Cities, Developers Upset Over Tough New Flood Maps

Federal officials have ordered six San Diego County communities to begin enforcing tough new flood maps that could lead to higher construction costs or building moratoriums in some areas of the county’s river valleys.

Intended to show land subject to flooding, the draft maps were sent to San Diego, Oceanside, Chula Vista, Escondido, Vista and Del Mar, and replace older maps prepared by San Diego County and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The new maps generally warn of wider and deeper flooding along the county’s major rivers than projected in earlier studies. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) regulations require developers to elevate new buildings above the predicted flood levels or to build major flood-control structures to protect urban areas.

The new maps, drawn by San Jose-based engineers George S. Nolte and Associates to FEMA specifications, show hundreds of roads, homes, businesses and industries lying in the path of 100-year floods--FEMA’s measuring stick for controlling growth in low-lying areas and thus limiting future flood losses.

The FEMA flood maps for the San Diego area appear to restrict further development or redevelopment in some of the county’s fast-growing areas. For example:

- The northern one-third of the city of Del Mar--developed with expensive homes and condominiums--would be under five feet of flood water from the San Dieguito River, according to a FEMA flood map. New homes built on vacant lots in the north beach area would have to be constructed on five-foot pilings, according to FEMA rules.

- Under the new maps, Vista’s long-discussed downtown redevelopment project lies in the path of shallow flooding from Buena Vista Creek. The minor overflow could increase costs and erode support for the proposed urban renewal project.

- The San Diego River in Mission Valley spreads across Interstate 8 and creates an island out of Mission Valley Shopping Center on 1983 FEMA maps. Recent city engineering maps of the river channel show expensive flood-control structures proposed to protect new development upstream of the Mission Valley and Fashion Valley centers.

- In Oceanside’s San Luis Rey River valley, the FEMA’s new maps show flood waters 2 and 3 feet deep in recently built housing tracts, and deeper still in low-lying industrial areas.

Although the federal maps are not final, cities have been ordered to begin enforcing them. But so far, the maps have been applied to only a few specific development proposals.

For example, at San Diego’s northwestern city limits, near the junction of Via de la Valle and Interstate 8, a proposed 243-room hotel is at a standstill because FEMA’s new maps show that the building must be elevated at least another five feet to meet the federal flood insurance program regulations.

A spokesman for the developers, Pelican Properties, said that engineers are exploring a plan to “flood-proof” the lower levels of the hotel--an option allowed for commercial buildings but not residential development.

Local flood-control engineers predict that property owners within the newly drawn flood-hazard areas will attempt to pressure local governments to protect their properties and to challenge the draft maps recently released by the FEMA.

FEMA trouble-shooter Ray Lenaburg, in a recent visit to San Diego and Oceanside, warned local city engineers that they must begin immediate enforcement of the new flood maps or face future liability if flood damage occurs.

The FEMA order irks city officials because they are required to enforce strict flood regulations that likely will be challenged and, in some cases, modified before they become final some time next year. The draft maps now are being checked by a Washington-based engineering firm, after which they will be subject to technical appeals by local governments before becoming final.

FEMA’s flood insurance program was created under 1968 legislation to turn a budget-draining program of disaster aid and public works into a more businesslike system of requiring at-risk property owners to purchase subsidized flood insurance to protect their properties.

Most San Diego area cities have joined the program and the others have applied for inclusion because, unless local governments participate, property owners are not eligible for insurance. Flood insurance generally is not available from private companies.

Under the FEMA program, cities and counties must agree to control building in the areas identified as flood-prone by the federal agency in return for continuing to receive federal aid for rebuilding of public roads and buildings damaged in floods.

Insurance is available to any resident or business within a member community at a premium of about $275 a year for a $185,000 building and $60,000 in contents.

FEMA officials acknowledge that only about 1.6 million property owners have taken out flood insurance, although it is required by most mortgage lenders for designated areas.

The sanctions under the federal law are so effective that San Diego-area city engineers are less concerned with the threat of the flooding than they are the immediate impact of the greatly expanded flood-hazard areas on new FEMA maps.

In these federal flood zone areas, new structures must be elevated at least a foot above the 100-year flood plain. Existing structures in a flood plain are still eligible for insurance, but the rates can be so high that few owners buy it and property values are reduced.

“You’ve ruined my whole damned day,” Oceanside city engineer Bud Herrell told FEMA’s Lenaburg after he learned last month that a number of city-approved housing tracts in the San Luis Rey Valley lie in areas prone to flooding under the new FEMA maps.

“You mean . . . what you’re saying to me is that I have to go out there to the front counter and face all those people asking me why I gave them bad information?” Herrell exploded as the facts of the new maps struck home.

Lenaburg, a civil engineer attached to FEMA’s San Francisco regional headquarters, tried to placate the Oceanside official. “You gave them the best available information you had at the time . . .,” Lenaburg began, but Herrell yelled:

“AND IT WAS WRONG!”

Herrell then lowered his head and shook it slowly as he asked rhetorically, “How do I explain it to them? How do I tell all those people who built out there in the valley that they are three feet under water?”

Herrell isn’t as concerned about the advent of FEMA’s 100-year flood as he is about the financial hardships the federal agency’s flood insurance program could place on local economic development. Under the FEMA regulations, new industry would have to protect against what he and most of his peers feel are unrealistically high flood levels.

