Maps show non-existent flood plains

Mapping errors could wind up costing some Jackson County home and business owners hundreds of dollars. But efforts are underway to correct the problem.

Several longtime homeowners in northeast Jackson County have recently received letters from their mortgage holders, saying they need to buy flood insurance they’ve never had to purchase before. This news, with the potential to cost them hundreds of dollars more a year in premiums, set off a barrage of calls to city halls in Malone and Greenwood. Those are two of the main areas affected, but homeowners in other areas are also getting similar letters.

The cities turned to Rick Pettis, planning director for Melvin Engineering. He helps the municipalities in a number of their planning and development projects, and has previous experience as a flood zone administrator.

Pettis knew that the state had recently issued new flood maps, as part of its periodic update of such data. It had been 20 years since the last update. The county is divided into quadrants during the process, so several maps are created. The maps are used by state, federal and local governments to analyze their landscapes. Lending institutions also make use of them.

Pettis rolled the 66 Jackson County maps out on a table, and began to notice that things didn’t look right on several of them. They indicated that great bodies of water ran though the middle of Malone, and that another coursed through Greenwood. Those don’t actually exist.

Some homeowners who have never needed flood insurance before in Grand Ridge, Bascom, Cypress and Sneads may also be getting similar letters because of similar errors in their maps.

Pettis picked up the phone and called the Northwest Florida Water Management District. Something was very wrong, he told his contact there.

The district got in touch with the mapping contractor. Soon the error was confirmed, the likely cause identified, and corrective action is now under way. Data for the entire county is being reviewed and new maps will be issued where changes are needed. It is believed there are significant problems in 12 of the 66 maps, with most of the 12 concentrated in the northeast portion of the county.

The review and proposed corrections are almost complete; they’ll probably be finished by the end of this week. However, the official map replacements will take some time, because the corrections have to work their way through the official revision process. The Federal Emergency Management Agency must sign off on the changes.

Under agency rules, it could take up to 90 days once the maps are ready. However, the project is being “fast-tracked,” and should be approved much sooner than that, said water management district Senior Hydrologist Jerrick Saquibal.

The maps, adopted before the errors were discovered, were available to lending institutions once they became official. When the banks saw the maps showing that homes they financed were located in what was now identified as a flood hazard zone, they started sending the letters.

Saquibal and Pettis both advised that homeowners explain the situation to their lending institutions if they receive such correspondence.

Although the lender may still be obligated to demand the purchase of flood insurance, as long as the erroneous maps are in effect, the lender might be able to put the demand on hold until the new maps are in place.

If homeowners do have to go ahead and purchase the flood insurance, they might be able to work out a refund once the new maps are established.

Saquibal said it also might be possible to look into asking the district or the emergency management office for letters that could explain the situation to lenders. He added that he was only speculating about that possibility, and couldn’t guarantee such participation from the district or from emergency management.

Working in partnership with the Federal Emergency Management Administration on the project, the water management district had hired a contractor to create the maps some time ago.

Saquibal said the error was something that could have easily happened given the amount of data involved. The technology being used was new, the maps are much more detailed than the ones they replaced, and the contractor was juggling many elements when it put the new maps together.

It appears that the people working on the project failed to compare the aerial photos taken in those areas with existing data, which could have given them a more accurate picture of the hydrology in the affected areas. The data collected with aerial photos has limitations, Saquibal said, and without comparative data it could easily be misinterpreted. The contractor, he said, immediately went to work on the problem once it was discovered.

He also pointed out that the maps were available for review by the public before they were adopted. Various municipal governments signed off on them, with the errors in place.

Pettis said he got involved in trying to figure out the problem not only for the sake of homeowners. He was also concerned about the communities. He feared that businesses looking to locate in this region might automatically dismiss Malone and Greenwood as potential sites because the flawed maps indicate a significant danger of flooding in those areas.