Commissioners adopt floodplain ordinance
The Warren County Commissioners have adopted a revised floodplain ordinance just weeks before new federal floodplain maps become effective.
The county’s Planning and Zoning office oversees floodplain administration for the 12 municipalities that are covered under the county’s zoning ordinance.
Zoning Officer Michael Lyon told the Commissioners during a public hearing held on Wednesday that the ordinance is being revised to include “what is required by FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency).”
Lyon said that the ordinance needed to be approved by March 21 or the potential exists for the residents of the 12 municipalities under the ordinance to lose their flood insurance.
Lyon explained that the county worked with the state Department of Community and Economic Development to make the revisions.
“They hired a floodplain expert,” Lyon said. “Warren County has a little different set up as far as zoning goes. Most municipalities had to adopt their own (ordinance). (DCED is) allowing us to do that for the 12.”
The maps the department currently utilizes range in age from 1976 to 1996. With technology advances, the new maps are much more specific, meaning some parcels that weren’t in a flood plain before are in the proposed maps now, and vice versa.
With the vast number of parcels in the zoned municipalities it is unclear how many were added to flood plains and how many were removed but county officials sent letters in late 2015 to the owners of the 3,104 parcels in the zoned municipalities that are now in the flood plain.
Whether you’ll need insurance if your property is in the flood plain but not the structure is not clearly defined and is usually up to whoever the lender is on your mortgage.
And if you have flood insurance now, expect your premium to jump significantly, largely due to hurricanes Katrina and Sandy that have wiped out the National Flood Insurance Program’s ability to continue to subsidize policies.
Later in the meeting on Wednesday, the commissioners unanimously approved the changes to the ordinance.
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