Yellow Pages
The projections of potential flooding in Skagit County shown on the federal government’s new flood maps show catastrophic possibilities.
But local officials say the biggest devastation could be what the maps mean for this area’s economic opportunities.
The maps released Wednesday are still preliminary and could be amended. The final maps will dictate whether property owners must purchase flood insurance and how elevated new development in the floodplain must be.
“I don’t think the word devastating is too dramatic down in our commercial areas if you look at the depths that these maps show,” said Mount Vernon Public Works Director Esco Bell.
He and others contend that the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s new flood insurance rate maps are overstated. The maps are intended to illustrate how high the water would get during a 100-year flood, which is a major flood with a 1 percent chance of occurring in any given year.
FEMA’s projected 100-year flood would bring 11 feet of water to the junction of College Way and Interstate 5, 10 feet of water at the intersection of College Way and Riverside Drive and six feet north of Kincaid Street in downtown Mount Vernon, Bell said.
That nearly doubles the flood heights shown on the 1985 maps FEMA uses now.
Burlington Planning Director Margaret Fleek spoke with other local officials and FEMA representatives Wednesday about public outreach in the coming weeks. She said at least three public meetings will be held early next year to let residents know how the map updates will affect them.
On Wednesday, though, she didn’t know what the impact would be for the holders of Burlington’s more than 1,200 flood insurance policies required by lenders for properties within the 100-year floodplain.
“It’s like biblical proportions,” Burlington Public Works Director Chal Martin said of FEMA’s flood projections for a site near Sedro-Woolley.
He said their data would equate to two days worth of levee-breaching flooding. An alternate set of data, which was developed by a consultant paid by Burlington, projects a much smaller flood volume lasting for less than a day.
Mark Carey, mitigation division director for FEMA Region 10, which includes Washington, said last week the new preliminary maps show greater flooding than the ones currently in use because more development has taken place in the floodplain, and technological advancements now allow for more accurate modeling.
Carey said local communities will have 30 days from the maps’ release date to review them for any nontechnical issues like incorrect street names.
Then following a few public meetings, a 90-day appeal period will begin, he said. FEMA will have authority to make changes in response to the appeals, or adopt the maps without changes, he said.
Will Honea, Skagit County’s Chief Civil Deputy Prosecuting Attorney, Bell and Martin all refrained from saying if their jurisdictions would appeal the maps, but the county, Mount Vernon and Burlington have all set aside money in their 2010 budgets to do just that.
If appeals are rejected, individuals or local governments could challenge the maps in court.
Local flood historian Larry Kunzler, who manages the Web site skagitriverhistory.com, doubts a legal challenge could win. But he too thinks FEMA’s maps are inaccurate.
“They are fatally flawed, flawed from the standpoint that they don’t comport with local history, and two, the event that they are projecting is greater than a 100-year event,” he said.
Read more local news in the Skagit Valley Herald and the Anacortes American, or read it online in the E-edition
