Beyond Compliance: Evaluating and Enhancing the Usefulness of Hazard Mitigation Plans in Coastal Washington

Abstract

Each coastal county in Washington State must prepare a Hazard Mitigation Plan (HMP) every five years to qualify for federal pre-disaster funding from FEMA. This process is resource-intensive and presents an administrative burden on county planners. Yet as climate change and rising sea levels intensify natural hazards such as flooding and coastal erosion, the pressure is mounting on Washington’s coastal communities to prepare and adapt, and the need for robust HMPs is greater than ever. To move “beyond compliance,” this report focuses on plan “usefulness,” defined as the capacity for a plan to be “used in a manner serviceable to reducing disaster loss and breaking the cycle of disaster damage, reconstruction, and repetitive damage,” rather than solely on meeting regulatory requirements. Through a literature review, content analysis of the most recent HMPs for Washington’s 15 coastal counties, and interviews with HMP planners from 10 coastal counties, we find that planning is frequently driven by FEMA compliance over local needs. As a result, HMPs are often treated as static reference documents instead of living tools for project development. We offer recommendations for making HMPs more actionable and connected to community priorities, alongside a planner-oriented HMP “cookbook” designed to make county plans easier to write, update, and use to support long-term resilience.