By KATHY HAGEMAN
Dickinson County public information coordinator
The new Dickinson County flood plain maps are on hold – again.
County staff were expecting to receive a letter of final determination in July to be issued in early August from the Kansas Division of Water Resources (KDWR) and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Region 7.
However, state and federal officials notified the county that additional errors had been discovered in the maps that affect elevation data in some areas inside and outside the city limits of various Dickinson County cities.
“Unfortunately, we will not be getting the letter of final determination because they found errors again - for the third time,” said Dickinson County Planning and Zoning Director Tim Hamilton. “It’s believed these elevations were primarily clerical errors.”
Those errors will delay the process a year, Hamilton said, meaning the old maps will remain in place.
The delay creates even more headache for county residents who have been waiting for the new maps to be effective so they can buy or sell property, Hamilton explained. Thanks to changes in technology, new data now is available.
“These maps have significantly shrunk quite a bit of the flood plain that’s currently being enforced,” Hamilton said. “A lot of people have been waiting to either sell the properties or do some construction based on the status of those maps. Now, some of those projects and sales transactions are in limbo until this happens.
“I know it’s really difficult for the general public, but we’re as frustrated as they are,” Hamilton continued. “This is the third time this has happened and every time it occurs it keeps extending it further out.”
While the errors are fairly easily corrected, the year delay in releasing the maps is due to the lengthy public review process.
After the corrections are made, each paper map will be made into a panel. Even though the corrections affect only a few of the panels, FEMA has to go through the due process of notification, publication and meetings to inform the public.
“They have certain standards at the state and federal level they have to meet, so that basically starts the preliminary process all over again,” Hamilton said.
Last minute
County Administrator Brad Homman told commissioners during their Aug. 4 work session that the county was notified the maps had been put on hold in “the final stretch of the race, in the final quarter heading into overtime.”
“At the last minute, FEMA said there are 12 areas of concern that need to be addressed,” Homman said. “It appears to me these are workmanship issues. Ten of the errors are elevation adjustments – six inches here, a foot there, where they were labeled wrong. But the elevations of actual flood water won’t change.”
Creating the new panels involves making the changes, then laying them on a table and matching up all the various properties.
“The earth is curved, there’s different elevations and a couple places those boundary lines didn’t match up like they should,” Homman said. “In my opinion, it’s due to poor workmanship by the contractor. But these errors create another 90-day protest period after the new maps are done, then they have to be published. Then the public is given the chance to look at them again, then there’s a public hearing and it takes another year to get all that done.”
Economic growth adversely affected
The newest delay is holding up a number of economic development opportunities in the county, Homman said.
“This is becoming very expensive for the county as a whole,” Homman said. “We have developers, we have homeowners, we have banks that are waiting to finance and lend money, but they can’t do it on properties that are dependent on how these maps are going to come out.”
A number of places in Solomon, Chapman and even Abilene are going to be positively affected by the new maps.
“If I’m in the flood plain under the old map and I’m going to be out of it in the new map, that’s going to make a big difference on what my mortgage is going to be,” Homman said. “And if I want to build a new house, nobody is going to lend if it’s in the flood plain, but it’s a different story if it’s out.
The newest delay is particular frustrating since Dickinson County is experiencing economic growth.
“It wouldn’t be a big deal if we were in the middle of a recession or a period like we went through where there wasn’t a lot of building, but we’ve come out of that, where people want to build and there’s not enough contractors to go around,” Homman said. “We’re in a situation where there’s a lot of potential and much of it won’t happen because we’re in a holding pattern.”