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Highlands Today

FEMA Re-Evaluating Flood Zones

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By GARY PINNELL

Highlands Today

Published: July 11, 2008

SEBRING - If your home mortgage is federally insured - and most are - and you live in a flood-prone area, you may have to buy flood insurance.

Even if you're not living in a flood zone now, you may be one day, because FEMA is updating its Flood Rate Insurance Maps.

On July 1, Federal Emergency Management Agency officials met with South Florida Water Management engineers to examine the levees on the north border of Spring Lake, which divert water into Arbuckle Creek.

"We're not here to make a decision; we're just gathering information," said Angela Prymas, a senior engineer with the district, told Spring Lake Improvement District Manager Joe DeCerbo in a meeting last week. The West Palm Beach water management district is constructing models of how water flows into Lake Istokpoga, she said.

But if Spring Lake's levees are not certified, said Stephen Partney, the water district's section leader for dam safety, residents with federally insured mortgages will be required to buy flood insurance.

"The Corps of Engineers is doing an inventory," said Jody Cottrill, a public information officer for FEMA Region 4 office in Atlanta. "We're trying to make sure people living in flood-prone areas know that flood insurance is available to them."

The last flood map in Highlands County was issued in 1983. Since then, the population has doubled, and so have commercial areas. All those streets and parking lots change the path of rainwater runoff.

South and Southwest Florida Water Management Districts have received FEMA grants to update flood maps, Cottrill said. "They're getting together to decide what information to collect and how to collect it."

Within the next two to three years, they'll produce preliminary digital maps, Cottrill said, which can be updated more easily in the future.

Here's the upshot, Cottrill said: "What it means to the community is that it could move people in or out of a flood zone."

People who live in a flood zone and have FHA mortgages, or notes guaranteed by FreddieMac or FannieMae, have already gotten letters requiring them to buy flood insurance, she said. But their neighbors, who live in areas of moderate risk, should check to decide if they want to buy flood insurance.

"Florida has the largest number of policies in force in the nation," Cottrill said. The National Flood Insurance Program has 5.4 million flood insurance policies in force nationally, and 2.2 million are in Florida, where most land is just a few hundred feet above sea level, Cottrill said.

DeCerbo isn't sure what the evaluation of the stability of Spring Lake levees will mean to residents. "We have a pump station. We can pump out any flood water," he said.

But the federal government and water districts often make decisions he doesn't understand, which include unfunded mandates.

Highlands County planner Zane Thomas said flood mapping will be on the Local Mitigation Strategy Working Group agenda at the 8 a.m. July 23 meeting in the Government Center.

WHAT IS YOUR FLOOD RISK?

Go to www.floodsmart.gov to estimate how much flood insurance would cost

Gary Pinnell can be reached at gpinnell@highlandstoday.com or 863 386-5828

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