Many Still Need Flood Insurance

Though a $1.3-billion campaign to protect Orange County from the Santa Ana River has been a success, thousands of homes and businesses remain threatened by flooding from smaller drainage channels and will not receive a promised reprieve from flood insurance, officials said Wednesday.

County and federal officials today will release new maps designating sections of Orange County safe from floods--and they will cut in half the number of homeowners and business owners who will be spared the cost of mandatory flood insurance.

In October, those same officials estimated that their work would eliminate flood insurance premiums for 30,000 homeowners and more than 10,000 business owners. Revised maps, however, indicate that half of those--about 20,000 property owners in sections of Huntington Beach, Santa Ana, Garden Grove, Westminster and Fountain Valley--remain threatened by flooding.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s mandatory flood insurance costs $200 to $800 a year.

“I am very pleased that many homeowners who formerly had to bear the burden of flood insurance will now be freed from that burden,” said U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach). “It is unfortunate that there are many others who will not be freed. Frankly, I was under the impression that the Santa Ana River Project would be eliminating the flood threat to a much greater degree in our area.”

For more than a century, Orange County has shouldered the sporadic but devastating wrath of the Santa Ana River.

During the dry season, the river’s flow is decidedly unmenacing, even piddly. During rainy spells, however, the river can generate catastrophic swells that turn parts of Orange County into one of the most vulnerable flood plains west of the Mississippi. At times, the north end of the county has been submerged, and settlers in the 1800s wrote of rowing boats from Newport Beach to Santa Ana.

But the river is no longer the problem. A series of construction projects, especially last year’s completion of the 550-foot-high Seven Oaks Dam in San Bernardino County, adequately protected Orange County from the river.

Now, the problem rests on the banks of smaller drainage channels--a hidden network of everything from dirt ditches to elaborate levees, hundreds of miles of them, that wind through Orange County.

They too can be quickly overwhelmed during heavy stretches of rain. A March 1, 1983, storm, for example, caused $48.5 million in damage and flooded 1,000 homes, mostly because those smaller flood control channels could not contain the 3 inches of rain that fell in just three hours.

Because those channels provide inadequate protection, FEMA has informed Orange County officials that thousands of homes and businesses in the area cannot be considered safe from flooding--not yet, anyway.

“We knew that there were some deficiencies in those areas,” said Herbert I. Nakasone, a manager of Orange County’s flood control planning. “What surprised us is the magnitude of the area.”

There are two problems:

* The first, affecting parts of Fountain Valley and Huntington Beach south of the San Diego Freeway, is largely bureaucratic and can be resolved relatively quickly, Nakasone said.

There, the federal government wants the county to essentially verify that levees along two flood control channels--the Huntington Beach Channel and the Talbert Channel--provide enough protection. County officials can likely complete that work and provide flood insurance relief there by the end of the year, Nakasone said.

* The second, affecting a swath of land that hugs the Garden Grove-Wintersburg Channel and includes portions of Garden Grove, Santa Ana, Westminster and Huntington Beach, is more troublesome and might not be resolved for a decade.

The Wintersburg Channel is a remnant of the not-so-distant origins of development in northwest Orange County. In the 1960s and early 1970s, when clusters of homes and businesses were beginning to flourish there, many of the flood-control channels were simply dirt ditches.

It probably will cost $130 million to widen the Wintersburg Channel and line it with either steel or concrete to increase the amount of storm water it can funnel through the county. That won’t be easy on Orange County’s $15-million-per-year flood control budget, Nakasone said.

“We’re not talking about something that can be done overnight,” he said.

So the county has appealed to the federal government for what is known, in the lexicon of civil engineers, as a “reconnaissance study”--essentially, a study of whether it is in the nation’s interest to route federal funds toward flood control along local channels.

“We’re going to find out exactly how much it’s going to cost to finish the job that started with the Santa Ana River project,” Rohrabacher said.

Rohrabacher and U.S. Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove) have planned community meetings May 30 and May 31 to discuss the new flood maps.

Sanchez will hold a meeting at 5:30 p.m. May 30 at the Boys and Girls Club, 10540 Chapman Ave., Garden Grove. Rohrabacher will hold three community meetings: 3 p.m. May 30 at the Huntington Beach City Council chamber, 7:30 p.m. May 30 at the Fountain Valley Civic Center and 7:30 p.m. May 31 at the Westminster High School gymnasium.

The new maps will also be available for inspection at Rohrabacher’s Huntington Beach office and at city government offices in the affected areas.

Despite the latest twist, Sanchez pointed out that 90% of people in Anaheim who currently have to pay flood insurance will receive a reprieve, as well as 80% of the residents in Santa Ana.

“That’s quite a bit of people,” she said. “We’re pretty excited.”

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The Changing Flood Plain

Despite a brief reprieve, about half of the property owners in the former Santa Ana River flood plain still must pay for flood insurance because of threats from smaller channels and waterways.

Source: Orange County Public Facilities and Resources Dept.