Insurance Space

The federal agency charged with minimizing flood damage is drawing up new flood insurance maps for Plymouth and Bristol counties, a region where coastal flooding is a fact of life for many.

State officials in charge of coordinating Federal Emergency Management Agency map-making activities with local communities are holding six meetings next week, four of them in regional towns, to discuss the new maps and get local comment on them.

Thousands of residents in this area live in floodplains, areas defined by the government as having a 1 percent chance of a flood in any given year. But that figure can be misleading: These areas have a 26 percent chance of flooding over the life of a 30-year mortgage, officials say.

Floodplain maps of coastal and riverfront locations define the areas likely to be covered by a serious flood. They determine who needs flood insurance, how much property owners will pay, and help those who may not be required to have flood insurance decide whether it would make sense to buy it anyway.

“It’s recommended that you review your risk,” said Richard Zingarelli of the state’s Flood Hazard Management Program. “Floods don’t just occur in mapped flood zones.”

The new maps are still preliminary, Zingarelli said. Part of the reason for next week’s community meetings is to seek comments on the accuracy of street names and other information on the maps and other flooding issues that may not be reflected on them.

The maps are especially important for communities with a lot of coastal and riverfront area – and a lot of insurance and other regulatory questions. The maps drive regulatory considerations, including the federal requirement that mortgage lenders make sure borrowers whose homes are located in floodplains purchase flood insurance. And since the new maps are derived from new data in some communities, some properties will find themselves moved into floodplains or shifted from one subzone to another.

Hull, a peninsula town with a history of flooding, has already put the preliminary maps on its website.

“Everybody but the people on top of the hills is in a flood zone,” said Anne Herbst, the town’s conservation administrator. With a population of only 11,000, Hull has the third largest number of flood insurance policies in the state, 2,114.

The maps are also important in Hull, she said, because the last time new data were incorporated was 1982, and many residents were not confident of their accuracy. In producing the new maps, technicians performed wave-modeling analyses to predict the height of waves and their effects and measured the elevation of cross sections up and down the peninsula, she said.

“The maps will be a big improvement for accuracy,” Herbst said.

Coastal residents aren’t the only homeowners vulnerable to flooding. Duxbury town planner Christine Stickney said flood is a risk for residents living near rivers and streams in her town, including some areas that have never been studied by FEMA and don’t appear in floodplain maps.

New studies were also made in Hingham, Marion, Mattapoisett, and Wareham, according to the state.

The lack of “inland data for us is a big problem,” Stickney said, especially since that data drive regulatory considerations. Many communities require new construction to be built above the elevation likely to be covered by a serious flood, she said, and applications for repairs or additions trigger requirements such as moving furnaces above the first floor to protect them from floods.

Altogether, almost 50,000 flood insurance policies are in force in the state, a lot of them in Plymouth and Bristol counties. While information on the total number of people living in floodplains is not available, the number of policies in force doesn’t reflect the total number of homes in floodplains because owners who do not have mortgages are not required to hold policies.

All cities and towns in the GlobeSouth region are eligible for the national flood insurance program, a subsidized program created 40 years ago by the government to help spread the costs of disaster relief. In addition to Hull, the regional communities with the largest number of flood insurance policies are Quincy, 2,921; Wareham, 1,856; Scituate, 1,443; Marshfield, 1,374; Mattapoisett, 707; and Plymouth, 451.

Consistent with its reputation as one of the state’s most vulnerable coastal communities, Scituate, over a 30-year period, had the highest number of loss claims, 3,071, followed by Hull, 2,067; Marshfield, 1,253; and Quincy, 1,197.

While residents are welcome to attend any of next week’s meetings, three afternoon meetings are geared toward community officials and three evening meetings are geared toward the public.

FEMA will publish official notices, possibly by the end of the summer, seeking public comment on the maps for a 90-day period. It is expected to issue official new maps by summer of next year.

The first revisions in four years, the maps combine information from new studies performed in some communities with information from previous maps, Zingarelli said. New data could place some properties into a floodplain that were not in one before. Fewer changes are expected in communities in which older data is used.

Preliminary maps for individual communities will be available at the state’s meetings. Towns have also been given copies, and residents should contact local officials about how to see them.

The new maps provide a good occasion, officials said, to reconsider flood insurance because you can “grandfather” in rates at a lower level if the new map is about to move your property into a higher-risk area. More information on how to obtain flood insurance is provided by FEMA on its “FloodSmart” website, FloodSmart.gov.

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Tags: flood insurance