La Crosse looks to get 52 homes out of South Side floodplain

Jul. 29--When Rich Schultz purchased his home near Ebner Coulee in 1990, his realtor said he would be out of the floodplain within a year.

Twenty-nine years later, Schultz is thinking of downsizing and selling his home on Black Hawk Place, but the Federal Emergency Management Administration still considers it at risk for serious damage during a 100-year flood event. The worst part. Despite rain in 2017 that pushed into the 50-year flood event range, the place has stayed bone dry.

"We had no issues whatsoever," Schultz said.

The city of La Crosse Floodplain Advisory Committee is asking the La Crosse Common Council to help people like Schultz by hiring consultants from Short Elliott Henderson Inc. to research and create its own hydrograph to help convince the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and FEMA to revise its floodplain map for the area.

The goal is to get FEMA to change the maps and get 52 South Side homes out of the floodplain, increasing property values and saving homeowners thousands in flood insurance each year.

The study -- which will cost $150,000 -- will take data of actual water flowage rates collected during the significant rainfall events in 2007, 2008 and 2017 and use that to create a regression equation to predict what would happen during a 100-year flood event, or flooding that has a 1% chance of happening.

"Ebner's a whole different animal than the North Side. It took quite a while to get even people on the floodplain committee to realize that water doesn't come in from the Mississippi River. It's just that coulee, Ebner Coulee," said Bill Bosshard, a member of the Floodplain Advisory Committee.

The area is a ravine and serves as a stormwater run-off for the bluffs, but the actual water runoff and the FEMA estimates based on the best available data at the time the maps were made don't match up, city representatives say.

Ebner Coulee map

This map uses red dots to mark 52 residential structures that have the potential to be removed from the floodplain if the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and FEMA agrees with the city's methodology for predicting flood events.

SEH Inc.

"It isn't really any different than any other stormwater situation," Bosshard said. "If you didn't clean the leaves off the gutters and clear it for stormwater, we'd have floods everywhere. This just happens to be an open channel and it's treated like a flood situation rather than just a normal stormwater."

La Crosse utilities manager Bernard Lenz said the point of the study isn't necessarily to get homes out of the floodplain; instead, he said it's important to make sure the maps reflect the actual risk of flooding.

"What we're trying to do is show the true level of risk. We think the map over-inflates the risk that's out there," Lenz said.

Bosshard and other proponents of change have worked for years to try and remove homes from the floodplain. Mortgages that are determined to be at risk for flooding are required to be insured through the National Flood Insurance Program, which can cost homeowners thousands of dollars per year, and reduces property values.

"Any time you take money from people -- and that's what flood insurance is -- they'll have that much less for payments and that much less the house is worth," Bosshard said.

Plus, the federal government limits the improvements that can be done to the home to 50% of its assessed value. That means for a $150,000 house, the owners can only invest another $75,000 in things like renovated kitchens, expansions or other projects, and that includes all owners for the life of the property. If someone spends $50,000 on renovations, the person they sell it to can only spend $25,000 on improvements.

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Between those two factors, it has the potential to create financial distress in the community, Mayor Tim Kabat said.

"You're greatly limiting what you can do with the property," Kabat said, especially when you consider setbacks and fill requirements.

Homes in the floodplain tend to attract owners who buy them as investment properties and rent them out, then aren't able to do a lot of upgrades. That's not good for La Crosse, which encourages people to reinvest in their homes to increase property values and boost the economy.

Ebner Coulee Floodplain

This neighborhood on 28th Street South is the subject of a proposed study aimed at helping people get out of the floodplain.

Peter Thomson, La Crosse Tribune

"It's one of those big-picture issues where a thing like a floodplain designation does become a city issue, not just for that individual homeowner, but for our whole community," Kabat said.

The heavy rainfalls in 2007, 2008 and 2017 were a game changer for proponents of changing the maps, said Doug Kerns, the city's former floodplain manager and current staff member in the engineering department.

According to USGS data collected by SEH, the events are close to a 50-year flooding event, which they say will let them provide a better picture of what the peak flow of the water would be during a 100-year event.

"Data was collected by homeowners and by the city, and there was some questions then. 'Wait a minute, this number shows this, but the actual flow didn't equal what was supposed to happen,'" Kerns said.

Ebner Coulee graph

This graph created by Short Elliott Henderson shows FEMA-predicted flood discharge rate in blue and the U.S. Geological Survey methodology estimate in orange. SEH and the city of La Crosse are asking to change the floodplain based on the USGS methodology.

SEH Inc.

The flood insurance study used by FEMA predicted 88 homes would be inundated by a rainfall like the one in 2017, where 6.72 inches of rain fell in 12 hours.

"Actual evidence shows there weren't any inundated, so we know it's way off," Bosshard said.

Convincing the DNR and FEMA won't be easy; however, a previous SEH study submitted to the DNR on behalf of the city was deemed acceptable.

"The effort here is to basically use statistical analysis based on these recent big events," Lenz said.

Schultz is hopeful that the city's efforts will get his street out of the floodplain and make it far easier to put on the market.

"I don't understand why Black Hawk Place is in the floodplain, for sure. My home is somewhat elevated from street level. We've never had an issue -- not even close. It doesn't even come up onto our driveway," Schultz said.

IF YOU GO

WHAT: Discussion of $150,000 contract with SEH to study Ebner Coulee floodplain

WHO: Finance and Personnel Committee

WHEN: 6 p.m. Thursday

WHERE: La Crosse City Hall, 400 N. La Crosse St.

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Jourdan Vian can be reached at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter at @Jourdan_LCT.

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