Criticism of flood maps not subsiding

The subject could be kind of dry, if it wasn't about Pinellas County getting all wet.

Tuesday is the last day to object to the Federal Emergency Management Agency's new flood maps, used for everything from setting flood insurance rates to drawing evacuation zones.

The maps, the first new ones for Pinellas County in 20 years, were delayed for five years as FEMA wrangled with Pinellas County over topics such as wave setup and storm-surge models. Now, as FEMA prepares to close its books on Pinellas, it is touting these maps as more accurate and technologically up-to-date than the ones it produced in 1982.

But people who followed the project closely, including a University of Florida professor hired by the county to review FEMA's work, have a different view of FEMA's maps.

They use words like scientifically indefensible. Crude technology. And, according to one coastal geologist, "total baloney."

"We're using data that we know is wrong," Mike Nadeau, a building official in Redington Shores, told a FEMA official who came to town to discuss the new maps.

"Listen to me," replied Doug Bellomo, the FEMA project engineer. "We're always going to be using data that we know is wrong. What I would argue is, we've got a vastly improved product from what we had in the '80s."

Critics charged that FEMA's maps are based on a hurricane that is unlikely to ever hit Pinellas County. They said the agency did not consider Pinellas County's shallow coast or the fact that nearly all storms approach from the southwest, rather than directly from the west as FEMA's models suppose. Those two factors could change or even diminish a hurricane's impact on the county.

Pinellas County is ending its fight with FEMA, partly because the federal agency has agreed to study Pinellas again if it ever adopts new technology.

But the people who have followed the process on the county's behalf -- people who understand terms like "wind wave model" and bathymetry, measuring the water depth -- are concerned that the maps do not match reality.

Dr. Y. Peter Sheng, a coastal engineering professor at UF, was hired by Pinellas County to counter FEMA's maps with his more modern model. He calls some of FEMA's work "back-of-the-envelope calculations."

"You try to deal with them on a scientific level, and they say, 'oh, the National Academy of Science recommended this,' " Sheng said of his dealings with FEMA officials. "But that recommendation was done more than 20 years ago. If you go back to those people, I am sure they would not agree. They would say, 'those are old. We never said that technology would be valid forever.' "

Bellomo, of FEMA, pointed to two strengths in the new maps: First, thanks to Pinellas County's decision to spend more than $1-million using lasers to map the county's topography from an airplane, the federal agency had more accurate elevation figures to use in this study. FEMA also converted the maps to a digital format to make them easier for local officials to read and use.

But the technology used to predict how a storm would affect coastal Pinellas is rooted in the 1970s, the agency admitted. Bellomo said FEMA did preliminary tests to determine whether the new methods would produce different results than the old.

"The difference would not be great enough to justify a huge expenditure of funding to duplicate it," Bellomo said.

President Bush has proposed $300-million to update FEMA flood hazard maps nationwide. In some cases, the money would be used to convert the maps to a digital format, like what was done in Pinellas, but FEMA also will study new technologies.

Still, Bellomo isn't convinced that more money and fresher science will radically change FEMA's assessment of how the long-awaited storm of the century would impact Pinellas. He said he thinks the agency's predictions are accurate, if old-fashioned.

Bellomo suggested Pinellas should not be overconfident about its history of avoiding major storms, considering how the county dangles off the coast of West Florida.

Said Bellomo: "Consider yourself lucky."

For more information

Copies of the proposed FEMA maps are available at city and town halls throughout the county, or through the county administrator's office, 315 Court St. in Clearwater. For information about Flood Insurance Rate Maps, visit www.fema.gov. For questions about the maps, call toll-free 1-877-336-2627 (1-877-FEMAMAP). For questions about FEMA's National Flood Insurance Program, call toll-free 1-800-638-6620.

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