Back in 1993, Mike Duvall didn't believe he could get flooded, even though his office sat smack in the middle of the Missouri River bottoms.
Then a 9-foot "tidal wave" of water claimed the environmental consulting firm where he was a partner. The firm was one of more than 280 Chesterfield Valley businesses that lacked flood insurance when the levee failed.
"We were just oblivious," said Duvall, who now is director of environmental services for St. Charles County. "In hindsight, it defies logic to think we were in that setting and didn't give it any amount of review. ... It'll haunt me forever."
Thousands of business owners, workers and residents behind levees or on earthen fill may be similarly ignorant today, because of a provision that allows wide swaths of flood plain to be removed from official flood maps.
Under a long-standing policy of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, any area deemed to be protected from a so-called 100-year flood by a levee or by elevation on dirt can be removed from the agency's flood hazard zone maps. The maps are used to determine who must buy flood insurance - and who must be alerted to the flood risk.
Critics say the exemptions wrongly lull people into believing they face no risk of flooding.
"Personally, I think that gives people a false sense of security," said George Riedel, flood plain manager for the Missouri State Emergency Management Agency. "Most of the time, the reason people are getting (map amendments) is because they don't want to buy flood insurance."
FEMA, which approved 17,000 such map changes last year, says that it must recognize the added protection provided by levees or by earthen fill used to elevate buildings.
"We map based on what's out there in the real world," said Mike Grimm, chief of FEMA's community assistance branch. "If it's been taken out of the flood plain, we don't feel we have the authority to keep it in."
FEMA allows landowners, developers, levee districts and others to apply for an exemption to the usual flood zone boundary. At a minimum, the area must be protected against a flood that has a 1 percent chance of happening in any given year, commonly called a 100-year flood.
Recognized levees must meet minimum FEMA criteria, including certification by a registered professional engineer.
Land that has been filled in with dirt can be removed from the official flood plain after a land surveyor provides an elevation certificate.
Once FEMA removes an area from the 100-year-flood hazard zone, there are no restrictions on development. Flood insurance is no longer required as a condition of getting a federally backed mortgage. Federal building standards for flood plains don't apply.
Leveed areas don't trigger any notification requirement for potential property owners.
Kevin Corrigan even got a letter from his bank telling him he wasn't in the flood plain when he built a $1.6 million building in Chesterfield Valley just a month before it flooded. Corrigan didn't carry flood insurance at the time, but he does now.
In '93, the levee was rated to protect against a 100-year flood. Now it's being raised to the 500-year-flood level.
"This is a flood plain, I don't care what anybody says," Corrigan said. The company, CORR-PAK Inc., a metal fabricator, has remained in the valley. Corrigan said that most of his neighbors now carry flood insurance too, although they don't have to.
A report in 1982 by the National Research Council, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, said that FEMA's map revision process undermined the ability of the federal flood insurance program to reduce flood damages.
FEMA adopted minimum levee standards in 1986 but ignored the committee's recommendations to require flood insurance, resident notification, emergency management measures and regulation of critical facilities such as hospitals behind levees.
"Any levee runs the risk of overtopping and structural failure during floods," the report noted, adding that the 100-year-flood standard is "generally found to be a low design standard."
Former Illinois state flood plain manager French Wetmore, who worked on the committee, said that FEMA should recognize shades of gray within the spectrum of flood risk, and offer insurance premiums that are priced accordingly.
A good start would be to require everyone behind levees to purchase flood insurance, he said.
"People would be reminded every year they're not living in a perfectly safe place," said Wetmore, now a consultant based in Park Forest, Ill.
Many others have echoed his sentiment. A blue-ribbon panel appointed by the White House to review the 1993 flood called attention to the "residual risk" behind levees. The report noted that the chance of a 100-year levee overtopping during the span of a typical 30-year mortgage is about 1-in-4.
"We, in effect, said if you're behind a levee, you ought to have insurance, period," said Gen. Gerald Galloway, a former Army Corps of Engineers civil engineer who headed the task force. "There's always a possibility the levee will fail. Unless you're out of the flood plain, you're going to be at risk."
Reporter Sara Shipley:
E-mail: sshipley@post-dispatch.com
Phone: 314-340-8215
