Mapping error that cost some thousands could be fixed

March 06--PANAMA CITY BEACH -- A bill filed by Congressman Neal Dunn seeks to grant relief to communities on the beach whose residents have been forced to pay as much as $50,000 a year for private flood insurance after being included on a federal coastal map.

Since 1990, residents of the waterfront communities Finisterre, Martinique, Bonefish Point, Alligator Point, and the RV Park Venture Out in Panama City Beach have been unable to get federal flood insurance because they were included in the Coastal Barrier Resources Act map. The map is meant to discourage development of hurricane prone, biologically rich coastal barriers by restricting federal expenditures that encourage development, but many have felt the inclusion of several already developed communities was a "mistake."

Dunn has filed a bill, H.R. 2947, the "Strengthening Coastal Communities Act," which would take the communities out of the protection area, allowing homeowners to get the much more reasonably priced federal flood insurance.

After a hearing last week in Washington before the House Natural Resources Committee on the bill, during which Bay County Commissioner Philip "Griff" Griffitts testified, Dunn said he's confident the bill will pass.

"I think there is an excellent chance," Dunn said. "We had a very favorable hearing at the Natural Resources Committee. We had people on all sides of the issue, including the Audubon Society, as well as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service, who all spoke in favor of passing this."

Dunn said the bill is "a correction to a mistake that was made in the Fish and Wildlife mapping."

"I think we've finally got this thing surrounded and nailed down," he said. "What (the bill) does is it removes 198 homes from the coastal barrier system, which means they can receive a number of federal benefits, including access to federal flood insurance, disaster recovery and federally backed mortgages. If these houses were uninsurable they'd have no resale value at all, so these 198 homeowners would have been literally left with homes that were worth nothing."

Panama City Beach residents say the "error" that put their communities in the map was supposed to cover only St. Andrews State Park but is forcing them to pay astronomical flood insurance rates, if they can get insurance at all. They also have said being included in the coastal map has hurt property values and made it difficult, if not impossible, to get loans or refinance.

For example, Sal Albano, a Martinique resident, said previously the bank financing his home added private flood insurance onto his mortgage payment, and the payment doubled to $3,900 a month.

He was pleased to hear about Dunn's legislation on the verge of passing.

"Of course I'd be happy if it happened," Albano said.

In 1990, when the CBRA maps were drawn for Bay County, an "otherwise protected area" map was created to include St. Andrews State Recreation Area, Griffitts said at the House Natural Resources Committee meeting last week in Washington.

"That imprecise method included private property in the OPA map," Griffitts said.

Griffitts told the committee the OPA map should have been limited to undeveloped conservation areas such as national wildlife refuges, national parks and seashores, state parks, military bases and conservation lands owned by private organizations.

Griffitts said Monday that developed communities should not have been included in the map, adding flooding has not been a problem in these communities either.

Dunn said the final vote on the bill, which has a companion in the Senate, should be made the end of the month.

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