Levee work to save most residents from high flood insurance premiums

Mission Mayor Beto Salinas doubts all his city’s residents could have afforded the mandatory and expensive flood insurance premiums that were planned for low-lying parts of Hidalgo County two years ago.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency projected the higher costs in 2007 when it began a national process to update flood maps that hadn’t been revised in decades.

With the federal agency charged with maintaining the levees limited by its budget, Hidalgo County put up $44 million of its own money to repair parts of the aging system, Salinas said. The finished work on the western side of the county saved residents in Mission and nearby areas from the higher premiums.

“It was going to kill us,” Salinas said Wednesday at a groundbreaking for new levee work. “The costs would have been too much (for Mission residents).”

Work to raise and repair the other 80 miles of untouched levees along the Rio Grande means the rest of the county will also be spared the higher premiums.

The U.S. International Boundary and Water Commission, the U.S. State Department agency that maintains the flood-control system, is repairing the levees using $110 million in funds from the federal Recovery Act.

Once the levee work is finished — completion is expected by the end of next year — the commission plans to notify FEMA that it will certify all of its levees as being able to withstand a 100-year flood, said Bill Ruth, the U.S. commissioner of the International Boundary and Water Commission.

A 100-year flood is a flood so severe that it has a 1 percent chance of occurring in any given year.

“Those levees will be completed,” Ruth said. “We will have them certified and the information in to FEMA prior to releasing those maps.”

FEMA will use the commission’s updated information on levee heights and standards when it prepares a final copy of the region’s flood maps, said Larry Voice, a civil engineer with the agency’s mitigation division. FEMA’s digital flood hazard maps provide an official depiction of flood hazards for properties and are used by insurers to calculate premiums for an area.

The agency is in the process of preparing a preliminary “Flood Insurance Rate Map” for Hidalgo County that will be completed by the end of next year, Voice said. Updating the map with new levee standards will remove some areas near the river from zones where residents or businesses are required to purchase flood insurance.

For other areas, the costs for flood insurance will be reduced depending on what the maps show.

Although the new maps may not require residents to purchase flood insurance, FEMA still recommends it in case of unexpected floods, Voice said. The agency depends on information from the water commission and other agencies to ensure the safety of the flood-control system.

“We’re not determining how well that levee is going to perform in a flood,” Voice said. “People certifying it are doing that — not us.”

Still, an updated levee system means lower insurance premiums and peace of mind for Hidalgo County residents who live near the levees, said Hidalgo County Judge J.D. Salinas. FEMA’s projections on the 2007 maps would have forced residents to spend a total of $150 million more on flood insurance each year.

The federal government still hasn’t reimbursed the county for the $44 million the county first put into the levee system, which Mission’s Mayor Salinas says still needs to happen.

But County Judge Salinas said the work couldn’t wait and was needed to protect residents from the higher premiums.

“It needed to start somewhere,” he said. “Somebody needed to pick up the shovel.”