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Force, but FEMA Has Not Assessed the Costs of Collecting and Reporting 
All Levee-Related Concerns' which was released on July 29, 2011.

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GAO-11-689R: 

United States Government Accountability Office: 
Washington, DC 20548: 

July 29, 2011:

The Honorable Mary Landrieu:
Chairman:
The Honorable Dan Coats:
Ranking Member:
Subcommittee on Homeland Security:
Committee on Appropriations:
United States Senate:

The Honorable Robert B. Aderholt:
Chairman:
The Honorable David E. Price:
Ranking Member:
Subcommittee on Homeland Security:
Committee on Appropriations:
House of Representatives:

Subject: FEMA and the Corps Have Taken Steps to Establish a Task 
Force, but FEMA Has Not Assessed the Costs of Collecting and Reporting 
All Levee-Related Concerns:

Recent catastrophic flooding in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, 
Missouri, and Tennessee caused levee breaches and forced mandatory 
evacuations; while record flooding along the Mississippi and lower 
Ohio River valleys prompted the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) 
to rupture the Bird's Point-New Madrid Levee, resulting in the 
flooding of more than 130,000 acres of Missouri farmland. The 
destruction is estimated to have caused hundreds of millions in 
property damages. These events underscore the importance of the 
nation's levee system and the role federal agencies play in assessing 
levee integrity and assisting communities in the aftermath of levee 
failure.

Levees are found in approximately 22 percent of U.S. counties, where 
almost half of the U.S. population resides and are, for the most part, 
owned and maintained by the locality in which they are located. The 
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), a component of the 
Department of Homeland Security (DHS), is responsible for mapping 
flood-prone areas across the country and issuing levee accreditations 
for the purposes of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). Under 
the NFIP regulations, FEMA requires that levee owners or community 
officials seeking to demonstrate the flood protection provided by a 
levee submit an engineering certification indicating that the levee 
complies with certain criteria.[Footnote 1] Flood insurance purchase 
is mandatory for all federally backed mortgages for properties FEMA 
designates as being located in a special flood hazard area, which are 
those areas that have an estimated 1 percent annual chance of 
flooding. If a levee receives accreditation from FEMA, homeowners who 
reside in the area protected by the levee are not subjected to the 
federal requirement to purchase flood insurance, but still retain the 
option to purchase flood insurance. Based upon the estimated flood 
risk reflected in FEMA's maps, FEMA makes flood insurance available to 
property owners in the 21,361 communities that participate in the NFIP.

The Corps is responsible for much of the federal construction of flood 
control and storm protection infrastructure. The Corps participates in 
the planning and construction of flood damage reduction projects, such 
as levees and floodwalls, to reduce damages from flood hazards, and 
shares the cost of these projects with the project sponsors. In 
certain limited situations, the Corps may assist in providing the 
engineering data that the levee owners submit to FEMA for 
accreditation purposes. However, in most cases the local sponsor has 
responsibility for operating and maintaining the levees, and there are 
limitations to federal actions available to assist locally operated 
levees, including constraints on federal funding for levee operation 
and maintenance. Among its other responsibilities, the Office of 
Management and Budget (OMB), as a component of the Executive Office of 
the President, provides oversight of federal agencies' performance, 
including overseeing FEMA and the Corps' efforts related to evaluation 
and accreditation.

