me this is this mike is for the camera so it's not this mike isn't going to amplify in my voice let's have a talk louder so if i if i end up trailing off if you just want to kind of point up like that so as you had mentioned this presentation is going to give some information about the national flood insurance program going to talk a little bit about the new maps compared to the old maps i'm going to touch on insurance just very very briefly not an insurance person so i can talk and a lot of detail about insurance i'm going talk about elevation certificates what they are and who might need one i'm going to talk about mitigation strategies that the homeowner could use potentially assist homeowners and we also kind of wanted to get some feedback from you this evening to see if there was interest from homeowners in this grant program so there are a bunch of acronyms that are used and thrown around a lot when we talk about flood maps so i thought i'd just start off by explaining some of the acronyms so if throughout the presentation i use them or if you hear other people use them just give you a sense program firms are actually these flood insurance rate maps that's their technical term there is that yes f h a which is the special flood hazard area which is basically the flood all also known as the special flood house has an area with a one percent chance of flooding in each year so it's a little bit of a misnomer when we use the term one hundred year flood because the hundred year flood is actually there's a one percent chance of that flood happening in every year so you'll see that acronym probably used on some of the maps or some of the technical documentation that's put out through fema  and then the b s e that's the base flood elevation that's the that's basically is the depth of the flood waters in any given place so these maps do show the base so richmond is a participating member of the national flood insurance program in the most basic sense if the town agrees to regulate development in the floodplain the n f i p will offer flood insurance for all property owners in richmond you don't have to be in the flood plain to purchase flood insurance but if you are in the flood plain and you have a federally backed mortgage then you are probably required to carry flood insurance and then the other benefit of f i p is that by us being a participating member in that program it also provides us access to funding and it can help with property buy outs it can also help fund structural elevations and i'll talk a little bit more about that in the presentation and also because we're a member of the n f ip we do receive funding to help fix our roads and bridges if they get damaged by floods hundred eighty two the n f i b issue the first affirms the first flood insurance rate maps for richmond and this is what they looked like they were very simplified this is the flood map for the village so these and as you can  see they don't have a lot of background information to be able to figure out if your property is in the flood plain or not there's no kind of reference information other than the road so it was hard to be able to see you know if your property was in the flood plain or if your property was in the flood plain was your building in the flood plain so these are the maps that we currently operate under so the first farms for richmond and the ones that are currently in effect are the flood maps during our storm events or a rain event during snow melt all that water runs off into our so small streams and rivers from the mountains and hills goes down into the valleys fills up the rivers in the valleys and when those river bank gets full day they overtopped their banks and all the wa really is you know a watershed level basically and i think that's happening upstream from us is going to affect us down in here and anything that we do here is then just going to go downstream and affect towns downstream so a lot of what happens up in central vermont you know what's happening in the matter of a valley that all ends up running down into the wood new city and then comes down to us here in richmond and an example of that was during tropical storm irene there was these huge microburst in north field which inundated the dog river which went into the new city and then also in the matter of a valley a ton of rain in the maghreb valley flew down the mad river into that when a ski and all of that comes down and helped contribute to the flooding here and so any development that's happening in the watershed is going to have an effect has basically all that runoff is just kind of coming down hill and coming through town and off to lake champlain understand the quite long process of coming up with new maps for richmond the new maps are called the firm's this is because they did is the data on the maps and they background photograph that's on these maps is from one thousand nine hundred ninety nine so those background images are going to provide more context more landmarks to be able to see if your property or or structure is in the flood plain but like i said the photographs in the background are from nine hundred ninety nine the new maps as part of the  which helped define the new flood plain in richmond basically the flood plain in richmond under these new maps is a greater area some more properties are now going to be considered in the floodplain under these new maps and  some of the smaller tributaries i don't believe were restudied they were just simply digitized so that there may not be the floodplains for some of the small streams might not be based on new technical data it's  simply carrying over some of that old data from the eighty two maps and putting them in this format so these new maps will go into effect on august second this year i know it's been a long adoption process here in richmond but that's