The cost of high water: Frederick County residents scrutinize new flood maps

Nov. 28--An early look at new flood maps had federal and state officials in high water as Frederick County residents tried to grasp how their properties would be affected.

Between 150 and 200 people crowded into Winchester Hall on Tuesday for a community outreach meeting, which prompted staff to open two overflow rooms to accommodate everyone. Many were there with a "Notice of Community Outreach" letter in hand from the Federal Emergency Management Agency informing them their property would be in the new flood plain.

The maps are still preliminary and have not taken effect, and an appeal process will open between this winter and next spring for landowners that think they have been incorrectly included in a flood zone.

"You have time in the process. We're just in the halfway phase, so it's like halftime," said Julius Lockhart, a flood plain management specialist for FEMA.

FEMA began updating Frederick County's maps in April 2014, and Tuesday's outreach meeting was phase five of nine in the process. Usually, the meeting is a gathering of community leaders, elected officials and planning or permitting staff, but it turned into a question-and-answer session for many residents whose homes or land could enter the flood plain.

"It just kind of happened that way," said Heather Davis-Jenkins, a mitigation specialist for FEMA Region 3, where Frederick County is located. "They decided it was an opportunity, while we were here, to have the community come see us."

FEMA would generally host an open house and have staff equipped with computers to answer residents' specific questions rather than try to address individual concerns at a large forum, she said. However, the open house follows the appeals process when residents can challenge the new maps, according to a timeline distributed by FEMA on Tuesday.

An estimated 668 new structures will be added to the flood plain under the new flood maps and 1,580 other structures will be removed, according to FEMA. In all, the agency estimates there are more than 173,000 structures in Frederick County, which means about 1.7 percent of the population is in the preliminary high-hazard flood area.

"There's obviously impacts countywide -- a lot of structures being removed from the flood plain, some structures coming into the flood plain," said Craig Thomas, project manager for the Baltimore District of the Army Corps of Engineers, which helped map Frederick County.

Flat Run in Emmitsburg is one area where there was a significant increase in the 100-year flood elevation, Thomas said.

The maps chart elevation to determine the flood plains of a 100-year flood event, which is a flood that has a 1 in 100 chance of occurring in any given year.

The new maps use airborne Light Detecting and Ranging technology to map elevations, which increases the accuracy of flood studies from within 4 or 5 feet to within half a foot. They also use a version of flood-modeling software from the Army Corps of Engineers that is considered an industry standard.

The flood elevation for Flat Run increased because the cubic feet per second of water expected in the area nearly doubled from when it was mapped in the 1970s at approximately 2,800 cubic feet of water per second to 5,800 cubic feet of water per second today, Thomas said.

Certain areas near Thurmont and Ballenger Creek will also be significantly affected by the updated flood plain, he said.

The agency touted a positive, which is that all "Zone A" land will be updated to "Zone AE," which may lower the cost of flood insurance for those homeowners because the elevation of the property will be known.

But the new flood maps may also hurt property owners whose land is now crossed by the flood plain. The county can use "more restrictive" information to permit future projects before the maps take effect, Davis-Jenkins said. But landowners whose property will no longer be in the flood plain -- after the maps are in place -- are still required to continue as if they were in the flood plain until the new maps are approved.

FEMA anticipates finalizing the new maps in 2020, Davis-Jenkins said.

Flood insurance

Updating the flood maps in Frederick County is important because it dictates who is required to have flood insurance.

The process is one Diana Warner and her neighbors are familiar with, after they hired a private surveyor in 2010 to help them show the elevation of their land should exclude them from the flood plain when the maps were last redrawn in 2007. She and several neighbors were able to secure a "Letter of Map Amendment" from FEMA acknowledging they were outside the "Special Flood Hazard Area" and that the mandatory flood insurance requirement did not apply to them.

After more than an hour of presentations and public questions, Warner was able to ask if her map amendment was still valid.

FEMA has a list of amendments that it will continue to honor, Davis-Jenkins said. The list was available for review on Tuesday, and Warner's was among them. It was a relief, she said.

"It's one, expensive," Warner said. "Two, it's like if my husband and I try to sell my house ... I don't want people to say, 'Oh, this is a nice house, but it's in the flood plain.'"

If a flood plain touches a property -- even if it doesn't touch a structure -- the bank that services the mortgage can require the homeowner to purchase insurance. That's what George Brigham found out last year when he was told he needed to buy flood insurance on the 200-year-old house he purchased 42 years ago to restore and live in.

He brought pictures of the worst flooding he ever saw on the property, which equated to little more than a puddle.

"I'm in no danger of being flooded out," Brigham said.

That line of reasoning has proved flawed in the past, however. Chris Colville, president of the YMCA of Frederick County, implored the crowd to consider buying flood insurance even if their home or business was outside FEMA's flood areas. In 2015, floodwater caused $1.6 million in damage to the YMCA, and this year, a second flood caused $1.4 million in damage, Colville said. The building is not in a flood zone.

"The damages that will occur are ungodly," she said.

But the price of flood insurance can also be high, which is what brought Webster Ambush on behalf of St. Paul AME Church to the meeting. Ambush serves on the board of trustees of the church, which may have a portion of land in the new flood plain.

St. Paul's is near Della Road and Ed Sears Road, and the intersection runs parallel to the Monocacy River. Daphne Weadon's family has lived on the land across from the church back to the time when slaves labored on the surrounding farms, she said. Her father, Louis Ambush, still lives there, and the family home is covered by the new flood plain.

The river and a nearby tributary do flood the roads. During Hurricane Agnes in 1972, Weadon -- then just 5 years old -- remembered the water coming into her family's trailer.

"It has come up, and this is how people describe it. ... It comes to the bank, or the trees, or the road," Weadon said of the floodwater.

As long as the water is not to the road, she knows she can get to church.

It could be a financial burden for St. Paul's or seniors on a fixed income to now have to purchase flood insurance policies in the newly mapped areas, she said. However, FEMA officials encouraged residents -- even those whose homes will be moving out of the flood plain -- to consider keeping or enrolling in flood insurance.

"Where it can rain, it can flood," Davis-Jenkins said.

Follow Samantha Hogan on Twitter: @SAHogan.

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