The Color of Water: Racial Differences in Exposure to Flood Risk across the U.S.

Previous studies on distributive environmental justice issues related to flooding exposure have been limited in spatial scale, afflicted by measurement shortcomings, and inconsistent in findings. We provide the first U.S. national and state-by-state descriptive portrait of annual average exposure to floods across all Census-defined racial/ethnic groups. Specifically, we investigate whether there are statistically significant interracial differences in average annual probabilities of experiencing a flood in the U.S. and how these differences vary across states and coastal vs. inland areas. We use predictions from the recent First Street Foundation flooding exposure model and demographic data from the US Census Bureau American Community Survey in our analysis. We observe no states in which non-Hispanic Blacks have a (statistically) significantly higher average exposure to floods than non-Hispanic Whites, but 21 states where the reverse is true. Hispanics have a significantly higher average exposure in three states, and a significantly lower average exposure in 18 states, compared to Whites. Notably, however, the aggregate Hispanic population of the three states where Hispanics face greater flood exposure (Illinois, Massachusetts, and Texas) exceeds the aggregate Hispanic population of the 18 where their average exposures are lower than Whites’. There are eight states in which Native Americans have significantly higher exposure, and none where have lower exposure than Whites’, implying that additional research and appropriate, community-informed policy responses should focus on this group. Further studies are also needed at smaller spatial scales to identify communities of color facing disproportionate flood exposures.