Aug. 23 — City faces FEMA deadline

The city of Puyallup has until October to comply with flood plain regulations

Susan Schell / of the Herald

The city of Puyallup has been given until mid-October to update their flood plain regulations to comply with the minimum state and federal statutes, which could affect the availability of flood insurance for city residents. The city is currently non-compliant with the regulations, said Kevin Farrell, flood plain management specialist for the southwest region of the Washington State Department of Ecology.

“They have drafted compliant regulations and there are some internal discussions about higher regulatory standards in the language,” Farrell said.

“Our program meets with local governments on a five-year cycle at a minimum of once every five years for a formal review,” he said. “We take a look at their flood plain regulations; each community is required to adopt and enforce flood plain regulations. As part of my review, we have an ordinance review checklist, which mirrors the minimum standards by federal and state statutes. We take each city’s regulations and go through the checklist and make sure it meets the standards. Puyallup did not meet all the standards.”

The issue was brought to the floor at a recent city council meeting by Puyallup resident Ann Coon, who expressed concerns that residents would not be able to buy reasonable flood insurance while the city was non-compliant.

“If they want to have higher standards our agency is happy to work with them,” Farrell said. “Failure to participate has the ramifications of non-availability of government-backed flood insurance.”

Farrell said if the city were not compliant by the October deadline, the issue would go to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for action.

“We are very confident that the city is working productively to make sure that does not happen,” said Ryan Ike, senior flood plain programs manager for FEMA region 10.

“In the unlikely event that the city does not comply, FEMA can initiate suspension proceedings from the National Flood Insurance Program.”

Ike explained that in a suspended community, homeowners couldn’t purchase a new policy, but current flood insurance policies would be honored through the life of that policy.

Puyallup City Planner Nancy Eklund said FEMA asked the city to adopt a flood damage protection ordinance in 2005, but the process of developing the plan has taken longer than anticipated.

“There were recommendations of addressing other flood plain issues that caused a lot more attention than what FEMA was requesting to get it up to standards,” she said. “The development community and some property owners want an opportunity to look closer at regulations. The hiccup in this is the addition of the recommendation of whether compensatory storage should be entered into the ordinance.”

Eklund explained that compensatory storage is intended to ensure that flood storage areas are not lost as a result of placing fill in the floodplain. Compensatory storage is defined in the proposed ordinance as any new, excavated flood storage volume equivalent to any flood storage capacity which has been or would be eliminated by filling or grading within the flood fringe.

The city wanted to have an engineering study completed to include the language so developers would know up front what the city expects of them, Eklund said.

“We were given some leeway from (the department of) ecology. But now that we have been given a deadline we have to attend to that deadline.”

Reach reporter Susan Schell at 253-841-2481 ext. 315 or susan.schell@puyallupherald.com.