While Herrell fears the new maps might cancel pending plans that will add income and jobs to the city, Lenaburg sees a bright side to the expanded flood-hazard zone along the San Luis Rey River.

The projections showing increased flood damage potential in the San Luis Rey River valley may tilt the cost-benefit ratio and push forward a stalled Corps of Engineers’ flood-control project, Lenaburg said. The $50-million channel project might prove much less costly than the still-to-be-computed property losses from FEMA’s 100-year flood in the valley, he said.

Local city engineers and planners who have had a chance to study the new FEMA maps agree that they could have significant impact on development plans. But whether the maps will result in severe cutbacks in river valley development or will lead to construction of miles of concrete flood channels to make the lowlands safe for development depends on local policy-makers, not the technical staff, they say.

Next in line for flood remapping are Los Angeles County cities along the Los Angeles River. Studies set to begin next year are expected to show that the concrete river flood channel through downtown Los Angeles and south through Long Beach is too small to contain 100-year floodwaters as projected by the FEMA. The overflow would inundate hundreds of acres of commercial and heavily-populated residential property, according to the agency.

Lenaburg, in recent meetings with city engineers in San Diego County, tried to soothe their concerns by pointing out: “What you have here doesn’t compare with L.A. Why, in Los Angeles, the L.A. River, the problems they have will affect 100,000 or so properties.”

But most local city engineers agree with Bob Cain, a San Diego city engineer: The idea of subsidized flood insurance is good, but the federal government’s application of it is not.

“Ultra-conservative” is Neal Wessel’s verdict of FEMA’s most recent flood maps with their increased flooding boundaries. Wessel, senior civil engineer in Vista, points out that, by overstating the flood hazard area, private engineers protect themselves against malpractice lawsuits that could arise if flood levels were underestimated.

Bob Nelson, Del Mar’s city manager, recently tried to break the news gently to his City Council in a briefing.

The maps show the entire San Dieguito valley flooded through town at depths 5 to 10 feet deeper than earlier, county-produced flood maps had indicated, extending flooding into Crest Canyon on the south and up Stevens Avenue on the north.

Nelson wasn’t concerned about the distant probability that the San Dieguito River would swell to its fullest and sweep “the flats”--the northern third of town--into the sea. He was worried about the costs to the community’s property owners in flood insurance premiums and lowered property values. He also knows that any future construction in northern Del Mar would have to be elevated five feet or more above existing housing pads to escape FEMA’s new flood level estimates.

Under FEMA’s new estimates, Del Mar’s public works yard would be under 8 feet of water; its fire station, 5 or 6. The town’s pride, the new Jimmy Durante Bridge linking the town with the state fairgrounds and built to replace a rickety wooden span weakened by previous floods, would be 5 feet under water.

In Vista, city engineer Wessel must explain to a City Council that narrowly approved a downtown redevelopment feasibility study last month that the slowly deteriorating commercial core of town will be under a foot or two of water if the hypothetical 100-year flood comes to pass--a factor which could add millions of dollars and miles of red tape to the renewal plans.

Developers of Vista’s newest and largest subdivision, Shadow Ridge Country Club, also face problems because of predicted flooding of roads and developable lowlands.

“We are walking a very fine line between keeping our city officials informed and keeping the public from panicking,” Wessel said.

San Diego city engineers do not have as many problems with the new flood maps because, except for the San Dieguito River at the city’s northern boundaries, flood channelization and flood-control measures already are in place in most flood-prone areas. New FEMA maps show only “fine tuning” of earlier ones.

Nearby, at the state-owned Del Mar Fairgrounds, the new FEMA map could cancel plans to build a new, larger grandstand for the Del Mar Race Track. Under the federal rules, the $24-million project would have to be elevated 5 to 10 more feet to rise above FEMA’s computer-produced flood levels, new flood maps show.

San Diego County flood-control officials are still waiting to see what new FEMA maps hold for the vast unincorporated areas of the county. FEMA maps are being prepared for 164 miles of 36 rivers and stream in the county’s less-populated areas.

Bitterness and distrust exist between San Diego County hydrologists and Federal Emergency Management Agency engineers because each finds fault with the other’s methods. When the county receives its drafts of flood insurance rate maps in late October or November, the battle will be on, both sides predict.

Joseph Hill and Bill Spalding, both veterans of the county’s flood-control program, which dates back to 1962, are convinced that they have the technical and historical data necessary to challenge the federal agency’s computer-produced flood maps.

County flood-control technicians have mapped every foot of the back country waterways, often on foot and, after the mid-70s, by aerial photography.

Both men feel that federal agency has used methods that result in maps that depict floods of much greater force and scope than 100-year floods.

“They have supplied us with maps (of San Diego incorporated areas) that show much higher water surfaces than would seem reasonable,” Hill said. “But they haven’t supplied us with the backup data to support their findings. Looking at those maps, I’d say they are showing us something closer to 1,000-year floods.”

Hill said that “without doubt,” the county will take the lead in protesting the new maps--an action most city administrators are hoping for.

Local governments may lodge technical protests against the FEMA maps during a 90-day appeal period late this year. The appeals are heard and judged by a panel of hydrologists in Washington, D.C.

The FEMA flood maps are “unreasonable,” Hill explained, “because they fail to recognize obvious physical phenomena involved in flooding--erosion and sedimentation, for instance.”

Lenaburg is politely silent about the San Diego County mapping methods except to predict that any local challenge by county officials to FEMA methods will fail.