FREEHOLD – As promised, a lawyer for Monmouth County filed papers today seeking to delay the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) from adopting the new flood zone maps that will require many Bayshore-area homeowners to buy flood insurance.

 

The 17-page document, prepared by Assistant County Counsel Gil Messina, was filed today with FEMA’s district office in New York. The appeal, or protest, carries with it several attachments, including a petition signed by 1,400 affected homeowners throughout the Bayshore region.

 

“Our goal is to protect the lives and property of our residents, with or without flood insurance, and by doing so eliminate the need for this added expense,” Freeholder Director Lillian G. Burry said. “Our long-term objective is to prevent flooding from ever occurring. We firmly believe that it is better to have no flooding at all than to have your home flooded and have insurance.”

 

Burry has been critical of the state and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for allowing a levee system built in the 1970s to deteriorate and become an inadequate protection against storms.

 

“Suddenly, residents were being told that not only would they need to buy flood insurance – an unexpected expense costing thousands of dollars per year – but that the system of levees and dunes they had relied on for decades to keep their homes safe from flood danger were now insufficient and their properties faced an unanticipated threat. This is unacceptable.”

 

In 1974, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers turned over responsibility for maintaining this system of dunes to the state, which has had the responsibility ever since. In 1982, FEMA confirmed the adequacy of the levee system, and residents of the Bayshore have been relying on that assurance. FEMA repeated that assurance in its initial 2008 Flood Insurance Study, but then deleted it.

 

“If FEMA, apparently based on its experience with the impact of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, now believes the protection to be inadequate, then it should work with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to design a new system that will provide the intended level of protection," Burry said. “In the interim, the state should take aggressive steps to improve the maintenance of the existing dunes to maximize their effectiveness. We cannot compromise the safety of our residents.

 

 

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