FEMA updates local officials on mapping process

The Federal Emergency Management Agency told various communities’ leaders last month that its process to determine how unaccredited levees are valued in National Flood Insurance Program would be “collaborative, flexible and feasible,” according to a local levee director.

North Lafourche Conservation, Levee and Drainage District Executive Director Dwayne Bourgeois called the revelation “a major step in the right direction,” after meeting with FEMA and about 20 other community representatives from across the country July 26 in Washington D.C.

“If FEMA incorporates at least the major points made at this meeting into their revised policy, I am cautiously optimistic that the revised policy will be provided for reasonable and due consideration of our non-accredited levees in the future revised [flood maps],” Bourgeois said.

The meeting was absent specific technical changes to the NFIP; instead, FEMA revealed some of the guiding principles it will use when developing the new process.

FEMA suggested the creation of local levee advisory committees that would work with the agency in shaping the policy. The agency also said it would be flexible so that credible maps are produced and realistic in terms of the considering the anticipated cost on community to meet corps standards, according to Bourgeois.

“They have also introduced the word ‘reach’ into their [Flood Insurance Study] vernacular indicating that they will consider levees not just in their entirety; but, over a defined reach or piece of levee,” Bourgeois said. “This indicates a willingness to consider mapping in finer detail.”

FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate announced in March the agency would discontinue its “without levee” policy that ignored unaccredited levees in flood map projections.

By ignoring levees that did not meet U.S. Army Corps of Engineers standards, FEMA was unrealistic in gauging flood risk in Lafourche, which would lead to higher elevation requirements than necessary for new structures, local officials argued before the policy was withdrawn.

FEMA is withholding elevation directives until the reformed policy is complete.