The Wasco County Planning Commission met yesterday to take up a mandatory edict by FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Though FEMA’s job is to deal with emergency situations, one of their enforcement tools is being used to protect endangered species. Here’s how it works:
Some of those endangered species are fish, including several whose habitat includes the Columbia River.
FEMA, as part of its portfolio, issues flood insurance.
Banks won’t loan money to people who want to build or buy in a flood plain.
So FEMA has used that lever to mandate that local authorities issue stringent new regulations under threat of not renewing current policies or issuing any new policies in that area.
What’s more, they did so on a ridiculously short timeline. City and county governments across the country have until December 1 to make one of three choices. One – implement the new stringent regulations. They include a requirement that if you add on to a building in a flood plain, you have to mitigate that change by adding an equal amount of land back in the flood plain, primarily by excavating that land until it’s below the flood line. And if you can’t do that on your own property, you have to double the amount of mitigation off-site.
That could cause quite a problem here as Commissioner Mike Davis explains:
“If we have a developer who wants to build a home or whatever into this wetlands, they have to move a piece of that wetlands to someplace else, where are they going to do it in one of the driest counties in the state?”
The second option would be to decide each property on a case-by-case basis. This involves hydrological and other experts that would strain the budget of the agency or any homeowner.
Or three – choose to prohibit any development in the flood plain entirely.
On top of that, FEMA will be coming out with a new flood plain map of the county in the next couple of years that will expand the areas designated as flood plain.
Members of the county planning commission reluctantly, and with many misgivings, voted unanimously to apply the new model regulations under the threat.
Wasco County is already working with other counties and cities to potentially mount a legal challenge to the new requirements.
Planning Commission Chair Marcus Swift summed it up the feeling of the Commission:
“I agree with everything that’s been said. I think it’s a terrible situation we’ve been put in, past the common sense. I want to put on the record that I support the county pursuing litigation or dealing with the coalition on this to block it, and hopefully they’re successful, but if not, my hope is that folks will continue to be involved in this flood plain map process where there are some opportunities for input or appeal, to go through that process.”
Wasco County Commissioners will take up the recommendation from the planning commission at their meetings on December 4 and 18.