Flood insurance confusion

News that residents of the Natomas Basin have the chance for a one-year reprieve from higher flood insurance rates broke Monday.

News that the same reprieve includes areas farther north into Sutter County? That's still fuzzy.

While an e-mail sent by Supervisor-elect James Gallagher said the county is getting the rate exemption as well, county officials said the Federal Emergency Management Agency hasn't confirmed such a move.

"We haven't received anything," Chuck Smith, the county's public information officer, said Wednesday.

In the wake of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, FEMA tightened standards for certifying levees, and began reanalyzing levees and drawing new maps of flood risk zones called Flood Insurance Rate Maps, or FIRMs.

Most of Sutter County east of the Sutter bypass and south of Stewart Road were remapped into a high-risk flood zone in a new FIRM which went into effect Dec. 2.

In the old map, the area was considered to have 100-year flood protection, residents were not required to have flood insurance, and received a lower "preferred risk" rate. The new maps reclassified the area as a flood hazard zone, where flood insurance is required and could cost a homeowner more than $2,700 a year if they did not have insurance purchased before the new map took effect.

A new map for the Yuba City basin is expected to be released in 2010.

On Monday, press statements from the office of Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Sacramento, reported that FEMA had agreed to extend the preferred risk flood insurance rates in the Natomas Basin for a year. According to the press release, FEMA agreed to the extension because of a delay in implementing the flood zone maps.

Part of the Natomas Basin extends into Sutter County, but this is only a small area in the southern portion of the county near the Sacramento County line.

Smith said Sutter County officials received a phone call on the insurance rate extension Monday from Rep. Wally Herger's office, but details on what the rate extension entailed were not available.

Attempts by the county since then to get information from FEMA on whether areas of the county further north have also been given a one-year reprieve on higher rates have not yet been successful.

"The county itself has not received any official information from FEMA," Smith said. "Doris Matsui's office issued a press statement that mentioned Sutter County as well (as Natomas)."

However, on Tuesday, Gallagher, whose district includes the areas affected by the new FIRMs, send out an e-mail newsletter saying county residents would receive the rate extension.

Gallagher said he received his information from Herger's office.

"(Herger's staff) had talked to FEMA as well, and they were going to offer that same extension to Sutter County... that was my impression," Gallagher said.

Matt Lavoie, Herger's press secretary, said any information on the rate map would have to come from FEMA, directing the Appeal-Democrat to Cynthia McKenzie at FEMA's district office in Oakland. McKenzie's voicemail said she was out of the office Wednesday and a message left was not returned.

Smith said the county will make an announcement once details from FEMA are available on whether all remapped flood zone areas of the county will get an insurance rate extension.

"We don't want to say it is if it isn't," he said.

Contact Appeal-Democrat reporter Robert LaHue at 749-4713 or rlahue@appealdemocrat.com.