As the result of its Map Modernization effort that began in fiscal 
year 2003, FEMA began an intensive remapping effort of its map 
inventory, including areas that contain levees. This remapping effort 
required communities and levee owners to validate that they met FEMA's 
accreditation requirements. While these requirements have been in 
place since 1968, levee owners have expressed difficulty in obtaining 
and paying for accreditation or re-accreditation and communities have 
communicated concerns to FEMA about the levee accreditation process. 
In July 2010, the President signed the Supplemental Appropriations 
Act, 2010.[Footnote 2] Language in the Senate committee report 
accompanying the appropriations act directed FEMA to establish an 
interagency task force with the Corps and OMB, to track, address and, 
where possible, resolve concerns stemming from FEMA mapping efforts in 
communities with issues related to flood control infrastructure, 
including levees.[Footnote 3] The report also directed the task force 
to report quarterly to Congress with a list of contacts made by a 
community official to FEMA or the Corps, including the date of each 
contact; a brief summary of the community official's concern; a 
determination of which governmental entity is legally responsible for 
the maintenance and certification of the flood protection 
infrastructure; and a joint response from FEMA and the Corps to the 
concern. Further, the report directed us to conduct a study of the 
number and status of responses to issues communities have submitted to 
the task force.

In its quarterly reports to Congress, FEMA has not included all the 
information the Senate committee report directed it to, such as a 
comprehensive list of all concerns that communities raised to FEMA. As 
result, we were unable to assess the number and status of responses to 
issues communities submitted to the task force. In response, as agreed 
with your offices, we reviewed (1) the progress FEMA has made in 
creating an interagency task force to track, address, and resolve 
concerns stemming from FEMA mapping efforts in communities with issues 
related to flood control infrastructures; and (2) the extent to which 
FEMA has the capabilities to collect and report information on 
community mapping concerns related to flood control infrastructures as 
directed.

To address our first objective, we reviewed information on FEMA's 
plans and policies for establishing a task force and discussed the 
establishment of a task force with FEMA, the Corps, and OMB agency 
officials. We also interviewed officials from the Association of State 
Floodplain Managers (ASFPM) and the National Association of Flood & 
Stormwater Management Agencies (NAFSMA), which are stakeholders to 
FEMA's mapping initiatives. As the two national professional 
organizations involved in floodplain and flood hazard management, 
ASFPM and NAFSMA have a long history of collaborating with FEMA and 
the Corps.

To address our second objective, we analyzed FEMA's policies and 
processes for collecting data related to tracking community levee 
concerns. In addition, we analyzed guidance FEMA provided to 
headquarters and its regions and assessed FEMA's activities against 
Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government.[Footnote 4] 
We also interviewed FEMA officials to gain an understanding of their 
capabilities to collect data to report information to Congress.

We conducted this performance audit from January 2011 through July 
2011, in accordance with generally accepted government auditing 
standards. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit 
to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable 
basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. 
We believe that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for 
our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives.

In summary, FEMA and the Corps have taken steps to establish the task 
force to address levee mapping issues in local communities. For 
example, in what they described as an initial step towards addressing 
the congressional concerns outlined in the Senate committee report, 
FEMA and the Corps developed a joint memorandum that describes their 
relationship and five planned actions. In addition, FEMA officials 
report that the task force does not have the capability to collect and 
report all contacts it has with communities that involve levee-related 
concerns, as directed by the Senate committee report. According to 
FEMA officials, developing and implementing a system that would enable 
the agency to collect and report this information would be unduly 
resource intensive. However agency officials have not completed an 
analysis to determine the costs of developing such a system, and 
documented and communicated that information to Congress. FEMA could 
better support its position that implementing a system to collect and 
report all levee-related community concerns would be unduly resource 
intensive if it performs and documents an analysis of the costs and 
timeframes needed to develop such a system. Furthermore, this analysis 
could include the identification of potential alternatives that might 
address the Senate committee report language in more cost-effective 
ways. To assist congressional decision makers, we are recommending 
that FEMA assess the costs and timeframes needed to develop a system 
to collect and report all contacts with communities that have levee-
related concerns; identify, if applicable, cost effective alternatives 
to address the intent of the Senate committee report language; and 
document and communicate this information to Congress.

