Butte flood maps to show insurance increases
Gridley, Biggs could be hit hard when new documents are released on Friday
Two months after briefly gaining hope of escaping a flood hazard zone, Gridley and Biggs residents may soon gain a glimpse of where higher insurance rates may arrive.
On Friday, Butte County is expected to release draft charts showing flood risks in its southern towns near the Feather River. The maps also will be sent to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is gradually extending high-hazard status to much of Butte and Sutter counties.
Much of the Gridley-Biggs area is expected to be labeled vulnerable to flooding if a levee failed along the Feather, where earthen flood walls are nearly a century old. But Stuart Edell, manager of the county Land Development Division, on Wednesday said his office would ask FEMA to keep at least the area west of the Sutter Butte Canal classified as protected against the peak flood in a 500-year span — a step that would exempt most homeowners from a future requirement to buy flood insurance.
In November, a FEMA representative told Butte County, Biggs and Gridley engineers the south county would receive certification for 500-year flood protection. But the federal agency stepped back from that claim a month later and asked the county to submit a suggested flood-risk chart by the end of this week, Edell said.
After FEMA stopped recognizing 100-year flood protection for the area because of deteriorating levees, south Sutter County was mapped into the federal hazard zone in December 2008, and most of the north county is slated to follow as early as next year. The designation requires those holding federally backed mortgages in the zone to buy flood insurance policies, usually at more than twice the price outside of floodplains.
FEMA has estimated Gridley and Biggs homeowners would pay at least $849 a year to insure a $250,000 home — up from the current $348 premium — if the towns are labeled hazard areas.
This spring, the Sutter Butte Flood Control Agency plans to ask property owners for an $80 million construction bond issue for Feather River levee upgrades. Property owners would pay a new assessment to cover the cost if it passes. The $200 million project would overhaul 24 miles of flood walls from Yuba City to the Thermalito Afterbay by 2014 at the earliest, which the agency hopes will lift flood insurance requirements.
Boundaries for the assessment district that would support the program may be set in February, said Bill Edgar, the agency's interim executive director.
Contact Appeal-Democrat reporter Howard Yune at 749-4708 or hyune@appealdemocrat.com.
