In Belleair Bluffs on Tuesday, the Florida League of Cities hosted the first in a series of meetings throughout the state to encourage city governments to invest more in flood mitigation programs that can reduce the risk of storm damage and lower federal flood premiums for local residents by an average of 20 percent.
Cities can increase those savings for nearly all residents who carry flood coverage by improving storm-water drainage, enhancing building codes, moving homes out of potentially hazardous areas and effectively communicating about storm danger and evacuation routes.
Ramping up these efforts will become more urgent in coming years as the Federal Emergency Management Agency looks to drive up premiums by 15 percent or more each year, with even higher costs for the kinds of older, low-lying properties that cover much of Pinellas County and parts of Hillsborough and Pasco counties, officials with Florida’s Division of Emergency Management say.
Coastal communities such as Indian Shores have gone to lengths to ensure residents get the best discounts possible through FEMA’s Community Rating System program. But a certain degree of peril still seems inevitable, especially on a narrow barrier island — if not from a storm, then from the cost of insuring against it.
“I built this according to code and I’m on the Intracoastal side, not on the Gulf; but in the real world, if we have a direct hit, we’re going to be a speed bump for the mainland,” said Mike Petruccelli, a member of the Indian Shores Town Council.
An extra foot of freeboard — the space above flood level — can save a policyholder 45 percent. But lifting a 50-year-old beach cottage to get it up to contemporary safety standards likely will prove cost prohibitive for many people.
“Any number of people over the decades built according to code when it wasn’t 10 feet and now you’re coming in and saying to them, ‘You’re below base flood elevation.’ Excuse me, when they purchased and built, they were not,” Petruccelli said, noting FEMA’s most recent flood map revision doubled and tripled insurance rates for many residents in his beach town.
With the National Flood Insurance Program facing insolvency after recent disasters such as hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, Congress has moved to increase rates across the nation, especially on older properties that have enjoyed lower rates set before contemporary flood mapping technology and building codes were in place.
The immediate sting of those rate hikes was lessened for owners of primary residences by last year’s Homeowner Flood Insurance Affordability Act, which capped individual increases at 18 percent per year.
“Have you noticed your rates will increase 15 to 18 percent a year and it doesn’t really say how many [years]?” said Danny Hinson, community rating system coordinator for the state’s Division of Emergency Management, at Tuesday’s meeting at Belleair Bluffs City Hall.
With rates set to keep increasing until they fully reflect a property’s true risk of flood – an undefined point – Florida Gov. Rick Scott has assigned Hinson and his team to travel the state to inform communities about what they can do to lessen the price of coverage for their residents.
FEMA’s Community Rating System program evaluates city and county governments on 19 safety activities, giving them a score of one to 10 based on a variety of flood mitigation measures.
Slightly less than half of the 450 Florida communities that receive coverage through the federal flood program take part in the CRS program, though many municipalities in the Tampa Bay area do participate, providing residents with anywhere from a five to 20 percent discount, Hinson said.
The cities of Tampa and St. Petersburg both are rated at six, giving residents a 20 percent discount.
Cities can obtain up to a 45 percent discount through the program, though only one California town has reached that level — essentially by moving all its homes out of the flood plain, Hinson said.
In built-out Pinellas County, it may prove hard to enhance the area’s safety in the most direct way – driving new construction higher above the flood level through building codes – though there are some federal grants available for enhancing an existing property’s flood safety.
In a catastrophic scenario, more aid is available for rebuilding after a major storm, Hinson said.
“If there’s a storm, whether it’s a hurricane or just flooding, some of them are going to get substantially damaged and they’re going to have to build them to the new standards,” he said.
Tools that are more readily available for local communities right now, such as drainage improvements, also can go a long way.
Miles from Tampa Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, Pinellas Park sits at a low elevation and its main thoroughfare, Park Boulevard, frequently used to flood during heavy storms.
The city’s community planning director, Robert Bray, remembers how bad conditions were when his family moved to Pinellas Park in the early 1970s.
“I didn’t realize how heavy rain it was until my dad was driving me down Park Boulevard and I saw a john boat puttering by,” he said.
After millions of dollars in infrastructure investment through the years, residents are getting a 20 percent discount on their flood coverage, and they don’t have to rely on boats to cross low spots in the road.
“I haven’t seen a boat on Park Boulevard except on a trailer being pulled along in 35 years,” Bray said.
For more information on flood mitigation through the CRS program in Florida, visit www.floridadisaster.org/mitigation/CRS
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