Property owners concerned about FEMA flood maps
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has been updating flood maps for those counties and Franklin County with the Map Modernization Program, funded through a $5 billion congressional earmark in 2003.
The floodplain lines are not correct on some of the maps, including that for Montgomery County, said Warren County Southern District Commissioner Randy Lewis."They're including the levees as part of the floodway, so FEMA is showing ownership of the levees," he said.
Typically, the levees are privately owned, most often by farmers in rural areas, and are maintained by levee districts.
A floodway typically is a low-lying area where floodwaters are likely to go during a flood.
The floodway designation on a map stops on the water side of the levee where the designation for the floodplain begins. The new maps show the floodway designation extending to the land side of the levee, Lewis said.
"Of course, property rights are being threatened," Lewis said.
An official with FEMA disagreed, saying the new maps have nothing to do with property rights.
"The map has no bearing on who owns what," said Melissa Janssen, risk analysis branch chief in FEMA's Kansas City office.
In addition to questions about property rights, Maurice Glosemeyer worries that additional FEMA regulations might come with the boundary change. Glosemeyer is a board member for the Tri-County Levee District.
"If they go to the inside of them, they can pretty much well dictate what we do and the levee board will be gone," he said.
He also raised concerns about the added time it could take to address FEMA's regulations for levees in addition to regulations of the Environment Protection Agency, Army Corps of Engineers and U.S. Fish and Wildlife.
"We'd have to jump through another set of hoops to get it repaired," he said.
Janssen disagreed, saying, "The levy maintenance and who pays for maintenance is going to have to be up to the levee district itself. It has nothing to do with maps."
She said the new maps only list levees that provide protection against a 1 percent chance flood, more commonly known as a 100-year flood.
"It's not the type of levee that we would be concerned with, and we would only be concerned with a levee that would offer protection against a 1 percent chance flood," she said.
Levees of this type aren't even designated on FEMA's new maps, Janssen said. With new imaging technology, they might be visible, but they're not labeled, she said.
Warren County farmer Gerald Engemann doesn't want anything to do with FEMA. He called the situation "absolutely unreal."
He and his brother farm 1,500 of the 11,000 acres in the Tri-County Levee District.
"We take care of our levees," he said. "We don't want to jump through FEMA's hoops when we need to make repairs. They need to leave it the way it is, and what gives them any right to change it?"
