Sandy Springs residents lined up at City Hall on Nov. 9 to get a glimpse of how proposed changes to flood maps could affect their properties.
Sandy Springs held the first of two public meetings to review the changes, and invited representatives from City of Sandy Springs, Georgia Department of Natural Resources and FEMA. The next meeting will be held Dec. 7.
Collis Brown, program manager for Georgia DNR, said new studies have reevaluated the flood mapping of the upper Chattahoochee river basin.
“We have prepared preliminary maps and local governments are reviewing them and we’ve met with them,” Brown said. “Some of them have chosen to hold public open houses.”
For homeowners, it could mean the difference between having to buy flood insurance and affect resident’s ability to make additions to their homes, depending on whether the new maps show they are in a high-risk area.
Brown said in December a 90-day public appeal period will begin where the public can challenge the existing maps. If someone refutes it, they will have to provide their own data to dispute the claim, he said. He said if the Sandy Springs City Council does not adopt the new maps within six months after the review period, it will be removed from federal National Flood Insurance Program. If that happened, he said, residents with flood insurance policies would be unable to renew them.
The new maps will go into effect in Nov. 2012, Brown said.
Tom Shillock, a GIS specialist with Georgia DNR, said the current maps are more advanced than they were a few years ago.
“It’s a far more accurate level of detail,” he said.
Greg Anderson and Mary Mattson came to the meeting because they received a letter about their home on the Chattahoochee River, which is built 50 feet above the river level. They said the meeting put their minds at ease.
“The issue is, with so much pressure on the real estate market, people might view an extra $200 as something they can’t do,” Anderson said.
Bill Hooper, whose Sandy Springs home is on Riverside Drive near the river, said his new flood map status potentially creates a problem for future financing of his home.
“The advice given to me was to recruit an engineer and start the process for applying for a letter of map change,” he said.
A Letter of Map Change allows properties that are on naturally high ground in a flood area to be exempted from the federal flood insurance requirement. Hooper said it seemed an overly-complicated way of doing something fairly straightforward.
“It gave me a starting point,” he said of the meeting. “It will clearly state improvements are out of the flood zone, even though the land is in the flood zone.”
