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| El Paso-owned and proud |
Aug. 29 - Sep. 4 |
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New flood maps may stop growth
Upper Valley property values will plummet, developers say
By David Crowder |
Two El Paso developers say if FEMA files its new flood maps next summer as expected, development in the Upper Valley would come to a standstill and property values would plummet along with tax revenues.
“There will be no new growth in the Upper Valley if these maps take effect,” said Doug Schwartz, chief executive officer of Southwest Land Development, a real estate development company in El Paso.
Sal Masoud, a civil engineer and developer who heads Del Rio Engineering, recently told City Council that the flood maps proposed by FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, would have an even bigger impact than that.
In addition to stopping development, which some in the Upper Valley might regard as a blessing, Masoud contends that putting thousands of homes and businesses into the flood plain would reduce property values by as little as 30 percent and as much as 70 percent.
“Think about it,” he said, “if you were to go out now to buy a house and you have the choice between house A and house B, both the same size and built by the same builder, but one is in a flood plain and one is not, which one would you choose? Just the word ‘flood’ scares people.”
Using taxable values on about 10,000 properties from Sunland Park Drive to Anthony, Texas, and reducing them by 30 percent, Masoud determined that the eight taxing jurisdictions stand to lose $12.3 million a year in potential revenue.
The city’s share of that would be nearly $3 million, he said.
“On empty land, you might even lose 75 percent of your land value,” Masoud said. “On a home, you’d probably lose between 15 and 30 percent of the value.”
Masoud said the situation has contributed to the indefinite delay of an 82-acre residential project he had planned off Gomez Road, where property was worth $45,000 an acre.
“Now it’s worth $5,000 an acre, if that,” he said.
Delay the maps
Masoud and Schwartz think the city of El Paso needs to do whatever it can to keep FEMA from filing the flood maps until the International Boundary and Water Commission completes its levee rehabilitation projects in October 2011.
“If these maps are affirmed, the construction of the levees isn’t going to get us out of trouble,” Masoud said. “It may be 10 years before we get the Upper Valley out of the flood plain again, and that’s just awful.”
The process could be delayed by an agreement with FEMA, or by challenging the accuracy of FEMA’s flood maps.
A big problem, they said, is the maps do not show base flood elevations for much of the Upper Valley – information that would allow property owners to consider elevating new homes, improvements or businesses above the possible flood level.
“There’s no rhyme or reason for it,” Schwartz said. “We can’t figure out if they have these numbers and they’re not providing them. They did not spend the kind of money on this study to do it properly.”
Schwartz said the flood maps are filled with errors, and it would be cost prohibitive for any developer or property owner to try removing property from a flood zone.
Even if the base flood elevation information were available, development would be difficult if not impossible, because pads for homes and businesses would have to be raised more than four feet, creating accessibility issues, Schwartz said.
El Paso city engineer Alan Shubert said it is logical to assume that properties brought into a flood zone will drop in value, “But how do you determine by how much?”
It is also true, he said, that FEMA hasn’t provided base flood elevations.
“If I can file an appeal based on the lack of information, I will do so, but I’m not sure FEMA will view that as a valid reason for an appeal,” said Shubert, who is FEMA’s flood administrator for El Paso.
FEMA response
But, Shubert said, he would have professional reservations about challenging the flood maps.
First, he said, the maps would remove from flood zones about 14,000 properties in other parts of the city. At the same time, they would require Upper Valley property owners who need to insures to buy it.
Asked about a possible delay of the flood maps’ approvals, FEMA spokeswoman Diane Howe said that FEMA has a process to follow that is intended to protect and advise the public of risks that properties carry.
And not everyone wants the finalization of the maps delayed.
“There are also developers in the city and county that want to have maps become effective as soon as possible because flood plains have been reduced or eliminated in various areas,” her written response stated.
Levee embankments stand along most of the Rio Grande. They are intended to protect homes, businesses and farms from flooding throughout El Paso County.
Over the years, the levees, which are the responsibility of the U.S. International Boundary and Water Commission, wore down as the river bottom silted up.
In 2006, the Federal Emergency Management Administration, as part of a national levee inspection program following Hurricane Katrina, decertified IBWC’s levees in El Paso and Dona Ana counties because they failed to meet FEMA height requirements.
Decertification meant that, legally, the levees were no longer good enough to count on for flood prevention purposes. That threatened to throw much of El Paso into flood zones and force tens of thousands of property owners to buy flood insurance for the first time.
Work halted
For reasons that have not been disclosed, FEMA did not file and activate its 2007 flood maps, giving IBWC time to complete levee improvements through the heart of El Paso.
IBWC has since certified miles of levee on the U.S. side of the river from the Zaragosa international bridge to a point above the Asarco plant.
That work and other infrastructure improvements by the city and developers in the past three years will keep more than 14,000 El Paso properties out of flood zones, whenever the new FEMA maps are finally filed and activated.
But the new maps released in July would put more than 3,500 Upper Valley properties into the flood zone because those levees can’t be certified.
Using its own staff and hired contractors, IBWC began working on the Upper Valley levees between Sunland Park Drive and Borderland Road in early 2009, but then halted that work last September.
The agency has since determined that the six miles of levee it rehabilitated in 2009 fail to meet FEMA standards and will have to be rebuilt.
Bids for that contract are due Thursday and construction is scheduled to begin Oct. 5 – more than a year after IBWC halted work in the same area.
David Crowder can be reached at (915) 587-6622 or at david_crowder@sbcglobal.net
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