City, towns successfully challenge FEMA flood maps
Published: November 23, 2009, 12:30 am
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The efforts of three local communities to delete properties from new federal flood zone maps have borne fruit, their leaders said last week.
The city and town of Lockport said they scored 100 percent success in their protests against new flood zone maps proposed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Wheatfield, which had many more properties added to flood zones by FEMA, was able to get most of the new additions to the map deleted, and plans a second appeal to try to remove more, Supervisor Timothy E. Demler said.
Demler said FEMA “told me they withdrew all the homes south of Jagow Road between Sy Road and the [Summit] mall. Those were about 400 of the new additions.”
But Demler said FEMA declined to delete eight or nine homes in the Wheatfield Heights area north of Niagara Falls Boulevard, off Nash Road behind the Adams Fire Company hall.
Wheatfield also was pitching to remove about 450 homes that were in the old flood maps from the flood zones. They were in the hamlet of Bergholz and along River Road.
Demler said FEMA did lower the measurements of a flood level for those areas, but didn’t change the flood zone boundaries on the maps.
“We will have a secondary appeal. We’re going to continue the fight,” Demler said.
Lockport Mayor Michael W. Tucker said the city was able to get FEMA to delete 18 properties it planned to add to the maps. Town of Lockport Supervisor Marc R. Smith said the town did the same for 32 properties.
The municipalities received letters in recent days from FEMA announcing the agency’s decisions.
FEMA was ordered by Congress to redraw the nation’s flood maps, a multiyear project.
The Niagara County maps drew protests from several local governments about the expansion of flood plains. Property owners in flood plains are usually required to buy flood insurance from the federal government, which can approximately double the price of homeowner’s insurance.
“The whole thing, as far as I’m concerned, was a big money grab,” Tucker groused.
The municipalities hired engineering firms to check FEMA’s elevation data, which was gathered by using a laser-guided instrument in a low-flying plane.
Wheatfield and the City and Town of Lockport were among those that hired the Wendel Duchscherer engineering firm from Amherst to take measurements on the ground, which often showed that the land wasn’t as low-lying as FEMA said.
As the year went on, FEMA deleted hundreds of parcels from the new flood zones, reducing the number that had to be formally challenged.
Tucker said most of the properties the city protested were in the eastern part of the city, on streets such as East Park Drive and Park Lane Circle.
City Building Inspector James P. McCann said in many cases in those areas, the flood zone boundaries stopped short of the homes. He said the city also was able to knock some properties in Lowertown, near the Erie Canal, off the flood maps.
The properties the town included in its protest were primarily in the Donner Creek watershed, mainly in subdivisions in side streets off Beattie Avenue and Locust Street Extension, Smith said.
Smith said the town considered trying to overturn what Wendel Duchscherer thought was an error in the Tonawanda Creek Road data, but decided against it. The affected area was about midway between Route 78 and the hamlet of Rapids.
“We would have had to spend a healthy five figures to correct FEMA’s data,” Smith said.
Tucker said the city also decided against trying to remove properties that were on the old flood maps from the affected zones. “We were trying to be realistic about it,” he said.
Smith said any resident who wants to try his luck in getting off the flood maps is welcome to do so, but the town is through with the general protests. A resident would have to do the work himself or, more likely, hire an engineer.
tprohaska@buffnews.com
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