Background:

The Nation's Levee Systems:

Levees are structures, either earthen embankments or concrete and 
steel floodwalls, built along rivers or other bodies of water to 
prevent water from flooding bordering land. Nationally, average 
economic damage from floods in leveed areas ranges from $5 billion to 
$10 billion annually. The full extent and specific conditions of the 
nation's levees are unknown, but the National Committee on Levee 
Safety, which was created by federal law, estimates that more than 
100,000 miles of levees may exist.[Footnote 5] The Corps has 
approximately 15,000 miles of levees within its authorities: 2,000 
miles are operated and maintained by the Corps; 10,800 miles are 
typically constructed by the Corps, but locally operated and 
maintained; and 2,000 miles are locally constructed and locally 
operated and maintained.[Footnote 6]

Federal Role in Levee Mapping:

FEMA is the primary federal agency responsible for assisting state and 
local governments, private entities, and individuals in preparing for, 
mitigating, responding to, and recovering from natural and man-made 
disasters, including floods. Floods are the most frequent natural 
disasters in the United States, causing billions of dollars of damage 
annually. FEMA does not design, construct, or maintain levees. Rather, 
FEMA's primary role through the NFIP is to identify and map flood 
hazards and related flood risks from flooding sources in various 
locations, including those areas that are protected to some degree by 
levees. FEMA requires that levee owners or community officials seeking 
to demonstrate flood protection provided by a levee submit an 
engineering certification indicating that the levee complies with 
certain criteria. For example, FEMA has criteria that define minimum 
design, operation, and maintenance standards, such as those for 
embankment protection, foundation stability, and interior drainage. 
[Footnote 7]

The Corps has a long history of levee design, construction, and 
operations. In general, local levee owners are responsible for 
operation, maintenance, and improvement of levees; however, the Corps 
has some responsibility for flood fighting, flood mitigation, and 
repair of damages to levees caused by natural events. Since 2005, the 
Corps has had limited involvement in the data collected and certified 
to inform FEMA accreditation of locally operated levees. The Corps 
currently has no general authority, responsibility, or funding to 
assist local levee owners in assembling their NFIP levee accreditation 
packages, unless the levee is part of an ongoing Corps study or 
project or if the levee is operated and maintained by the Corps.

Risk MAP Implementation:

From 2003 through 2008, FEMA spent $1.2 billion to update the nation's 
inventory of flood insurance rate maps--known as Map Modernization. 
Congress appropriated $622 million to FEMA, from fiscal years 2009 
through 2011, for its Risk Mapping, Assessment, and Planning (Risk 
MAP) effort. Along with coastal flood hazard mapping and significant 
riverine flood hazard data updates, one of Risk MAP's primary areas of 
focus includes areas affected by levees. FEMA also reports that in 
addition to updated digital flood insurance rate maps, new products 
are being designed to help communities gain a better understanding of 
the threats posed by flooding so that they can take effective action 
to reduce risk.

Community Concerns Related to Levee Accreditation:

When FEMA began updating its maps in 2003, it reiterated its 
commitment to verify that all levees currently depicted in flood maps 
meet design, operation, and maintenance standards for protection 
against the 1 percent annual chance of flood (also referred to as a 
100-year flood). Owners of locally operated levees are responsible for 
the costs associated with seeking and maintaining levee accreditation, 
and some levee owners have expressed concerns about the costs and 
process for obtaining accreditation. Recognizing that the process of 
collecting and submitting data that document compliance with criteria 
for accreditation can be time-consuming and expensive for communities, 
FEMA offers communities provisional levee accreditation while they 
collect and review their information for accreditation. A community 
with a provisionally accredited levee has 24 months to submit 
documentation that its levee meets FEMA's criteria and standards for 
accreditation before the levee is de-accredited.

Suspension of "Without Levees" Modeling Policy:

In February 2011, 29 senators and 49 members of the House of 
Representatives requested that the FEMA Administrator terminate a 
process used in mapping communities--known as without levees modeling, 
because it treated some nonaccredited flood control structures as 
though they provided no flood protection instead of more precisely 
determining their relative effectiveness. The concern was that the 
without levees policy did not reflect that a levee under repair or 
unable to control a 100-year flood could still provide some level of 
protection.

