No Flood Plan = Higher Rates

Adam Lynch

Corps District Commander Col. Michael Wehr said last week that he wants the Levee Board and the Corps to agree on a Pearl River flood-control plan soon.

by Adam Lynch
October 7, 2009

Jackson insurance agent Hank Aiken warns that some home-owner insurance policies could triple in price if the Federal Emergency Management Agency changes local flood maps without the benefit of a final flood-control plan for the Pearl River. The Pearl experienced a 100-year flood in 1979, which inundated Jackson's fairground area and many spots in North Jackson and Flowood, causing more than $200 million in damage.

Aiken, whose business on Dunbarton Drive took on three feet of water during the 1970 Easter Flood, said some owners could end up with their homes moving out of low-cost "preferred" status and into a higher-risk flood category.

"If they change the flood maps, they'll redistribute some policy-holders into more expensive insurance zones," Aiken told the Jackson Free Press. "Someone who has a preferred policy, like a B or C Zone, which is considered low risk, may find their home in a high-risk A or X Zone if they refuse to certify the local levees. The average home owner with a preferred policy, may pay $300 a year, but if they go into an A zone, they could see their costs triple."

This fear could become reality soon. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Chief of Project Management Doug Kamien made clear to mayoral representatives on the Rankin-Hinds Pearl Flood and Drainage Control District Levee Board that if the Board and the Corps did not begin some version of a flood-control plan by February 2010, then the Corps would not certify the Pearl River Levee System.

"If we're in the middle of upgrading the levee system at that time, then we can say the system will be certified, and costs in that area will not be impacted," Kamien told the board.

The message was clear, however, that the Corps considers the clock ticking.

The Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, on behalf of FEMA, notified the city of Jackson and the Corps in January 2007 that it planned to modernize local maps to more accurately reflect the probability of flooding in the area. The following month, the city of Jackson put in a request to the Corps for levee certification.

If the Corps certifies the levees, then the Flood Insurance Rate Map will suffer no changes. Without certification, however, the new resulting map will reflect the area flooded from the 1979 flood without the benefit of levees.

Jackson Mayor Harvey Johnson Jr. said after the meeting that the Levee Board would have to move forward with a plan.

"We've got the information," Johnson said. "The only thing to do now is move ahead."

Moving ahead will likely mean an expansion of the present levee system, if the Corps has its way. The Levee Board is considering two alternatives to a Corps-endorsed levees-only plan, and both involve flooding the Pearl between Hinds and Rankin counties. One plan creates a 1,500-acre lake costing about $605 million, according to estimates. An even bigger lake plan, proposed by Jackson oilman John McGowan, consists of 4,133-acre lake containing numerous islands, which he claims would cost $400 million or less.

Kamien made clear Monday, however, that the Corps has no intention of recommending any lake plan, due to environmental concerns, because any lake plan will require more environmental mitigation than a simple levee system.

"The federal government has very strict guidelines in how we're going to proceed, and we're going to base our decisions on what's in the federal government's interest," Kamien told board members.

Levee Board attorney Trudy Allen disputed the Corps' interpretation of the federal government's reliance upon environmental impact, arguing that new federal legislation passed in 2007 softened the government's stance on the plan's environmental impact.

Allen argued that the Water Resources Development Act of 2007 exempted a local lake plan from some financing and environmental restraints, so long as the plan was recognized as a "locally preferred" option.

"(The law) doesn't say it needs to have the lowest environmental impact. It says it has to be environmentally acceptable," Allen said.

Kamien said, however, that all attempts to dam the river is still an act of damming of the river—what the Corps calls "impoundment"—and would require more environmental mitigation and expense than the levees-only plan: "We've studied the impoundment from the reservoir down to I-20. An impoundment is an impoundment is an impoundment."