Fairfield unveils draft master flood plan and public flood‑viewer after modeling shows bigger inundation and erosion by 2050

Bill Hurley, the town engineering manager, opened the meeting saying the town had hired consultants to produce a 2025 Master Flood and Erosion Utility Plan that “incorporates future sea level rise, increased storm intensity scenarios” and will proceed in two phases: comprehensive risk assessment followed by concept‑level, permit‑ready designs.

Consultants from Weston & Sampson and coastal specialists presented modeling that compared present‑day FEMA floodplain maps with hydrodynamic results for future scenarios. Jacob Mars, the project modeling engineer, said the team ran six scenarios using FEMA FIS still‑water inputs and sea‑level rise assumptions, including a 2050 scenario that adds 20 inches of sea level rise and a 2100 scenario that reaches roughly 40 inches. “By 2050… our hundred‑year storm is inundating a lot of 500‑year floodplain areas,” Mars said, noting methodological differences between the project’s 2‑D modeling and FEMA’s mapping.

The consultants summarized the headline model outputs: for the same return‑period storms, modeled inundation area increases roughly 14% for the 25‑year scenario and 15% for the 100‑year scenario under the 2050 sea‑level scenario. For the Mill River subwatershed they estimated roughly 59 additional acres of flooding in the future 2‑year scenario and more than 100 additional acres for the future…