In response, in a March 10, 2011, letter, FEMA announced that it would 
suspend it's without levees modeling policy while it works to develop 
a new approach to addressing the complexities of mapping areas with 
levees. As of July 2011, FEMA is in the process of developing its new 
approach. FEMA's decision to discontinue its use of without levees 
analysis has the potential to shift a particular community's special 
flood hazard area boundary, according to FEMA officials. FEMA 
officials also noted that the agency has received far fewer contacts 
from communities with concerns related to mapping levees since the 
suspension of the without levees modeling policy.

FEMA and the Corps Have Made Progress in Establishing the Task Force:

FEMA and the Corps have taken steps to establish the task force to 
address levee mapping issues in local communities. According to FEMA 
officials, the task force, comprising FEMA, the Corps, and OMB, was 
initially created as an entity to quickly address Congress's interest 
in flood control infrastructure issues in local communities. According 
to OMB officials, the task force has had only one meeting since it was 
formed in August 2010. FEMA officials stated that while the task force 
has only had one official meeting, collaboration is also needed at the 
FEMA Regional and Corps Division and District levels, which agency 
officials stated is well underway. FEMA officials further stated that 
their first priority was to provide timely information to Congress, 
then later establish the prescribed protocols and processes to help 
formalize its relationship with the Corps and OMB, clearly identify 
their respective roles and responsibilities, and improve the 
information the task force reports to stakeholders.

In what they described as an initial step toward addressing the 
congressional concerns outlined in the Senate committee report, FEMA 
and the Corps developed a joint memorandum that describes their 
relationship and five planned actions, as well as a flowchart that 
illustrates how information is processed by the task force agencies. 
The joint memorandum is an agreement designed to set expectations and 
protocols for both FEMA and the Corps in headquarters and the field. 
FEMA and the Corps described five planned actions to accomplish this 
goal: (1) collaboratively communicating with local communities when 
flood protection infrastructure issues arise that cross lines of 
authority, (2) providing requested information in response to 
quarterly data calls on joint community-level activities for inclusion 
in required quarterly reports, (3) holding regularly scheduled 
meetings to resolve issues and develop proactive strategies for 
collaboration, (4) collaborating through the Federal Interagency 
Floodplain Management Task Force to streamline agency authorities to 
better provide assistance to communities, and (5) conducting joint 
webinars for FEMA and the Corps' local offices on levee safety to 
improve coordination between FEMA and the Corps related to levee 
concerns. FEMA officials described the joint memorandum as evidence 
that FEMA and the Corps are cooperating, and said that it also 
includes provisions to ensure that senior-level management is more 
involved.

Both FEMA and the Corps are members of the Interagency Flood Risk 
Management Committee, which has been meeting quarterly since 2005 to 
address key national issues of flood risk management and make 
recommendations for needed changes, particularly in regard to 
interagency cooperation and collaboration. Both agencies also 
participate in the National Committee on Levee Safety (NCLS). The goal 
of the NCLS is to support levee safety programs through coordination 
and information exchange among federal and nonfederal entities 
concerning the implementation of levee safety guidelines. Senior 
officials with ASFPM and NAFSMA told us that FEMA and the Corps work 
together jointly with their associations on flood control 
infrastructure and mapping, but also collaborate with other state and 
local governments and the private sector. In addition, FEMA officials 
stated that a senior FEMA flood mapping official is currently on a 6- 
month detail at the Corps' headquarters to help improve how the two 
agencies work together.