the date that we've been told these maps that we have copies of will go into effect in august and if you're looking to get copies of these flood maps we have the paper copies the you've been looking at once that new map that effective date is here august second you should be able to log on to fem map service center where you'll be able to basically pull up one of these panels on your computer and be able to zoom in and create your own flood rate insurance map for your  neighborhood but i went on there the other day and they don't have these maps loaded on to that web site yet so i think they're probably waiting for that effective date before they'll have them loaded the agency of natural resources also has an online mapping tool so if tonight you were interested in looking more detail at the floodplain you can log onto the natural resources atlas and that link to that website  is posted on the back of the agendas that were available at the door and that's going to give you the opportunity to zoom into your property uses a online mapping interface that's very much like google earth or yahoo maps and it has a more updated photograph in the background and so you can zoom in to your neighborhood and then you can click on the layer that's listed as  overlay that this new flood plane on a more dated map and it gives you the opportunity to kind of print that map off if you like we will be getting this data also uploaded onto our g i s our geographic information systems software that we use in the planning and zoning office so probably by next week we'll be able to create maps with this new data from our office so if you've looked at these maps and you feel like they're inaccurate if you feel like they've not correctly depicted the floodplain at your property there is a process that you can go through to have your property or you r structure removed from the n f i p flood plane that process or that documentation is called you can ask for a letter of map change and  a couple different types of letters of map change and the most common ones are a letter of map or a vision and that's where you would apply to fema and you would to show their engineering data which would basically disprove the data that they used to create the map if you're applying for a letter a map or a vision they would actually reprint that panel of the map but the more common avenue that you would probably explore would be requesting a letter of map amendment and so if you feel like your property should not be in the floodplain or if your building is actually on a little knoll and elevated above the flood plain then you can go through that process and fema will issued you a letter of map amendment where they will they they won't reprint the map but they'll issue you a letter which basically they are recognizing that your structure is not in the floodplain and that they will not require you to buy flood insurance and you also won't be subject to the local zoning regulations that are applied to property in the flood plain thema does have a web page so what the pages listed up there is a good resource if you want to explore that or find out more information about that process they have a lot of that information online if you if you have a loma if you know that you have a lo you want to make sure that you're alone that you have today will be revalidated once these new maps come into effect we do have a list where that was given to us from fema where they've basically said here's a list of the lomas that will be revalidated with the new maps here's a list of lomas that will be superceded by the new maps so we have this list so if you have a low and you're unsure of its status after the presentation we can take a look at the list and see you know how it is going to treat your loma and you can also go through this process if you feel like the two thousand and fourteen maps don't accurately depict your site's actual situation you can then apply to fema and go through that process that is a process where you you as a property owner will have to contract or hire an engineer or a surveyor they'll have to produce some technical data and they'll be the ones that then can help you through that process so i'll talk a little bit about flood insurance not a whole lot like i mentioned i'm not an insurance professional as i mentioned if you have a federally backed mortgage and you are in the flood plain or if you will be in the flood plain once these new maps go into effect you will most likely be required by the by lending agency to carry flood insurance in the discussion about flood insurance there are a couple of terms maybe use and i'll just explain those briefly some of the terms that are used in the insurance discussion is whether your a prefer structure and that means was your structure be considered a post for structure and so you'll see those different terms used in literature about flood insurance many of you may have heard that in two thousand and twelve the bigger waters act was passed which basically said that femur was going to start increasing flood insurance premiums and that they were going to become quite expensive for property owners this was primarily due to the fact that following hurricane katrina and subsequently superstorm sandy and irene fema was having to pay our a lot of insurance claims but they weren't charging what they felt was the true cost of that claim so in order for them to make their money back and to make that the f i appear more sustainable program they identify the fact that they needed to start charging people the true risk that was associated with their properties in the and mississippi that said this this is just crazy this is just too expensive you know nobody here can afford this these huge increases that you're proposing and so a subsequent act has been passed which is called the homeowners flood