New map to reduce area requiring flood insurance in South Buffalo
FEMA agrees to drop 2,400 city properties
Joanne Janicki has been forced to buy flood insurance for her South Buffalo home for a dozen years because federal regulators say her property is in a high-risk flood zone.
But that will change Sept. 26 when about 2,400 properties — including Janicki’s — are removed from a reconfigured zone.
“I couldn’t be happier,” Janicki said Monday, shortly after Rep. Brian Higgins announced that the federal government will approve a new flood zone map.
Janicki recently paid $623 for flood insurance, knowing she probably never would recover a penny of it through claims because the insurance does not cover the type of basement flooding inflicted by storms here. For catastrophic flood insurance to cover damage, water has to come in through a first-floor window.
“It’s much more than my homeowners insurance — probably double,” she said of her flood premium. “That’s outrageous.”
Higgins said many people have been trying for decades to prod the Federal Emergency Management Agency to revise the flood zone. He said tens of millions of dollars have been spent since the 1960s on projects that reduce the likelihood of severe flooding along Cazenovia Creek.
Local leaders and community activists presented compelling data to federal regulators, spurring them to revise the zone boundaries, said Higgins, D-Buffalo.
“This isn’t a political process where you just yell and stomp your feet,” he said.
Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N. Y., who also has been working in the issue, issued a written statement praising FEMA’s revised map.
“We pushed and prodded FEMA to make sure the maximum number of hard-pressed homeowners were removed from the flood maps and relieved of the crushing burden of unnecessary levels of insurance,” Schumer said. “Getting by in this economy is difficult enough, which is why we worked so hard to make sure the flood maps reflected the reality of a much-improved flood protection system in South Buffalo.”
Last week, the Common Council approved the new flood map that, by city estimates, would shrink the number of properties in the zone to fewer than 450 from about 2,700. City officials say they expect the revised map to include at least 300 properties currently within the flood plain boundaries plus about 100 others in the Old First Ward.
But Higgins insisted that federal officials have yet to confirm whether the new boundaries would add any properties. That, Higgins said, would produce challenges on a case-by-case basis.
In 2006, South Council Member Michael P. Kearns coordinated a community survey that indicated many property owners were spending at least $700 a year for flood insurance. One property owner reported paying a premium of $1,800.