Corps officials largely agreed with FEMA that the two agencies 
collaborate well at headquarters, but they also acknowledged that the 
interaction between their respective districts and regions in the 
field could be improved and have recently made enhancements. For 
example, a Corps professional engineer reported that FEMA and the 
Corps are collaborating more when dealing with state and local 
communities. In addition, according to a Corps official, the two 
agencies have increased their joint communication and outreach to 
flood communities since the public often perceives them as one unit. 
In addition to providing a consistent message, he explained that this 
approach helps to better educate communities about the roles and 
responsibilities of FEMA and the Corps. The Corps official said that 
this new approach is clearly illustrated in one of its districts, 
where a senior Corps official currently presides over leadership 
meetings between the FEMA regional office and the Corps district 
office in an effort to improve their direct communication as well as 
their communication with the local communities. A FEMA professional 
engineer in the corresponding FEMA region also cited an increase in 
joint communication efforts at local meetings to address flood control 
issues. Likewise, OMB officials stated that they believe the Corps and 
FEMA have a good working relationship and that OMB's involvement in 
the task force is limited to mediating any conflicts, which have not 
arisen, and reviewing and concurring with the quarterly reports.

FEMA Has Not Assessed the Costs and Feasibility of Reporting Community 
Flood Control Infrastructure Concerns as Directed:

FEMA officials report that the agency does not have the capability to 
collect and report all contacts it has with communities involving 
levee-related concerns, as directed by the Senate committee report. 
According to FEMA officials, developing and implementing a system that 
would enable the agency to collect and report this information would 
be unduly resource intensive. While FEMA officials stated that they 
had not assessed the costs of implementing such a system, they said 
that the cost and time associated was impractical given other agency 
priorities. According to FEMA officials, at a minimum, the agency 
would need to purchase a software system and configure it such that it 
could be accessible to all its regions and could interface with the 
Corps, and test the system before implementing it agencywide. Further, 
FEMA officials stated that they would have to assign staff to review 
the data and determine which issues were material in nature and which 
were simply answers to routine questions. FEMA provided a preliminary 
estimate of the magnitude of the costs, which totaled approximately 
$2.6 million to acquire a system and $1.5 million annually in 
operation and maintenance costs; however, FEMA officials stated that 
they had not done an assessment of all the costs associated with 
developing and implementing such a system. FEMA officials also stated 
that these preliminary estimates only included FEMA's costs and that 
they did not know enough about the Corps' operational and technical 
requirements to develop estimates for an information technology system 
that would meet its needs.

In the absence of such a system, FEMA and the Corps have developed a 
process to collect information from regional or district offices and 
report, in their quarterly reports to Congress, issues of concern 
related to levees that have either not been resolved or are recurring 
themes. FEMA officials stated that when a community raises an issue of 
concern currently, it does so by contacting a regional FEMA office, 
and FEMA personnel address the issue at the regional level. Thus, in 
the majority of cases, FEMA officials stated that they are not aware, 
at the headquarters level, of day-to-day contact with communities that 
contact the agency with levee-related concerns and how those issues 
are resolved.

Likewise, Corps officials said that to gather information for the 
quarterly reports, the Corps solicits the input of the flood risk 
managers in its district offices for issues submitted by the local 
flood communities. This information is compiled across all the Corps' 
divisions and transmitted to the corresponding FEMA regional offices. 
According to Corps officials, soliciting input from the districts is 
appropriate because they have a better understanding of the local 
issues. Corps officials stated that most community concerns are 
resolved at the district level, but those issues that cannot be 
resolved are eventually forwarded to headquarters and are reported as 
"issues of concern" in the quarterly reports. FEMA and the Corps have 
developed a task force quarterly reporting flowchart that describes 
how issues of concern are processed at the local level and eventually 
reported to Congress. FEMA's process for working with the Corps to 
gather the information it is currently including in its quarterly 
reports to Congress involves soliciting information from regional, or 
district, levels and then processing that information through 
headquarters to identify trends and reporting those that have occurred 
most frequently. While this approach does not allow FEMA to report 
every contact where there was a levee-related concern, FEMA officials 
stated that they felt it was a practical way to address the Senate 
committee report language.

