Officials concerned as FEMA mulls flood maps

St. Charles officials are concerned about flooding, but in a different way. They are more concerned about what areas the federal government thinks will flood than they are about actual flooding.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is still deciding what areas its flood insurance rate maps will show risk of flooding. Preliminary maps show some areas at risk of flooding by Cole and Boschert creeks, including parts of such major employment centers as Elm Street Business Park and Fountain Lakes Commerce Center, located along Missouri Highway 370.

If FEMA finalizes the maps it will mean some companies will have to buy flood insurance, prevent some companies from expanding and make it less likely companies will locate in these areas, according to local officials.

Keith Schneider, a commercial real estate broker with Cassidy Turley, said he has a client who is considering locating a large facility on a site in the Elm Street Business Park. If FEMA decides the property could flood, “even if the client is given the land for free it almost eliminates that site” because of the amount of fill needed to elevate the site, he said.

JPC Controls and Craftsmen Industries, two of the city’s longtime employers, could be impacted by FEMA’s decision, said David Gibson, the city’s planning manager. Calls to the owners of both companies were not returned.

Kris Weidenbenner, president of New Frontier Bank, said if a company is located in an area FEMA deems to be at risk, and that company had a loan at his bank, the bank would no choice but to require the business to get flood insurance, which can get expensive.

New Frontier has a branch in the 3700 block of Elm Street, but that building is elevated and not at risk, Weidenbenner said. However, the bank foreclosed on a property that could be impacted by FEMA’s final decision. “We’re going to have an issue trying to sell that property,” he said.

In the meantime, it appears that all decisions regarding development and expansion in the affected areas have been put on hold until FEMA issues its final maps.

“The more I hear about it, the worse it sounds,” Geoff Orf, a commercial real estate broker and chairman of the city’s Economic Development Commission, said about FEMA’s preliminary maps. “We need to have time to implement a solution.”

City Council President Mike Kling-hammer agrees. He said the city has to make sure FEMA understands the importance of delaying its final approval of the maps.

St. Charles is going to be proactive on this matter, Gibson said. He said the city will send in its appeal of FEMA’s maps in late May even though the agency has not made a final determination and may not do so for some time. The city has had engineering studies done that show “some discrepancies” with FEMA’s maps, he said.

The city will not appeal all the maps covering St. Charles, according to Gibson. For example, one preliminary map shows parts of the Frenchtown district at risk of flooding by the Missouri River. “There’s nothing at this point we can do to fight that,” he said.

One reason FEMA appears to be taking its time on this matter, according to local officials, is that the agency is considering a policy change. Currently, if an area is protected by an unaccredited levee FEMA deems that area to have no protection at all. If the policy change occurs, the FEMA would deem the area as protected—at least to some degree. Such a change in policy would benefit St. Charles, Gibson said.

When asked about this policy and possible changes to it, FEMA spokeswoman Rachel Racusen emailed this statement:

“FEMA has been engaged in a comprehensive review of its National Flood Insurance Program to identify reforms that will enable us to better address flood risks. A part of that review has included working with members of Congress and other stakeholders regarding FEMA’s approach to mapping flood risk with respect to levees. We have determined that an improved approach will enable FEMA to provide that more accurately reflect the flood risk experienced by families living behind levees, but it will take us some time to finalize a new approach. In the meantime, FEMA is withholding finalizing flood maps for communities with levees who could be impacted by a new approach that more closely reflects the flood risk in the area.”

About FEMA’s statement Gibson said, “That’s the same thing I’ve been getting” from FEMA. “I really don’t know what to tell anybody at this point.”