What a FEMA accreditation status actually means

FEMA accreditation is a question about flood mapping, not a verdict on construction quality. When FEMA accredits a levee system, it means the community has provided documentation that the system meets the criteria in the federal regulations for a one-percent-annual-chance flood, and FEMA will therefore map the area behind it as if that protection is in place.

The three statuses

• Accredited Levee System. Documentation has been provided and accepted, and the leveed area is mapped accordingly.
• Non-Accredited Levee System. That documentation has not been accepted. This is the most common status on the register, and it does not mean the levee has failed or will fail.
• Provisionally Accredited. An interim status while a community assembles the required documentation, granted under an agreement with a deadline.

Why it matters to you anyway

The status drives how the land behind the levee is mapped, and the map drives the flood insurance requirement on a federally backed mortgage. A change in status can therefore change what a lender requires of you without anything physical changing on the levee itself.

What it does not tell you

It says nothing about your specific address. Accreditation describes the system as a whole measured against a design event. Whether water reaches a particular house depends on the elevation of that house, the nature of the flood, and factors no register can hold. USACE also notes that the database may not represent the totality of levees in the United States, so the absence of a record is not evidence of the absence of a levee.

For a decision about a property, the authority is your local floodplain administrator, and the document that answers the question is usually an elevation certificate prepared by a licensed surveyor.