While FEMA officials stated that the development of a system to 
collect and report all levee-related community concerns is unduly 
resource intensive, other than a rough order of magnitude estimate, 
agency officials have not completed an analysis to determine the costs 
and time frames of developing such a system and documented and 
communicated that information to Congress. Standards for Internal 
Control in the Federal Government highlights the importance of 
capturing information needed to meet program objectives and ensuring 
that relevant, reliable, and timely information is available for 
management decision-making purposes. We recognize that agencies must 
balance resources and priorities; however, FEMA could better support 
its position that implementing a system to collect and report all 
levee-related community concerns would be unduly resource intensive if 
it performs and documents an analysis of the costs to develop such a 
system. Moreover, conducting an assessment of the costs and time 
frames associated with developing a system--that includes both FEMA's 
and the Corps' needs--to collect and report levee-related community 
concerns and documenting and communicating this information to 
Congress could help provide Congress with pertinent information to 
inform its decision making on how to address community concerns 
related to levees.

In addition, this analysis could include the identification of 
potential alternatives that might address the Senate committee report 
language in more cost-effective ways. For example, FEMA has identified 
about 1,200 levee systems where the provisionally accredited levee 
status was accepted and the 24-month data submission period has ended. 
Thus, one alternative that FEMA could propose would be for FEMA to 
proactively solicit input from these 1,200 levee system owners to 
determine whether they have concerns related to flood mapping efforts, 
and report the results to Congress. This would reduce the reporting 
burden from the universe of 21,361 communities that participate in the 
NFIP to a more manageable number of communities that are most likely 
to have concerns related to the congressional interest that directed 
the quarterly reports. Another alternative FEMA might consider 
proposing is collecting and reporting local community concerns in 
specific regions that the agency views as likely to have challenges. 
Considering alternatives such as these, in conjunction with an 
assessment of the costs and time frames associated with developing a 
new system, could provide FEMA with pertinent information to assist it 
in deciding the most cost-effective method for providing Congress with 
information on community concerns. Specifically, it could help FEMA 
determine whether a new system for collecting and reporting community 
concerns is more cost-effective and beneficial than its current 
approach to reporting to Congress.

Conclusions:

Mapping flood-prone areas with levees that are frequently decades old 
and minimally maintained is an inherently contentious issue, as FEMA's 
maps have economic consequences for millions of homeowners who may be 
required to purchase flood insurance. Thus, ensuring that FEMA and the 
Corps are collaborating effectively to address and resolve community 
concerns is vital. To their credit, FEMA and the Corps have taken 
steps to improve their collaboration in recent years. Nonetheless, 
conducting an assessment of the costs and time frames associated with 
developing a system--that includes both FEMA's and the Corps' needs--
to collect and report levee-related community concerns and documenting 
and communicating this information to Congress could help provide 
congressional decision makers with pertinent information on the costs 
and benefits of collecting and reporting these data. Further, by 
identifying, if applicable, cost-effective alternatives for addressing 
the Senate committee report language FEMA could provide Congress with 
more options in addressing community concerns related to levees.

Recommendation for Executive Action:

To assist congressional decision makers, we recommend that the 
Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency assess the 
costs and time frames needed to develop a system to collect and report 
all contacts with communities that have levee-related concerns; 
identify, if applicable, cost-effective alternatives for addressing 
the Senate committee report language; and document and communicate 
this information to Congress.

Agency Comments:

In written comments on a draft of this report, DHS concurred with our 
recommendation to assess the costs and time frames needed to develop a 
system to collect and report all contacts with communities that have 
levee-related concerns and report this information to Congress. In 
response to our recommendation, DHS stated that FEMA will collaborate 
with the Corps to document an assessment of the costs of developing a 
system to collect and report all contacts with communities that have 
levee-related concerns and possible alternatives for addressing the 
congressional concerns. DHS further stated that FEMA will share the 
cost estimates and requirements for the alternative system approaches 
with congressional staff and develop a mutually agreed upon path 
forward that will address the congressional concerns in the most cost- 
effective and efficient manner. The Corps provided technical comments 
on a draft of this report, which we incorporated as appropriate. DHS's 
written comments are reprinted in enclosure I.

