Residents want FEMA to rethink flood plain maps

The message sent was clear — residents of Harvey County want the Federal Emergency Management Agency to take another look at the preliminary flood plain maps before they are finalized.

And representatives of FEMA and the Kansas Department of Water Resources who were on hand for a public meeting Thursday afternoon at the Harvey County Courthouse heard it — loud and clear.

“Scott (Davies, Harvey County environmentalist and planning and zoning director) has shown me some work that shows inconsistencies,” Scott Samuelson, with the Department of Water Resources, said during the meeting. “I will take those back to my office. I can’t promise anything at this point, but I will take them back to my office for my review and talk to my boss about these.”

Samuelson and FEMA Region VII representative Georgia Wright were stand-ins for the meeting, as tornado recovery work took those who scheduled the meeting to other places.

But there still was valuable information learned at the meeting, most notably that the county can file for an extension of its 30-day protest window and who will handle those protests.

Davies will serve as a clearinghouse of sorts for local protests, using those to create a protest signed by the Harvey County Commission requesting FEMA not finalize the proposed flood plain map without taking another look at what information was used to put the map together.

And, at least some of that information is wrong, documented by Dan Garber of Garber Surveying and Davies.

Garber told those in attendance his company, at the request of the Harvey County Commission, surveyed 100 miles of county road and found that on a “great percentage” of those miles his company found elevations that did not match what was on preliminary flood maps.

During that portion of his work, private properties were not checked, only road elevations.

But they checked properties in North Newton as well and pointed specifically to 12 properties along Kisiwa Creek shown to be in the flood plain by preliminary maps. But when his company did cross-section surveying of the creek, they found differences in what the maps showed and what was really there.

“Eleven of those, and likely all 12, will come out of the flood plain,” Garber said, “but at a cost to the home owners.”

For those who can’t get changes made to the preliminary maps, getting amended out of the flood plain begins with having a survey company check property elevations and the accuracy of FEMA information.

Once that is done, the property owner can apply for a letter of amendment, which takes their property out of the flood plain and removes the requirement of flood insurance if the property is mortgaged through a federally insured lender.

It’s a process that sounds backwards to many of the nearly 150 people at the courthouse Thursday — having to first take out the insurance, then hire a surveyor to prove the information is wrong.

“Our question is, is it right for FEMA to pay a contractor to put these maps together with faulty information?” Garber said. “We think it makes more sense for the information to be verified and then maps created.”

The preliminary map expands the 100-year flood plain, which means there is a 1 percent chance of flooding in the area each year, in the southwest portion of Harvey County.

In that part of the county, Garber Surveying found road elevations off by a foot and as much as 3 feet.

“A foot deep in a lot of Kansas can cover three or four sections of ground, as flat as we are,” said Harvey County Commissioner Ron Krehbiel.

Krehbiel’s Burrton-addressed home falls within the proposed flood plain. On Thursday, he was wearing two hats —that of commissioner and that of a landowner who would be affected if the preliminary maps are put into effect as-is.

“We have to get these maps right,” Krehbiel said. “I am all in favor of having these maps, but they have to be right.”

The new maps are the result of federal Legislature approving funds for the creation of new, digital flood plain maps nationwide. There are 19 counties in Kansas currently going through the process of having new maps created.

In Harvey County, the Thursday meeting signaled a 30-day protest window for the county commission to protest the maps was set to begin.

It’s a protest that will happen.

At the advice of Georgia Wright, Davies will collect the names of property owners who believe the information used by engineers to create the preliminary maps was incorrect or incomplete. Davies said at the meeting he will request an extension from FEMA to work on documenting inaccuracies in data and why the map should be reworked.

A deadline for when those protests need to be given to Davies was not given at the meeting.

Commissioner Chip Westfall said the first priority, in his mind, is for the county to let FEMA know a protest is coming and to ask for an extension to make writing that protest feasible. He said the county will produce public notices of any and all deadlines for protests when they are created.

“This does not end today,” Samuelson said.

Once a preliminary map is accepted, Wright said it can take up to nine months for the map to become final. Before that happens, the county commission and city councils will be notified they have 60 days to accept the maps.

To view the proposed maps, which are not available online, contact Davies, who received copies of the proposed maps about a month ago.

“I always tell people to talk to their local zoning people,” Wright said. “They can give you some idea of how the changes might affect you. They can’t make a final determination on things, but they can give you a good idea of what may happen.”

If a property is moved into the flood plain on the final map, two things happen. To get the property amended out of the flood plain, the owner must pay for surveying and apply for a letter of amendment from FEMA.

“Once you have all of your documentation together and mailed to FEMA, it generally takes about three weeks for a determination on the application,” Wright said.

The other is if there is a mortgage on the property, flood insurance will be required by any federally insured lender. In order to avoid paying the flood insurance, a property owner would have to provide proof — in the form of surveying — the house is not in the flood-plain-affected area of a property.