insurance affordability act of two thousand and fourteen basically they haven't completely rolled back bigger waters but they have realized that they cannot charge people that amount of money from for flood insurance right out of the gate basically so i think kind of the basic overview of the current situation of flood insurance is your flood insurance premiums w probably start increasing they'll increase last over a greater period of time there is a handout that we have which looks just like the the handout this posted here that in the back and it provides an overview of the impacts of this new change in flood insurance so if you have any questions i guess i would encourage you to pick up that flyer in the back  other piece of information we just want to let people know what we've been told is that if you have flood insurance or if you anticipate having to buy flood insurance you should really contact your insurance carrier now don't wait until these new maps go into effect because  a certain level of grandfathering that you may be eligible for which could help decrease the rate of increase which will happen with flood insurance rates so we would encourage you to call your insurance person now don't wait until after these maps go into effect and that the other recommendation is don't let your flood insurance policy lapse between now and then  could be viewed as having to buy a new per new policy if you let it lapse and you may have a different rate applied to your property that if you are just retained your current policy basically there's kind of two things happening there is that the these acts were passed where they want to increase or flood insurance rates then also here in richmond we're having new maps that are going into effect and with these new maps going into effect more people are now going to be considered in the flood plain and so more people may have to buy flood insurance now and there is a level of grandfathering to properties that have flood insurance right now that maybe maybe won't be affected to increases as quickly as if you were so the premise behind the flood insurance and how they'll figure out what your your rate is is they're going to be wanting to know how deep in the floodplain you are the deeper you are in the flood plain so when you're talking with an insurance person they may be asking you for an elevation certificate because they're going to use this information to determine what your actual risk is how deep are you in the flood plain how deep is your structure in the floodplain that's predominantly what they're they're interested in and so the elevations a terrific as as mentioned will help determine what your flood insurance rate is it's also used  local zoning regulations to ensure that your building is in compliance with our floodplain regulations and this may also be additional piece of documentation that fema would want you to supply then if you're going to be seeking a letter map amendment and an elevations or to figure looks like this is a worksheet well basically you can download this from the internet but as a homeowner you have to contract with a registered surveyor engineer or architect that's the professional that you would go out and find who would be able to fill this information out for you and so what they're looking for the information they're looking for on this is that they're looking for the date of the most effective firm panel so if you have one of these already you're going to want to take a look at it because if you're elevation certificate references  hundred two maps you might need to get a new one the references the two thousand and fourteen maps because the baseline elevations might be different so they're also going to be asking for what is the base flood elevation at your property how deep is the flood waters going to be at your property and they're also going to be asking you what your flood zone is the old maps had a variety of different zones on the now the primary zone is that you'll find that are listed on these maps are a those are the areas with the highest household level if you're in an age and you probably have a lower hazard level so that's the kind of information that they're going to be wanting and they'll be looking at on your elevation certificate  also they're going to be wanting to know what is the elevation of your lowest floor in your house and the lowest floor of your basement for they want to know where is the water going to start accumulating in your building first and they're also going to want to know what the elevation is of your mechanical equipment in your house and they're also going to want to know what the elevation of the next floor is is in your house and basically this is because they want to know how much of your stuff how much of your house is go in the water in the event of a flood and as i mentioned you'll have to get a surveyor engineer architect to fill this out and they'll have to put their professional stamp on this documentation for  this is just a diagram that basically kind of just illustrates the information that i was showing so what the elevation certificate is going to want to know is what's the elevation of your lowest floor that's your basement and that it doesn't matter where your first floor i mean it does matter where your first floor is but they want to know where will war to start filling up in your house will want to know what your lowest floor is which is if you have a basement going to be your basement floor they're going to want to know what the lowest adjacent grade is like differently than a baseman and so they're going to take that into account when you know if your insurance person asks you for this so they can give you a quote on what your new insurance is going to be sure sure so your crawl space it would have to me a certain definition and i think some of that