Buy flood insurance now - Prices will rise next year
6/25/2009 issue of The River Reporter.

Prices will rise next year
By FRITZ MAYER

MONTICELLO, NY — If your home or building is in a newly designated flood zone, you should buy flood insurance now, before the new flood maps are officially adopted, because you will save a lot of money.
That was the advice of Paul Weberg, a risk analysis engineer with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) who addressed a number of town, village and school officials at the government center on June 19.

FEMA is in the process of updating the flood maps in Sullivan County, and the new maps won’t be officially adopted until about 15 months from now. In the meantime, property owners with buildings that will be placed in a flood zone can buy flood insurance now, and those prices won’t go up when the new maps are adopted.
Weberg thought it was a sufficiently important point that he repeated it. He said, “If somebody is out of a flood zone now, and put into the flood zone, if he or she buys the flood insurance before the flood maps go into effect, the flood insurance will be much, much cheaper, and that’s called grandfathering. That’s the law of this country and that individual will be entitled to those cheaper rates as long as he or she lives and owns the building.”
There was other news that Weberg also considered to be good for residents. While the flood zones will expand in many areas with the new flood maps, countywide there are actually 16 percent fewer structures located in flood zones than on the previous maps. On the other hand, some communities, which are especially prone to flooding, will have more buildings in the zones than in the past, so it is important for property owners to check the status of their lots.

Weberg said that FEMA is committed to working with the communities to ensure that the new flood maps reflect the true conditions on the ground. Stan Martin, supervisor of the Town of Rockland, which has been especially hard hit with flooding in the past five years, said that some of the maps that he has looked at don’t reflect the new course of some streams that changed course as recently as the flood of 2006.

Weberg said one of the reasons for the upcoming meetings with public officials and the public was to allow FEMA to take advantage of information that local residents might have regarding flooding, and that local input could lead to changes on the maps.

Residents who don’t agree with a particular FEMA decision will be able to protest or challenge the decision in a three-month period beginning about August 1, though the actual date has not yet been set. Weberg said that, in order to be successful, a challenge would need to be more than a resident saying, “I’ve lived in this house for 50 years and it has never flooded.”

Martin asked if communities would be expected to hire engineers to bolster their claims regarding flood claims.
Weberg said no, but if a community felt strongly enough about challenging a FEMA determination, the hiring of an engineer would be one way to do it. Another way might be to point out a high-water mark in a specific area.
FEMA plans several meetings with public officials on July 7, and a meeting for residents on July 8 from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. at the government center in Monticello.

Go to rmc.mapmodteam.com/RMC2/Counties_Sullivan.htm to view the maps, which are also available through the building inspectors and code enforcement officers of the county’s towns and villages.