By JOHN HOFHEIMER
Leader senior staff writer
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has rewarded Sen. Mark Pryor’s long-standing effort to keep flood insurance affordable and available by considering local levees and flood-control structures when updating flood-insurance rate maps.
FEMA administrator Craig Fugate told Pryor, as well as Senators Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) that he has directed an end to the practice of using “without-levee” mapping when, in fact, there’s sufficient local flood protection to keep rates low or even make insurance unnecessary.
“For several years now, I have been telling FEMA officials that their approach to flood insurance is unreasonable and detrimental to Arkansas homeowners and businesses,” Pryor said Friday. “Dismissing existing infrastructure isn’t logical or practical. FEMA has finally come around, offering a more precise solution.”
Pryor has worked to overturn FEMA’s tough new methodology since it was announced during the Bush administration, said Michael Teague, a Pryor spokesman.
“They were dead set on doing it in a certain way,” said Teague, and they targeted Arkansas and Mississippi first.
Pryor had said that as other states were included, opposition would grow, and he was right.
Some areas that have never been in a flood plain are now suddenly in a flood plain, Teague said.
Some people already have been forced to buy expensive or more expensive flood insurance, he added. He said it would take a while to unravel the situation, see who has been affected and fix it.
“They shouldn’t be stuck with this moving forward,” he said.
Early last month, 14 Repub-lican and 13 Democratic senators sent Fugate a letter asking that mapping “be terminated because it completely wiped some flood-control structures off the map instead of more precisely determining their effectiveness.”
“This will affect Cabot and Beebe because of the levees around here, and Bayou Meto,” Pryor said in an interview with The Leader last June.
The old rules could have brought “everything to a halt,” Pryor said at the time. “Cities and counties aren’t sure what they are agreeing to.”
FEMA sent letters to cities in Arkansas indicating they would no longer be eligible for federal disaster assistance, and residents and businesses could not buy or renew existing flood-insurance plans if the new floodplain measures were not adopted.
“This is very heavy handed. They want any new development, anything anywhere, to be elevated, get above floodplain when it’s already sitting behind a world-class levee—and local people pay for the levees,” the senator said at the time.
Flood insurance, administered by FEMA, can cost Arkansas homeowners from $131 to $2,647 annually, depending on coverage and location, according to the senator. It can cost businesses up to $5,000 annually and deter economic development in communities, Pryor said.
FEMA had sent out ordinances to cities and counties saying they must pass them or loans and developments will stop.
“FEMA is finally listening,” Pryor said. “I commend them for acknowledging the need for a more accurate and precise analysis of existing flood-control protections before forcing consumers and businesses to pay hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars for insurance.”
In a letter to the senators, Fugate agreed that his agency had the technical ability to affordably and efficiently produce more accurate flood maps unnecessarily.
If FEMA determines an area has a 1 percent annual chance of flood, property owners in that area are required to purchase National Flood Insurance Program coverage to protect against such flooding hazards if their mortgage is backed by the federal government.
Communities across the country have complained that FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers have disregarded locally funded flood-control projects and repairs that may provide some level of actual protection in the development of the new flood maps.
“In order to increase the credibility of our Flood Insurance Rate Maps in areas where levees are not accredited, I have directed my staff to replace the ‘without levee’ modeling approach with a suite of methodologies that are technically sound, credible and cost-effective,” Fugate wrote. “The approach will better meet the needs of our citizens while providing more precise results that better reflect the flood risk in areas impacted by levees.”
“It makes sense to take existing flood-control structures into account,” according to Wicker. “This should be a significant help to residents in areas that faced higher insurance rates.”