We are sending copies of this report to the Secretary of Homeland 
Security, the Secretary of Defense, the Director of the Office of 
Management and Budget, appropriate congressional committees, and other 
interested parties. The report also is available at no charge on the 
GAO Web site at [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov].

If you or your staff have any further questions about this report, 
please contact me at (202) 512-8777 or jenkinswo@gao.gov. Contact 
points for our Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs 
may be found on the last page of this report. Key contributors to this 
report are listed in enclosure II. 

Signed by: 

William O. Jenkins, Jr.
Director, Homeland Security and Justice Issues:

Enclosures - 2: 

[End of section] 

Enclosure I: Comments from the Department of Homeland Security:

U.S. Department of Homeland Security: 
Washington, DC 20528: 

July 21, 2011: 

William 0. Jenkins, Jr. 
Director, Homeland Security and Justice Issues: 
441 G Street, NW: 
U.S. Government Accountability Office: 
Washington, DC 20548: 

Re: Draft Report GAO-11-689R, "FEMA Has Not Completed an Assessment of 
the Costs of Reporting on Collaboration in Resolving Levee Issues" 

Dear Mr. Jenkins: 

Thank you for the opportunity to review and comment on this draft 
report. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) appreciates the 
U.S. Government Accountability Office's (GAO's) work in planning and 
conducting its review and issuing this report. 

The Department is pleased to note the report's positive  
acknowledgment that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and 
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) have taken steps to more 
effectively collaborate together to address and resolve community 
concerns related to catastrophic flooding. DHS is committed to 
continuing and improving this relationship which may be a good example 
for other agencies to "benchmark" against. 

This draft report contained one recommendation, with which DHS 
concurs. Specifically, in order to assist congressional decision 
makers, GAO recommended that the Administrator of FEMA: 

Recommendation 1: Assess the costs and timeframes needed to develop a 
system to collect and report all contacts with communities that have 
levee-related concerns; identify, if applicable, cost effective 
alternatives to address the Senate committee report language; and 
communicate this information to Congress. 

Response: Concur. FEMA will collaborate with the USACE to document an 
assessment of the costs of such a system and possible alternatives to 
address the Congressional concern. 

FEMA has been coordinating with the Senate Appropriations Committee 
staff on this issue during the past year and looks forward to 
continuing that dialogue. FEMA will share the cost estimates and 
requirements for the alternative system approaches with staff and 
develop a mutually agreed upon path forward that will address the 
Congressional concerns in the most cost-effective and efficient manner. 

Again, thank you for the opportunity to review and comment on this 
draft report. Technical comments were previously provided under 
separate cover. We look forward to working with you on future Homeland 
Security issues. 

Sincerely, 

Signed by: 

Jim H. Crumpacker: 
Director: 
Departmental GAOIOIG Liaison Office: 

[End of section] 

Enclosure II: GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments:

GAO Contact:

William O. Jenkins, Jr., (202) 512-8777 or jenkinswo@gao.gov:

Staff Acknowledgments:

In addition to the contact named above, Christopher Keisling, 
Assistant Director, and Linda Miller managed this review. David 
Alexander, Tracey King, John Vocino, and Patrick Washington also made 
significant contributions to the work.

[End of section] 

Footnotes: 

[1] 44 C.F.R. § 65.10.

[2] Pub. L. No. 111-212, 124 Stat. 2302 (2010). 

[3] S. Rep. No. 111-188, at 46 (2010).

[4] GAO, Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government, 
[hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO/AIMD-00-21.3.1] 
(Washington, D.C.: November 1999).

[5] 33 U.S.C. § 3302.

[6] The 2,000 miles of locally constructed levees are in the Corps' 
Rehabilitation and Inspection Program. 

[7] See 44 C.F.R. § 65.10. 

[End of section] 

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