Millions could face huge flood insurance bills from levee map

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Faced with warnings that scores of cities nationwide are at risk for serious failures of the levees protecting them, hundreds of communities are scrambling to inspect and upgrade their flood defenses.

They are doing so not only to protect residents and businesses from inundation, but also to save them from what could be huge flood insurance bills.

Millions of U.S. homeowners could be forced to buy flood insurance policies, which can top $2,000 a year for an average home, as a result of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's efforts to redraw flood maps for most of the nation.

The problem is this: Unless a community's levees are certified by engineers as sound, they are not deemed to provide minimal protection against floods. As a result, under federal regulations, residents and businesses behind the levees would be treated as though there was no protection at all.

And that means owners could be forced to buy flood insurance at double -- or higher -- the rates charged for areas where levees are rated capable of holding back a 100-year flood.

The crackdown, which began long before the recent Midwest floods, reflects the government's new skepticism about levees, born in the wake of the devastation that befell New Orleans when levees broke in more than 50 spots during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

A Scripps Howard News Service review of data from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and FEMA shows that hundreds of levees must be certified as sound over the next few years in order to be registered on government flood maps that are being updated, in many places, for the first time in decades.

FEMA records show that of more than 2,400 counties where flood plains are being redrawn, nearly 1 in 5 projects are behind schedule. The cause, most often, is uncertainty or disputes over the adequacy of levees.

Nearly 20 million people live in the affected counties, jurisdictions that in most cases are considered by FEMA to face the highest flood risks in the nation.

Almost no one disputes that FEMA's $1 billion effort to bring flood hazard maps into the digital age is needed to more accurately reflect the threats property owners face. In many communities where the work is already complete, as many properties were moved out of flood zones as were moved in.

Although FEMA is best known for coordinating disaster relief, the agency also runs the National Flood Insurance Program, which makes federally-backed coverage against flood damage available to homeowners, renters and businesses through private insurance companies in more than 20,000 communities. Standard homeowner policies do not cover flood damage.

But to be included in the program, a community must have FEMA-approved maps showing its flood risks and its plans to reduce those threats -- including in areas that are protected by levees.

Proving that a levee is up to the standard -- that is, capable of preventing a flood than has a 1 percent chance of happening in any given year, plus a buffer of an extra 3 feet in height -- has already produced a torrent of problems for officials and property owners.

Particularly hard hit are places protected by any of the 122 levee systems declared deficient by the Corps in late 2006.

In almost every one of these several hundred communities, correcting or upgrading levees carries a price tag of millions of dollars. Even gaining certification of a levee with no defects can cost hundreds of thousand of dollars.

Adding to the difficulty are FEMA's tight deadlines for proving levees can hold back water as claimed. The constraints have civic leaders and some members of Congress crying foul.

But David Maurstad, the flood insurance administrator for FEMA, told Congress in a recent hearing that "a major part of our responsibility involves examining how structures designed to contain floodwaters, such as levees, actually work and whether they will perform the way they're expected to."

Local and regional leaders -- from the Sacramento River Delta of California to the Illinois shore of the Mississippi River -- say they've been caught in costly bureaucratic crossfire over levees they had assumed were adequate.

"Like FEMA, we absolutely believe that we have an important responsibility to make our citizens aware of flood risks,'' said Les Sterman, executive director of the East-West Gateway Council of Governments serving the St. Louis region on both banks of the Mississippi.

"At the same time, we have to work in a responsible way to reduce those risks. We don't ever want to create a situation where well-intended government action is creating a hardship every bit as threatening as the acts of God we want to protect against,'' Sterman said.

He says that's just what is happening in the American Bottoms region of Illinois around East St. Louis. There, the Corps has determined that none of five levee systems constraining the Mississippi from Alton to Columbia are strong enough to withstand a 100-year flood, although they held up, under constant vigilance, during the most recent flooding along the river.

The Corps' decision means that in a little more than three years local authorities must repair and recertify the levees or 150,000 residents and 4,000 businesses will find themselves placed in a flood hazard zone and required to buy federal flood insurance.

