Terrebonne – Residents may be forced to buy pricey flood insurance

Many Terrebonne Parish residents might be forced to purchase costly flood insurance now that FEMA flood maps are official. Lafourche's maps are still being debated.

FEMA's flood maps for Terrebonne were made official earlier this month and will go into effect Sept. 7. During this time, the new maps will be brought before the Parish Council for ratification at the local level. Most of Terrebonne Parish was placed into high-risk or special-risk zones. Homeowners in these areas with federally backed mortgages must purchase flood insurance as a condition of their loans. Similarly, those who have received federal disaster assistance also must maintain flood insurance to receive any future assistance.

To see the flood maps and search properties go to: https://msc.fema.gov/fmcv.

"For those who may be at or below the new base flood elevation on their property, this means that FEMA will require that they would then have to elevate to the new minimum when rebuilding or making repairs or improvements to structures if the costs are in excess of 50% of the value of the structure which is cumulative over a 10-year period," Terrebonne Parish Planning and Zoning Director Christopher Pulaski said. "The modeling has reduced flood zones and elevations in some areas while increasing in others, which would have an impact for those property owners with federally backed mortgages, which would then require flood insurance if they are in a special flood hazard area."

According to Pulaski, the parish appealed the first set of maps in 2008, and has been working with FEMA to have the maps reflect the millions of dollars that have been spent on mitigation. Roughly 92% of Terrebonne Parish is wetlands or swamps, which is considered special-risk. The parish is working on ways to update the maps as future mitigation is constructed, said Pulaski.

Lafourche, however, is still in the process of appealing the maps. According to Executive Director of the North Lafourche Levee District Dwayne Bourgeois, Risk Rating 2.0 was implemented without having accurate data. The flood maps FEMA uses to determine the risks to Terrebonne and Lafourche originally didn't take into account the flood mitigation effects of many of the levees, nor local drainage methods.

FEMA determined the risk zones using the Army Corps of Engineer maps that listed accredited levees. While Lafourche's levees were on these maps, they are not accredited, and therefore FEMA didn't accurately account for the mitigation they provided, Bourgeois said. The levees will affect the flow of waterregardless of accreditation.

"If you are doing a flood insurance study and you are pretending like a levee doesn't exist at all, that's a problem," he said. "You're going to overstate the flood risk in some areas, and you're going to understate the risk of flooding in other areas."

He said these are being corrected on the map side of FEMA, but it doesn't seem to reflect on the prices of the insurance side. This makes the maps all the more important, because they determine who is forced to purchase flood insurance based on who they place in high-risk and special-risk flood zones.

FEMA has been going through the process of opening the maps to the public since June 2021. Aside from the maps placing areas into different flood zones, it is unclear how this relates to the Risk Rating 2.0 outside of mandating flood insurance. This has lawmakers speaking out against it because they've disagreed with FEMA's lack of transparency regarding how its Risk Rating 2.0 comes up with policy prices.

FEMA says these new ratings are to cope with the effects of climate change and will base risk zones off of three factors: distance from flood risks such as bodies of water, the type of flood risk, and the cost to rebuild.

The change to Risk Rating 2.0 was to fix long standing inequities within the program that saw many policyholders paying for effects that impacted others. According to the new pricing model, those living in southern Louisiana will be carrying a much larger financial load than previously.

Most policyholders face an initial yearly increase of no more than $120, according to FEMA. Bourgeois argues this is misleading because FEMA doesn't say for how many years it will continue to increase. The long term cost for the insurance could increase dramatically, he said.

"But that's for the first year," Bourgeois said. "I think it's evil the way they are doing it... you can look on that declaration page and see what the full rate will be, but they're not honest and telling people when you're going to hit this."

The maximum it can increase per year is 18%. Senator John Kennedy, R-LA, recently proposed a bill that would change this from 18% to 9%. Senator Bill Cassidy, R-LA has teamed with other Senators to propose another bill to force transparency from the program.

Those house hunting or trying to sell a home will have felt the sting already.

"If you went to buy a house and they look for the declaration page, who's going to buy a house knowing its $6,300 for flood insurance, and because I have to borrow money on it and it's in a special flood hazard area, I have to buy that," Bourgeois said.