Not Picking on Gulfport
By Ryan LaFontaine, The Sun Herald, Biloxi, Miss.
May 30–GULFPORT — Rejecting claims it is unfairly picking on Gulfport, FEMA said Thursday it conducted similar flood critiques of more than 70 communities in Mississippi.
FEMA selected Gulfport in October 2006 for what the agency calls a “community assessment visit” or “CAV,” a survey of properties citywide, to determine how well the city was measuring up to national flood elevation standards.
The Warr administration has argued that Gulfport was selected for a CAV only because the city was first to adopt FEMA’s more stringent elevation requirements.
Jody Cottrill, a regional spokeswoman at FEMA’s headquarters in Atlanta, said that is hardly the case.
“There have been a number of CAVs done in coastal Mississippi communities after Katrina,” she said.
The agency has done post-Katrina CAVs in D’Iberville, Pascagoula, Gautier and Picayune, and small, one-day surveys in Hancock County and Pass Christian. Biloxi had a CAV in 2004.
A CAV in Gulfport in 2006 revealed more than 200 properties that violate FEMA’s elevation requirements.
FEMA soon will reduce Gulfport’s flood rating — which will increase flood insurance premiums by as much as 10 percent for all Gulfport homeowners — because the city failed to remedy its non-compliant properties.
Mike Womack, director of the state Emergency Management Agency, said Gulfport has made an effort to correct its non-compliant properties — most of which were built before Katrina, some as far back as 1994 — but he said the situation could have been handled differently.
“We fully support FEMA in its efforts to ensure flood regulations are enforced,” he said. “But we don’t want the citizens of Gulfport to pay higher flood insurance rates.”
During the CAVs in other Coast communities, FEMA found some problem properties, but they were mostly isolated cases nowhere near the magnitude of what was uncovered in Gulfport.
City leaders say it seems odd that the lion’s share of non-compliant properties were found only within the city limits of Gulfport.
Cottrill said FEMA has scheduled CAVs this summer in Moss Point, Pass Christian and Lucedale.
—–
To see more of The Sun Herald, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.sunherald.com.
Copyright (c) 2008, The Sun Herald, Biloxi, Miss.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.