is defined within the elevation certificate and a crawl space is treated differently than a basement so with that i'm going to kind of transition to kind of what you can do as homeowners to make your property less susceptible to flood damages and some of these mitigation techniques could also help decrease to start coming into your house and the whole kind of premise behind and flood mitigation and having a lower insurance cost is that they want your lowest floor to be ideally above that base flood elevation you will get a lower insurance rate if your lowest floor is at or above that base but elevation so most construction here in vermont includes a floor of above that base for the elevation which does mean this will box kind of represents like your mechanical system like your furnace so that does mean you get all your stuff out of your basement basically you don't have a basement if you are going to build something new in the flood plain cannot have a basement if you want to renovate an existing house you may want to consider some of these things like i said they can help decrease your insurance costs but this is this is kind of like the extreme this is like what you do in the extreme you get rid of your basement so if you do want to get your lowest floor above the base for the elevation a couple ways you can do it you can elevate your house on close and piers and this is they one like the floodwaters to be able to run and flow underneath underneath your house they want to decrease the amount of obstructions that are in the flood plain or you c have a crawl space and have flood vents which are shown here and your lowest floor is here and this would allow for floodwaters to move in under and through your structure and these these flood vents they can be constructed in different ways and as mentioned the whole purpose of them is so that water is going to flow in and through and around your building so if you're in the floodplain you want to build a new khara this is probably what you'd want to do our local floodplain regulations would require this i'm not going to talk too much about what our local flood regulations are but i would be happy to answer questions of people have about that as a side note the planning commission is working on revising the local floodplain regulations and you'll probably start getting notice of those regulations later this summer  and this is just a couple more examples of these flood events here they're showing that you could use an air vent as a flood event or you can actually purchase an engineered flood events they have the when they the building the other thing you could consider is that if you do have a basement you could fill your basement and put in some flood vents move mechanical system that's another way you could retrofit your house if you are really looking to get that what they're referring to as a structural elevation getting your house up above the flood  plain if you own a mobile home and you're in the flood plane probably want to consider anchoring your mobile home because you want to make sure that mobile home is not going to to move or become loose from its footings and potentially tip over or flood away float away so to make mobile homes more flood resistance resistant i want to elevate them above the flood plain and then make sure they're anchored down so they're not they're not going to  move if you have a commercial building you could basically kind of wrap your building in rubber and make it impenetrable to flood waters they the insurance people only let you do this on commercial buildings they won't let you do this on residential buildings so if you have a commercial building this is an option that you can consider if you want to make your building more flood proof and the recommendation here is the sealant would stop water from entering the building and you'd want that sealant to go at least two feet above the base for the elevation because that's where you're going to recognize the most amount of savings on your flood insurance if you're not thinking about filling in your basement or elevating your house some other things you might want to consider that can make your building less susceptible to flood damages would be and so the diagram here showing a house that you know is in the flood plain so they're saying like if you're going to replace the  floors consider flood resistant flooring so that means don't put carpet back in your house because if that carpet gets wet has to be ripped out and if you're planning on installing like a h v ac unit  don't don't put it on the ground below the b s c elevated so it's actually going to be above the base flood  elevation other things are going they can help make your property less susceptible to flood damages is making your fuel sources flood resistant or flood proof so this is if you have propane tanks you want  your propane tanks or if you have a ground propane tank outside you want to anchor it down if it's not going to become loose and to poker and potentially float away and end  down in williston or if you have an oil tanker in your basement you want to consider anchoring down your oil tank and then elevating both the vent pipe and the fill pipe to above the base flood elevation so in the case of a flood if you don't want flood waters to get down inside the fill the fill pipe and then push that oil back up and out or to have your oil tank come loose and fall over and spill oil all inside your house this was a big concern in other communities during the flooding there was a lot of hazardous material spills and people had to abandon or evacuate their houses because  their fuel sources were not were not flood proof so while the actual tank might not actually hurt your house the actual spill my make it inhabitable in the future so a couple of suggestions  for your fuel sources or if you have