Flood Zones in Monson
Parts of this town are inside mapped special flood hazard areas, where flood insurance is required for most mortgages and building is regulated. Whether a specific property is inside one is a parcel-level question, check the address, not the town.
What the Record Shows for Monson
- Federal flood map: Digitised, with 49 mapped special flood hazard areas inside the town.
- Mapped wetland: about 5.6% of the town's land area. Massachusetts regulates work inside a buffer reaching out from the edge of a wetland, so proximity matters as well as presence.
- Dams: 25 inventoried, of which 1 carry a high hazard potential classification and 12 carry none at all. Hazard potential describes what a failure would do, not how likely one is.
- Cleanup registry: 3 listed release sites in the state's registry. An empty list means nothing was reported, not that the ground is clean.
The Question the Town Cannot Answer
Whether a specific property sits inside a flood zone is a parcel-level question, and no town-level page can settle it. Check the address for the point rather than the town.
Two things worth reading beside this. What flood insurance claims here actually show: about a quarter of paid claims in this region came from properties the map placed outside the high-risk zone, so the map governs your premium rather than your risk. And why 48 of the 101 towns have no digitised map at all, which is the single most misread fact in this dataset.
Flood Mapping Across Hampden County
Download CSV, same columns, same definitions
Whether each town in the county has a digitised federal flood map, and how many of its inventoried dams carry a high hazard potential classification. Not digitised means the question has not been answered for that town, which is different from having been answered no.
| Town | Federal Flood Map | High Hazard Dams |
|---|---|---|
| Agawam | Digitised | 1 |
| Blandford | Digitised | 2 |
| Brimfield | Digitised | 0 |
| Chester | Digitised | 0 |
| Chicopee | Digitised | 2 |
| East Longmeadow | Digitised | 0 |
| Granville | Digitised | 1 |
| Hampden | Digitised | 0 |
| Holland | Digitised | 1 |
| Holyoke | Digitised | 2 |
| Longmeadow | Digitised | 0 |
| Ludlow | Digitised | 4 |
| Monson | Digitised | 1 |
| Montgomery | Digitised | 1 |
| Palmer | Digitised | 0 |
| Russell | Digitised | 1 |
| Southwick | Digitised | 0 |
| Springfield | Digitised | 2 |
| Tolland | Digitised | 0 |
| Wales | Digitised | 0 |
| West Springfield | Digitised | 0 |
| Westfield | Digitised | 3 |
| Wilbraham | Digitised | 0 |
What These Columns Mean
- Town
- Towns in the same county.
- Federal Flood Map
- Whether a digitised federal flood map exists for the town. Where it does not, flood risk is unmapped, which is an absence of information and not a finding of safety.
- High Hazard Dams
- Dams whose failure would likely cause loss of life downstream. This describes the consequence of a failure, not its likelihood, and says nothing about condition.
Cite: RE413. “Flood Mapping Across Hampden County.” Updated August 5, 2026. https://www.re413.com/towns/monson-ma/flood-zones/, underlying sources at https://www.re413.com/sources/.
0 of the 23 towns in Hampden County have no digitised federal flood map.
More on Monson
Monson Compared
Side by side with the towns people weigh it against, on tax, prices, utilities and commute.
The Same, Nearby
The nearest towns to Monson, each with its own figure.
Sources
- Federal Emergency Management Agency. The National Flood Hazard Layer: whether the town is digitised and its mapped special flood hazard areas.
- Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection. Mapped wetland resource areas and the Chapter 21E disposal site registry.
- Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation, Office of Dam Safety. Inventoried dams and their hazard potential classification.
"Figures through" is the period the publisher's data describes; "checked" is only when we last asked. The full sourcing: sources and method.