Flood Plain Residents Prefer FEMA's Faucet to Its Maps

You know how when you see a flood-prone area hit yet again, and hear it declared a state of emergency? That's not just to attract TV cameras--the declaration means state and federal monies can be made available for home repair, legal services, medical care, and so forth. Depending on the size and frequency of the floods, that can add up to a large bill.

It's also, in part, an answer to the question, "Why do people build in a flood plain?" For one thing, the land is often cheaper than land that doesn't flood. But for another, we help people rebuild. So while there's a risk, you're not paying full freight.

To rectify that last part, FEMA has, for the last five years, been working on developing updated Flood Insurance Rate Maps, which try to assess the risk both in places that flood often, and in places that could flood disastrously. They've created 100,000 individual digital flood insurance rate maps, and, to the chagrin of people who live and work in areas at risk, they don't put a lot of faith in levees or dams.

Insurance is required in some instances where it wasn't before (some money can be saved through a "grandfathering" rule) and new development in a high-risk area is more strictly regulated. The Seattle Times has a story on the outcry across western Washington, even from areas like Chehalis:

FEMA won't consider levees that protect a growing commercial development near the freeway because they provide protection only from a 50-year flood and not a 100-year flood.

Water has coursed past those levees twice in the past 15 years: They were breached in the 2007 storm, swamping a Walmart and a Home Depot; and they were overtopped in a 1996 flood.

But city officials say those were the only times in 60 years that the levees failed.

(That said, the area has flooded in 1986, 1990, 1991, 1996 and 2000.) Unfortunately, city officials did not stand up in 1996 and 2007 and say, "This is on us. We live by the levee, we flood by the levee. Please, keep your $9 million of disaster assistance for the less fortunate." What they did do after 1996 is allow more building in the flood plain, more than 100 permits.

Nor do they seem to understand that government has to take a longer view than a city official. Chehalis City Manager Merlin MacReynold is quoted as saying "We're going to fight it," complaining that FEMA's 100-year flood scenario is an "extreme anomaly." Yes. It's a 100-year flood scenario.

This is what the response is in Chehalis, just over two years after the last flood. So you can imagine how aggrieved everyone is in Kent.