a system that's in your basement you could consider building a concrete flood wall around it so that it would stop water from accumulating in it so you don't have to replace it in the event of a flood or if you're going to do interior renovations there's different materials that you can use that will be less susceptible to flooding or damage from floods and a lot of this information is contained in some of the handouts on the table a lot of these diagrams and the information are from a couple of those sources so this is if you're going to insulate your house consider not using that that pin open up all your walls the other consideration is if you're redoing your electrical is to put your electrical outlets above the base flood elevation just then of course does accumulates not getting into your whole  wiring system in one of those documents it contains a list of materials so if you are looking to kind of kind of get some more information if you're planning a remodelling project getting some information about the different types of materials that are less susceptible to flood damage these are included as i mentioned in the materials in the back but it goes through a variety of different materials and basically rate is either maybe try this instead we've found that there is a program that can help cover the costs of structural elevations if there are homeowners here in richmond that are really interested in elevating your house above the flood plain so that you could get a lower insurance rate there's a there's a grant program out there where we could seek funding that could cover seventy five percent of the cost of elevating your house that funding source can also cover flood proofing a public buildings elevations or property acquisition and so we were actually interested to hear from people who have buildings in the floodplain if they were all interested in pursuing this this funding source so what would this mean it would mean that if you have a house in the floodplain it could actually potentially mean you jack your house and you fill in your basement and you create those crawl space with flood vents the water would come in through through that and that whole space  the deadline is early august and so if people were interested we'd be happy to talk with you further there may be future sources of funding into the future it like next year there might be more sources of funding but for this year we've heard that there's an application deadline for august and that it can take a while to hear back from fema so if you were interested in elevating your house and wanted to work with the town of richmond to pursue this grow funding it wouldn't be something that could happen this year and potentially be prepared to elevate your house next next summer maybe there is a cost share if the homeowner is interested in working with the town to elevate the house the grant funding were cos it would cover seventy five percent of the project cost and the homeowner would have to commit to paying that  remaining twenty five percent and what we would need from the homeowner if we were looking to pursue this for this upcoming round would be basically a homeowner signing a letter saying that you would agree to pay that twenty five percent  as i mentioned it is a fairly quick time frame that we're on there maybe future sources of funding into the future maybe they would have more money available next year as i mentioned the application would be due in august so if you are interested we'd love to talk with you at the end of this this presentation and one consideration is that if you do receive this funding and elevate your house your house would for ever be enrolled in an f i p so even if you didn't have the requirement for a mere lending organization to be part of the n f ip because you'd receive this money then they would be a commitment for the property to stay in the program so that actually kind of and the presentation that we have per paired for this evening this is my contact information if you had any questions come up after tonight's meeting and like i said if you if you are interested in that the funding that i mentioned we'd love to chat with you more either later tonight for some time next week and that's my contact information so much of this i think that  quotes that they were receiving from the people that would actually do the work and i was hearing quotes between like forty thousand sixty thousand to elevate your house you know a lot of  that is a hard one because flood insurance i don't know the details of flood insurance i could give you a very general i sense what i had heard and this may not be accurate now with this lay this passing of homeowners affordability insurance act of two thousand and fourteen was that the the average assessed value of a structure so this is a just your structure is not your structure and your land is about one hundred seventy thousand dollars and the bigger war to act they were proposing that the insurance cost one hundred seventy dollars house would be about four thousand dollars but now with these new changes that may not be a very accurate estimate anymore so if if if you were just to use just that information four thousand dollars a year in a flood insurance versus paying twenty five percent of fifty thousand dollars that's just a rig loose it's just in general you know changes so the fema has been getting information out to the piece of paper on the back is going to give an overview i think there's probably some once these maps become available for access through famous maps service it's going to be the same quality resolution is just going to give you the opportunity to kind of like  zoom in a bit more source of information to kind of to kind of compare and see and the elevation certificate to be referencing the most current flood there any other question