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County to review flood map changes

The move could get some homes recently added to high risk areas removed from proposed maps.

By SAUNDRA AMRHEIN
Published November 11, 2005

SUN CITY CENTER - If you don't know Dave Brown by name, he offers a helpful reminder.

"I'm the flood map guy," he tells fellow residents.

The one with a section of his Web site devoted to the topic. The one with video tapes of Hillsborough County Commission meetings. The one with a 3-D model he built with foam board showing community lakes and land elevation.

All of it, Brown hopes, led to what he and others consider a "major victory" last week when the County Commission voted to slow down the process of updating flood zone maps.

In doing so, commissioners asked staff members to review the maps so they can remove some of the roughly 25,000 homes recently added to high-risk flood zones.

What's likely to be removed? Properties where the flood zone touches the edge of the lot, but not the home itself.

Without the changes, Brown estimates that 1,500 homes in Sun City Center would be placed in the high-risk flood zone. Most of them by mistake, he says. A costly one.

Residents in those flood zones with government-backed mortgages might have to buy flood insurance, a hit of possibly more than $1,000 a year. Others could face a loss of thousands of dollars in the sales price on their homes.

"I found that the maps were so bad in Sun City Center, and I think they are bad all over the county," said Brown, who has been serving on a citizen's advisory panel on the flood map changes.

Almost all of those Sun City Center residents added to the map have property near a lake, he said. But the houses sit up high enough so that the foundations would never be touched by floodwater.

The maps, produced by the Federal Emergency Management Agency using county data, did not take land elevation into account, Brown said.

"They didn't follow the curves of the land," he said.

Brown wants planners to use an elevation map provided by the Southwest Florida Water Management District to correct mistakes in the new maps.

The models for the FEMA maps did consider land elevation, said Eugene Henry, hazard mitigation manager for Hillsborough County.

But he acknowledged that mistakes could have been made. Planners will use the Swiftmud elevation map and other sources to verify or correct the hazardous flood zones, he said.

The issue started about four years ago when the county partnered with FEMA to update the flood zone maps. The revisions are part of a national effort to bring flood maps up to date.

While parts of Hillsborough County's maps were revised 13 years ago, other maps are 25 years old, Henry said. Meanwhile, residential and commercial growth has drastically changed Hillsborough's terrain and rainwater flow.

"We have lots of risks in Hillsborough County," Henry said.

Even zones that aren't marked as high risk got flooding during last year's hurricanes, he said.

"If our folks are more educated about where these areas are, they can make a better decision about how to protect their property and themselves," Henry said.

FEMA released Hillsborough's updated maps several weeks ago and gave the county a year to sign off on them before they become official.

The county planned to send out notices to property owners and hold public hearings on the maps. Then, residents could appeal their parcel's placement in the flood zones. That appeals period was supposed to run from Dec. 1 to Feb. 28.

But after last week's commission meeting, county officials said they hoped to delay the process to allow more time to meet with residents and make changes.

Instead of holding four public meetings as originally planned, the county will hold eight regional meetings and another 14 smaller meetings targeting population centers such as Sun City Center.

If the county decides to remove people from the maps at those meetings, residents won't need to go through a costly appeals process.

"I believe when this map hits our community, there's going to be shock, there's going to be panic," Commissioner Jim Norman said at the Nov. 2 meeting where he asked for a delay.

If the county does not remove a property owner from the map now, residents might have to pay hundreds of dollars for a land survey to formally contest their flood zone designation later.

Some residents say that's not fair.

"They say I'm in a flood plain that's never flooded," said Don Wagner, whose back yard slopes sharply down about 7 feet before reaching one of Sun City Center's lakes. "Why should I have to pay to prove (it's not)?"

"I smell a rat," Wagner added. "Someone's looking to make money here."

Saundra Amrhein can be reached at 661-2441 or at amrhein@sptimes.com

Residents can view the flood maps at www.hillsboroughcounty.org and click on Flood Map Update on the right. Or residents can check out Dave Brown's Web site www.suncitydave.info and click on Flood Plain Information.

[Last modified November 10, 2005, 09:34:06]