodplain easements restore, protect, maintain, and enhance the functions of the floodplain. They also conserve natural values including fish and wildlife habitat, water quality, flood water retention, ground water recharge, and open space; reduce long-term federal disaster assistance; and safeguard lives and property from floods, drought, and the products of erosion.

Land Eligibility

NRCS may purchase EWPP easements on any floodplain lands that have been impaired within the last 12 months or that have a history of repeated flooding (i.e., flooded at least two times during the past 10 years).  Land within the breach inundation area of a dam for the purpose of preserving this land in a natural floodplain is also eligible.  State and local units of governments are eligible to apply.

Easement Payments

Under the floodplain easement option, a landowner voluntarily offers to sell to the NRCS a permanent conservation easement that provides the NRCS with the full authority to restore and enhance the floodplain’s functions and values. In exchange, a landowner receives the lowest of the three values as an easement payment

1. a value based on a market analysis,
2. a geographic rate established by the NRCS State Conservationist or
3. the landowner offer.

Restoration of the Floodplain

The easement provides NRCS with the authority to fully restore and enhance the floodplain’s functions and values to natural conditions to the greatest extent practicable. NRCS may pay up to 100 percent of the restoration costs. NRCS actively restores the natural features and characteristics of the floodplain through re-creating the topographic diversity, increasing the duration of inundation and saturation, and providing for the re-establishment of native vegetation.

Landowner Use

Landowners retain several rights to the property, including:

• quiet enjoyment
• the right to control public access and
• the right to undeveloped recreational use such as hunting and fishing.

At any time, a landowner may obtain authorization from NRCS to engage in other activities, provided that NRCS determines it will further the protection and enhancement of the easement’s floodplain functions and values. These compatible uses may include managed timber harvest, periodic haying, or grazing. NRCS determines the amount, method, timing, intensity, and duration of any compatible use that might be authorized. While a landowner can realize economic returns from an activity allowed for on the easement area, a landowner is not assured of any specific level or frequency of such use, and the authorization does not vest any right of any kind to the landowner.

Compatible Use Determination

NRCS determines the amount, method, timing, intensity, and duration of any compatible use that might be authorized.  While a landowner can realize economic returns from an activity allowed for on the easement area, a landowner is not assured of any specific level of frequency of such use, and the authorization does not vest any right of any kind to the landowner.  Cropping is not authorized and haying or grazing would not be authorized as a compatible use on lands that are being restored to woody vegetation.

Program Signup Information

For program sign-up information, contact your USDA-NRCS office.  A list of offices is provided under "Contact Us" on this website.

Additional Information

National EWP Floodplain website

News Release

Available in Adobe Acrobat format.

Print version of the information on this webpage.
 

Program Contact

Barbara Baker, Program Manager
514-255-2502

< Back to Programs