FEMA proposes to pay for a floodwall around Nye County's government offices in Pahrump, and anyone who wants to say something about it has until Tuesday, August 26, 2026.
The money would come through the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, under grant number HMGP-4708-006-002. The agency has now published its final public notice, which is the step it takes before funding work that touches a floodplain or a wetland.
What would be built
- A concrete floodwall 1,102 feet long, of rebar, concrete and grout, with a drainage system to collect and divert stormwater
- A concrete culvert, 24 feet by 48 feet, over an existing drainage channel, which would also serve as a vehicle driveway
- Removal or replacement of 46 feet of sidewalk and curb south of the property's north driveway, and of a pedestrian footbridge across the drainage channel
- A replacement dumpster enclosure, because the cinderblock one now standing sits where the wall would go
The project area is 6.1 acres, with a further 15.8 acres used for staging.
What it protects
Floodwater would be redirected away from four sets of county buildings and into culverts and drainage channels: the Nye County Courts Complex, the Information Technology Building, the Sheriff's Office Complex, and the offices of the Assessor, Recorder and Treasurer.
That is the county's records, its courts and its law enforcement dispatch in one project area.
The part worth reading twice
FEMA's own flood map for the site, FIRM panel 32023C8850F, effective December 2, 2015, puts the entire project area and most of the staging area in Zone X, which is the designation for minimal flood hazard. Only a tenth of an acre, along the western edge of the staging area, sits in the 500 year floodplain, where the chance of flooding is 0.2 percent in any given year.
The county proposed a floodwall anyway. The notice explains why: the project area and its surroundings have been subject to extreme flash flooding during monsoon and atmospheric river events.
A flood map is a statistical model of a landscape. Pahrump's experience of water arriving fast off the alluvial fan is not always the same thing, and here the county has decided the difference is worth a wall.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service's National Wetlands Inventory also shows a riverine wetland running through the project area. It shows none in the staging area.
What else was considered
Two alternatives. Doing nothing was rejected because the buildings would stay exposed to flooding, property damage and the public safety risk that follows. Moving the buildings somewhere drier was rejected as costing more and disturbing more ground.
FEMA concluded the floodwall is the only practicable alternative, which is the finding it must reach under Executive Order 11988 on floodplain management, Executive Order 11990 on the protection of wetlands, and its own rules at 44 CFR Part 9, before it can fund construction in a floodplain. The county says the work meets local floodplain standards, and would be responsible for building and maintaining it.
How to comment
Write to the FEMA Region 9 Environmental Officer, FEMA, 1111 Broadway, Suite 1200, Oakland, California 94607, or email fema-rix-ehp-documents@fema.dhs.gov.
Requests must arrive within 15 days of publication, which the notice gives as August 26, 2026. No action will be taken before that date. Maps of the project area, the staging area and their position relative to the floodplain and the wetland are available for public review from the same office.
Sources
- Final Public Notice, Critical Systems Flood Mitigation Project, Nye County, Nevada, HMGP-4708-006-002: the county's copy, and our mirror, SHA-256
f138bb9ec482fb0d3107813630c027fe3dd440e0f36fb3905ca7b61e7b304ae8 - Executive Order 11988, floodplain management
- Executive Order 11990, protection of wetlands
- 44 CFR Part 9, FEMA's floodplain and wetland rules
- The county commission's full meeting record is at /meetings/bocc