Although the Corps historically has had a part in the design and construction of most levees around the nation, the agency itself actually operates and maintains only a few hundred levees. It also inspects only about 2,000 that are part of a special federal rehabilitation and repair program.

It was from those 2,000 levees that the first-of-its kind report in 2006 identified 122 with problems, including those around East St. Louis.

Congress last year also directed the Corps to inventory all 20,000 to 30,000 levees believed to dot the country in a bid to better understand flood risks. That task is expected to take about six years, with the results eventually used to update flood maps.

Already, the Corps' evaluation of 13,000 miles of levees for the 2006 report reflects changes in attitudes about floodwalls since Katrina. In the past, inspectors largely assumed that levees would work as designed.

"Our new system uses right up front what we call the identification of the potential failure mode. How can this thing fail?'' said Eric Halpin, the Corps' special assistant for dam and levee safety.

.After Katrina, when pumping stations were abandoned or failed as generators ran out of fuel and when waves overtopped some sections for hours before officials realized the threat, the Corps is putting greater emphasis on levees working with little or no human intervention.

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Officials in the Sacramento, Calif. delta are also faced with new Corps doubts about the levees there.

The region is protected by thousands of miles of earthen levees that inspectors in many spots found undermined by tree roots, rodent burrows and frequent leaks through mushy soil.

At the center of the flap is the Natomas section of Sacramento, a natural basin that contains the city's airport and the Arco Arena, home court of the Sacramento Kings NBA franchise, as well as some 70,000 residents.

A committee of experts commissioned by the state to study the levee system concluded recently that Sacramento faces a greater risk of flooding than any other major city in the country, even New Orleans.

City officials say the Corps' assessment and FEMA's year-end deadline to declare Natomas a flood hazard zone threatens to cripple development in the fastest-growing neighborhood and gives no credit for efforts being made to fix the levees -- work that's not going to be completed until at least 2010.

The strength of levees is being called into question in areas both wet and more typically dry.

Just five years ago, Grand Rapids, Mich., completed a 17-year, $12.4 million project to raise floodwalls along the Grand River to 1 foot higher than the projected 100-year flood level, FEMA's standard until 2006.

Raising the walls another 2 feet carries a price tag of $9.2 million. But without the change, the new flood maps for the city and surrounding Kent County would put about 6,100 homes and businesses in the flood zone and required to carry flood insurance.

"FEMA should discard its 'all-or-nothing' policy on levee certification and should take existing flood protection into consideration when revising the maps and calculating flood risk,'' said Rep. Vernon Ehlers, R-Mich.

At Dodge City, Kan., the Arkansas River is a dry gulch most of the time. Dirt levees built after a major 1965 flood haven't been challenged by high water in more than a decade and engineers haven't looked at them since 1995.

But low-lying land along the river could still flood, prompting FEMA to designate several hundred properties under the flood hazard insurance requirement unless the city has the dikes recertified, at an estimated cost of $250,000.

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Frustrating as recertifying levees may be, many flood prevention experts say FEMA's standards are still too lenient.

For the most part, the government's flood probabilities and river forecasts are based on calculations of what happened in the past, taking little or no account of changes in climate, land use or even the impact of other navigation and flood control structures along a river, said Nicholas Pinter, a professor of geology at Southern Illinois University and a specialist in flood modeling.

"They talk about the 100 year, the 500 year flood. But the Upper Mississippi (basin) has seen four events that were at or above the supposed 100-year flood level in the past 35 years. That's a contradiction in terms,'' Pinter said.

"On the one hand, it's good that we have all the federal agencies working hand in hand with the same criteria for levees and flood protection,'' said Robert Galloway, a professor of engineering at the University of Maryland who has worked on levee issues for decades.

"But I'm worried that the use of the 100-year flood standard will give a lot of people a false sense of security, particularly in urban areas. Everyone's cheering that New Orleans will have 100-year flood protection by 2011, but that's probably not enough to defend against another Katrina and certainly not a stronger storm."

E-mail Lee Bowman of Scripps Howard News Service at bowmanl(at)shns.com.

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)