Marana study may avert costly change

FEMA map could make many buy flood insurance

August 26, 2008

Arizona Daily Star

By Brian J. Pedersen

Marana has completed a major step in its battle with the Federal Emergency Management Agency with the submission of a drainage study that town officials hope will keep nearly all of a 19-square-mile area out of a high-risk flood zone.

The seven-month study, which to date has cost more than $300,000, shows that only about three square miles of the area in question should fall within a flood zone, requiring homeowners with federally insured mortgages to buy flood insurance.

“This is, by far, better than any of our previous studies we’ve had,” Marana Town Engineer Keith Brann said. “It’s very much money well-spent.”

Marana officials will brief the Town Council on the results of the study during a special meeting at 6 this evening.

Brann said it is expected that FEMA will complete its review of the study by Oct. 1, with new flood maps approved as soon as November.

Town officials estimate that only 250 existing structures and 600 currently platted lots would fall within the flood zone, compared with 2,000 structures and 10,000 lots from the area FEMA identified.

“I think we’re in really good shape,” Mayor Ed Honea said. “I think this is going to save our residents $3 million a year in flood insurance.”

FEMA officials told Marana in July 2007 that after a nationwide process of remapping flood plains, it had determined a huge chunk of town was in what FEMA calls a Special Flood Hazard Area, where there is at least a 1 percent chance of heavy flooding in any given year.

FEMA based its findings not on drainage studies but on a survey of levees and levee-like structures, Brann said. It ruled that man-made structures such as the Central Arizona Project canal, Interstate 10 and the Union Pacific railroad tracks did not provide adequate flood protection because they were not built with the same materials used in actual levees, he said.

The result was panic among Marana residents whose homes fell within the area in question, which encompassed nearly every part of town west of the CAP canal and east of the Santa Cruz River.

It also added an extra burden to a housing market that was already slowing down, Honea said, and led some home builders to back out of projects within the town.

“It was like a double whammy,” Honea said. “People don’t want to buy a house in a flood plain.”

After the announcement, town officials immediately began the process of working with FEMA to allow Marana time to conduct a hydrological and topographical study of the Tortolita Fan, the name given to the area between the Tortolita Mountains on the northeast side of Marana and I-10.

But Honea said it wasn’t until U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords stepped in last September on behalf of Marana that FEMA backed off its plan to submit new flood maps without Marana getting a chance to complete a study.

“Had she not intervened, I don’t think we’d be here today,” Honea said.

The Arizona Democrat introduced legislation in November that would have forced FEMA to overhaul its remapping process. Six weeks later, FEMA told Marana it would allow the town time to conduct its drainage study.

“This study represents a major accomplishment for the town of Marana, its residents and its future,” Giffords said in a statement released Monday. “I believe this study gives the federal government and town leaders the hard facts and scientific data they need to protect our community and plan for its future development.”

Though FEMA has yet to approve the final volume of the study, turned in on Aug. 12, Brann expects the agency to accept it without many changes because it approved the first two volumes earlier this year without making changes.

Honea added that a FEMA official was “embedded” with Clint Glass, the engineer Marana hired to do the study, during the process.

“You would think if FEMA was going to have a problem with any part of the study, they would have indicated that,” he said.

Once the study is approved and new flood maps are issued, Brann said, the town will begin outreach to residents whose homes will need flood insurance. He said the town will also work with developers whose land will be affected by the flood-zone designation to find ways to improve the land so that someday it as well can be moved out of the flood zone.

“The areas that are flood-prone, we have a better-detailed flood study to do those improvements with,” Brann said. “We will be looking at long-term and short-term solutions. We will not be walking away from them.”

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