Hamilton fights federal government on flood hazard area

AFFECTED PROPERTIES

Most of the properties affected are west of where Two Mile Creek passes under Cleveland Avenue and east of Haverhill Drive.

Areas affected are near the creek at:

Mike Day’s 54-year-old towing business in Hamilton is 12 blocks from the Great Miami River, but a pending designation by the Federal Emergency Management Agency could require his company to start buying federally-backed flood insurance. It wouldn’t be because of flood dangers from the river itself, but from Two Mile Creek, which quietly flows west of his property.

City officials estimate about 70 homes, 15 businesses and numerous undeveloped properties could be affected by the need for flood insurance if they have mortgages. If the proposed designation becomes official, future buildings constructed in the pending zone would have to be elevated above predicted flood levels, and also would need flood insurance.

City administrators, who recently decided to appeal FEMA’s proposed new “Special Flood Hazard Area” along the creek, think it’s all wet.

“We’re going to challenge FEMA on that,” city Public Works Director Rich Engle recently told the city council, “and we’re going to be hiring a consultant to assist us, to do a hydraulic analysis, and go to FEMA, and say, ‘Look, this is not the case. This is not true.’”

Engle told the Journal-News: “The proposed flood profile for the 100-year flood on Two Mile Creek watershed is about six feet higher than the previous flood profile.”

Day, owner of Day’s Towing and Repair and the Sunoco station at 1275 Main St., is very familiar with the creek near his business: He played in it as a boy, and says an overflowing creek has never reached his company’s property. He doesn’t want to have to pay flood insurance, the way 32 others across Hamilton already do.

“It just seems to be one more government-intrusive cost that I would have to end up paying because someone deems it necessary, that has probably never stepped foot on this street,” Day said. “I don’t know how they come up with it. The geography has not changed. So what rules for flood plains have changed to make them deem it a flood plain now, versus 50 years ago?”

FEMA updates its flood maps from time to time, as it is doing now across Butler County, often when flood levees are changed.

The Two Mile Creek examination actually happened earlier — the period for Hamilton to appeal the map changes ran from November 2014 to February 2015, said Eric Kuklewski, the branch chief for risk at FEMA Region V in Chicago.

When that appeals period happened, “At least as best as I can research, we did not receive any appeals directly on that creek in Hamilton at that time,” Kuklewski said.

But the Two Mile Creek map won’t be finalized until the map for the rest of Butler County is complete, he said.

Federally-backed flood insurance, which is sold by commercial insurance companies but is different than the kind of rider homeowners can buy for problems like sewer backups into their basements, can be costly.

Of the 32 FEMA-backed flood-insurance policies in effect within Hamilton, the average premium is about $900 per year, which buys approximately $200,000 of coverage, said David Schein, FEMA Region V’s flood-insurance liaison. Those 32 policies represent a combination of residential, commercial and other policies, including the contents within buildings, he said.

FEMA creates the flood-hazard maps, but it is a property’s mortgage lender who decides, under federal law, how much federally-backed flood insurance must be bought.

In cases where buildings were constructed before a flood area was designated — such as for the 85-plus structures near Two Mile Creek if the new map takes effect — insurance premiums are significantly lower than for buildings built after such a map change, Schein said.

Even for buildings that go up after flood-zone designations, premiums still can be relatively low, as long as the new buildings are situated above predicted flood levels, Schein said.

Hamilton has some persuasive data

Engle said city officials have data they can use to show FEMA’s proposed flood profile “is not consistent with high-water levels witnessed during actual storm events.”

For example, “on June 26, 2009, Hamilton received 5.74 inches of rain,” Engle said. “A rain gauge in the Two Mile Creek watershed recorded 4.4 inches of rain in a period of four hours, which corresponds to over a 200-year storm.”

And yet, “Two Mile Creek did not overtop bridges that the FEMA study predicts would be overtopped by a few feet during a 100-year flood,” Engle added.

After evaluating the flood model used to create the prediction, the city believes the model should be changed to include existing water detention basins and more accurate topographic mapping, Engle said.

Kuklewski said Hamilton’s plan to submit a “Letter of Map Revision application” to his agency probably is the city’s best option to win change.

“While we certainly can take gauge information into account, and we try to look at that when we do the study work, this isn’t just about one rain event,” he said.

The bottom line is, it likely will take much more work by city consultants to convince FEMA it was wrong, Kuklewski said: “We want to work with the community, but it doesn’t sound like they have the data readily available today.”

Most of the properties affected are west of where the creek passes under Cleveland Avenue and east of Haverhill Drive. Among areas affected are near the creek at: Carlisle Avenue; Washington Boulevard; Glencross Avenue; the area of Main Street between Winston Drive and Victory Drive; Westbrook Drive; the Town and Country Shopping Center; Lexington Drive; Thomas Boulevard, Washington Boulevard and Parkview Avenue.

Some homeowners on Thomas Boulevard took the possibility of flood-insurance premiums in stride.

“If I have to pay for it, I have to pay for it — I’d rather be covered,” said Bev Dozier, one such resident, who has lived on the street since 1990. “I’m not worried about that.”

On the other hand, neighbor Kyle Taylor, who has owned his home a year, hopes the city’s arguments prevail: “I hope we don’t have to pay flood insurance,” he said.

“I’d hope they would make a common-sense decision,” said Day, the towing-company owner. “It’s … just another burden that businesses don’t need right now, especially here in Hamilton. You can only have so many straws on our backs before they break, you know?”