Floodplains
It’s Thursday afternoon in Medford, do you know if you live in a flood plain?
Most of us may be able to answer that question with some level of certainty. For example, I live on top of one of the many hills in the city. It would take a Noah’s Ark level flood event for the waters from the Black River to lap at my doorstep.
However, for many other residences and businesses in the city, there is a lot less certainty. There is even more uncertainty because the Federal Emergency Management Agency recently completed new floodplain maps, expanding the areas that were previously considered to be in floodplains.
On Monday night members of the Medford Planning Commission gave their stamp of approval to a new floodplain zoning code, including the new maps.
The city council will get a chance to put their rubber stamp on the updated codes in January following a public hearing. The county is going through the same process with the floodplain code upgrades.
The code language is nothing to get overly excited about and is the model ordinance crafted by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources that meets all the legal mumbo jumbo required in such things.
If anyone gives it more than a cursory skimming I would be surprised.
The devil, as they say, is in the details and the biggest detail is in the maps. Maps which will ultimately dictate what you can do with your property, or rather how much more you will need to spend to do what you want to do with your property.
This is where the entire process falls short, since at no time have directly impacted property owners been told the status of their parcels is being changed.
For many, the only time they may find out they are in a floodplain is when they go to get a building permit and are denied, or are forced to go through an expensive process of proving that what they are doing won’t impact the flood elevations.
This is especially troublesome considering that if some part of your property is considered to be in the floodplain, then the entire property has to follow the floodplain restrictions and rules.
This can amount to tens of thousands of dollars of additional burden on those looking to develop along floodplain. Not to mention the potential property and homeowners insurance burden that might come with it.
In fairness, local boards and commissions are caught between a rock and a hard place on the issue. They were handed down the maps by FEMA and told they needed to adopt them, and the new ordinance, or not be able to be part of the federal flood insurance program. Which also means that if there is a catastrophic flood, federal assistance to help people rebuild or relocate might not be there.
So despite any individual misgivings people may have, elected officials are forced to rubber stamp the maps and code changes and move them through the system, much like so much debris floating down the river.
It would be nice if impacted property owners were actually informed that their parcels are not to be considered part of wetlands, rather than have to play guessing games or proactively search through maps to try and find out if they are impacted or not.
Mapping floodplains makes sense. It makes sense to have limits on the type and extent of development within established floodplains. From a practical sense, it makes sense that tax dollars not go to rebuilding structures and infrastructure washed away in flood waters every few years.
However, changing the maps and not telling people that the status of their property has changed or giving them an opportunity to challenge those changes before they are put into codes and laws seems more than a little like the government taking away someone’s ability to use their property without any due process involved.
Unfortunately, for most people they will never know until they go to get a building permit or have to file an insurance claim.
Individual property owners should at least be told the status of their properties is changing and potentially impacting its value and usability.
Brian Wilson is News Editor at The Star News.
