UPPER LAKE — Many Upper Lake homeowners may have to buy flood insurance next year, if they have a federally backed loan and live in an area surrounded by a system of levees about to be under careful state and federal scrutiny.
Not to be confused with the Middle Creek Flood Damage Reduction and Ecosystem Restoration project area, this 11.1-mile levee system encompasses much of Upper Lake to the north of the reclamation area and is operated and maintained by the Lake County Watershed Protection District.
The levee system is about to be remapped on the Federal Emergency Management Agency”s (FEMA) Flood Insurance Rate Maps (FIRM). FEMA operates on the assumption that none of the levees provide 100-year flood protection, said county Water Resources Engineer Tom Smythe, and will show the homes they protect to be in a floodplain on its FIRM maps.
Mortgage companies must require flood insurance for mortgaged homes that in a mapped floodplain through the National Flood Insurance Program. The average cost of flood insurance in Lake County is $500 per year.
FEMA”s Web site has a tool for checking to see if a particular residence is in a Special Flood Hazard Area on its FIRM maps. Currently, any residence in the area protected by the levees in question would show as having a 100-year level of protection.
However, said Smythe, that is not true.
“We know that certain areas will not meet the specifications,” said Smythe. He pointed to a levee along Scotts Creek near Highway 29 that was designed to protect from a 50-year flood event. It overtopped in Jan. 1995 and has needed sandbagging twice since then.
The levees were built in 1958 by the US Army Corps of Engineers, before FEMA”s levee criteria were adopted in the mid-80s. “The Corps” design criteria does not always meet FEMA”s levee criteria,” said Smythe.
The level of a 100-year flood is determined by statistics developed from monitoring equipment that measures how much water flows through a given area during several years, Smythe explained.
The levees which protect Upper Lake, including those along Middle Creek and Clover Creek north of Upper Lake, were designed to provide 200-year flood protection, meaning that they would stand up to a flood event that has a 0.4 percent chance of occurring in any given year. The rest vary between 100- and 50-year flood protection.
The California Department of Water Resources (CDWR) will begin a five-year process this summer of levee certification for all of its 1,300 miles of project levees in rural areas, including the system in Upper Lake. The result may or may not mean relief for the area”s homeowners, depending on whether the CDWR”s findings show the levees provide 100-year flood protection.
Smythe estimated that it would cost several million dollars to bring all the levees up to the 100-year flood protection standard. CDWR estimated that to bring its 1,650 miles of state project levees up to standard, including the ones in Upper Lake, it would cost in excess of $40 million, said Smythe.
The Lake County Board of Supervisors is expecting a letter from FEMA explaining its intention to remap. In the interim, the BOS appointed a committee to ask pertinent questions concerning the next steps in the process and what the county”s options are. Supervisors Denise Rushing and Anthony Farrington volunteered; Smythe will also participate along with Water Resources Director Bob Lossius and Deputy Director Pam Francis.
Smythe said the committee would need to have talks with both FEMA and CDWR to find out what their options are as FEMA moves forward with its remapping process, and what the next steps are.
FEMA has said it will hold two public meetings, the first in February, to inform the public, lay out options and hear public input. The second, scheduled for April, will start a 90-day period for the county to recertify the levees. The cost to certify the levees, said Smythe, would be around $1 million.
Contact Tiffany Revelle at trevelle@record-bee.com.
