Rates jump for 1,500 added to Bullitt flood map

Newlyweds Scotty and Tabitha Smothers liked their options when they bought a home on Lakes of Dogwood Boulevard in Shepherdsville in June.

They could use the home as a start-up, live there until Tabitha, 23, graduated from dental school at the University of Louisville, then upgrade.

But four months into their mortgage, their options changed.

In September, the Smothers learned their $118,500 home — one of nearly 1,500 Bullitt County properties — will be listed in a floodplain, a designation that could require spending hundreds or thousands of dollars annually on flood insurance.

Property owners have until Jan. 1 to appeal new flood maps produced by the Kentucky Division of Water.

"It's kind of a big mess, and it really could affect this town significantly," Scotty Smothers said.

Jefferson County also received new maps this year that affected thousands of properties, but, unlike Bullitt, officials have asked to redo the maps. The Metropolitan Sewer District said it found errors that may have added properties unnecessarily, and the agency plans to spend a few hundred thousand dollars to possibly save residents millions.

In Bullitt, a net total of 1,451 properties were added to the floodplain, though not all will need flood insurance, said Carey Johnson, cooperating technical partners program manager for the division of water. If a property doesn't have a structure on it or the structure is outside the flood zone, the owner will not need the insurance.

Johnson said he is unsure how many properties will need the expense, though state and local leaders acknowledge hundreds of properties will be affected.

Bullitt owners are now looking for answers on what exactly the maps will do while questioning why — if local leaders were informed about the maps in 2010 — residents didn't know about them sooner.

"I think this should have been handled much earlier," said Shepherdsville business owner Donna Richardson, whose animal feed store on Old Preston Highway will have to start carrying flood insurance — estimated at $1,200 to $3,000 annually.

Since 2009, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has paid to update maps nationwide through the Risk Mapping, Assessment and Planning program, which conducts comprehensive studies of communities' floodplains to determine which properties are at risk of flooding.

The division of water partnered with FEMA in 2005 to update maps statewide and budgeted $900,000 in 2009 to reassess Bullitt and Jefferson counties, Johnson said.

The state hoped to update the counties' maps by studying areas that had not been looked at in decades, such as the Salt River floodplain in Bullitt — last studied in 1985, Johnson said.

Bullitt's maps had been partially revised in 2004, and at that time, 4,328 properties were in a floodplain, Johnson said. The latest maps, completed in 2013, include 5,778 properties.

In Shepherdsville, about 175 properties with structures have been added to the floodplain, while 263 properties with structures were removed, Johnson said. He could not provide similar numbers for the unincorporated areas of the county or other cities.

State employees met with county and city employees on April 13, 2010, to inform them Stantec Consulting Services had been hired to update the maps.

Elected officials, such as the Shepherdsville mayor and the county judge-executive, were invited to the meeting but did not attend, Johnson said.

Stantec completed preliminary maps in October 2013, and state employees met with local leaders Dec. 3 to discuss them, Johnson said. This time, Judge-Executive Melanie Roberts and Shepherdsville Mayor Scott Ellis, among other officials, were present.

Residents have since questioned why local leaders did not keep them informed throughout the process, but the leaders say there was nothing to tell.

Roberts, in office since 2007, disputes that she knew of the new maps before the December meeting and said even then, the division of water did not make it clear how many properties would be affected.

To get answers, Bullitt Fiscal Court spent $10,000 in March to study how the maps would affect the county. Louisville engineering firm QK4 presented the study's results to the court Sept. 16, and the study was placed on the county's website.

Roberts and Ellis said they did not do more to publicly discuss the maps because state officials told them informing property owners would speed up a 90-day appeals process — which officially started Oct. 1.

In the typical process, state officials submit the maps for federal register publication after presenting them to local leaders, then plan for the 90 days when residents can appeal their placement. During that time, Johnson said the division of water encourages local officials to speak with residents and place copies of the maps for view in public spaces.

Johnson said there is no rule against talking about the preliminary maps, and there is no way to speed up the 90-day appeal period's start date.

Jefferson County's floodplain study was on a similar schedule to Bullitt's starting in 2009, but instead of moving forward with the revised maps this year, MSD decided to redo the study.

Development team manager David Johnson said MSD employees noticed errors in the flood maps and asked the division of water's permission to do a more costly, in-depth study paid for with MSD funds.

Chief engineer Steve Emly said the errors likely occurred because Stantec used methods that tend to overestimate floodplains in heavily developed areas. He said thousands of properties could have been added to the flood zone based on Stantec's maps, but the MSD office could not provide an exact estimate.

"We're fortunate we have staff available that knows enough about floodplains that we felt right off the bat they might not be right," he said.

Currently, 5,274 Jefferson County property owners carry flood insurance policies with annual premiums totaling $4.6 million. Johnson said redoing the study will cost a few hundred thousand dollars but could save property owners millions on insurance costs. The MSD board will vote on approving the funds in November.

Mayor Ellis said he will do anything it takes to remove properties from the flood zone.

"One home is one home too many to be added in," he said.

Since December, Ellis' staff has discussed a long-term plan to build a 200-acre basin to hold overflow from the Salt River and a short-term plan to join the Community Rating System, implemented by the National Flood Insurance Program to reduce insurance rates in communities that exceed floodplain management minimum standards.

About 1,300 communities nationwide are involved in the rating system, which can provide property owners 5- to 45-percent discounts on their insurance rates.

Jefferson County has been in the program since 1990 and is one of the highest-rated communities in the nation, saving property owners 30 percent annually. To receive the high rating, the county spends hundreds of thousands of dollars annually to maintain sewer systems and keep the program up-to-date, David Johnson said.

Shepherdsville also plans to appeal the revised maps before Jan. 1. For an appeal to pass, the city will have to submit technical or scientific information that proves the study is wrong.

"We're hoping that our appeals protect our residents," Ellis said. "We're going to battle to get those numbers down."

For the unincorporated areas, the QK4 study recommends county officials don't appeal the maps — which could cost upwards of $200,000.

"I suggest we go the more economical route and let (homeowners) be aware of applying for the amendment themselves," Roberts said, adding that the county will also apply for the CRS program.

Individual property owners newly listed in the floodplain can appeal the maps by hiring a surveyor — which costs about $500 — to conduct a site elevation survey. The division of water decides if the survey proves the property should not be in a floodplain, Bullitt County Planning Department director Roanne Hammond said.

The state department will review appeals as they are submitted, and Johnson said he expects the process to be finished by March. The county will then have six months to adopt the new maps and inform residents.

Richardson said she has little faith that local leaders will give her the best information or fight for her property.

"There may not be a thing anybody could do, but I see a lack of effort," she said. "If they can't change it, that's fine. We understand. But how hard did you try?"

Reporter Bailey Loosemore can be reached at (502) 582-4646. Follow her on Twitter at @bloosemore. bloosemore@courier-journal.com

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