Change could be costly for some living near Mississippi River

ST. LOUIS (AP) -- A federal remapping process could mean that thousands of Missouri and Illinois residents living along the Mississippi River pay more for flood insurance.

Currently, homeowners in areas behind levees protecting against 100-year floods are exempt from having to purchase flood insurance. That may change, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Friday.

The change is due to a remapping process conducted by the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Chicago-based Floodplain Management and Insurance Branch, which oversees six Midwestern states. The agency is updating maps "to make sure the information we show on them accurately reflects current flood risk," said Terry Reuss Fell, who heads the branch.

Plans call for a note on the map to recommend that residents protected by 100-year levees buy insurance. As a result, lenders may require it. And in areas like East St. Louis, Ill., where the Army Corps of Engineers can't certify that five levees protecting the city are sound, insurance will be mandatory, the newspaper said.

"If we don't put a note on a map to alert both communities and individuals, they don't realize there is a risk associated with levees ... and communities don't develop a plan to deal with a levee failure," Fell said.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said as many as 150,000 Illinois residents could be required to buy flood insurance, most of them for the first time. And Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., submitted written testimony Thursday to the Mississippi River Commission expressing his concern.

"FEMA has recommended a decision which seems to mandate that almost all of the entire region ... acquire flood insurance," he wrote, calling it a "knee-jerk reaction" to Hurricane Katrina.

FEMA has deemed Illinois a higher priority. No later than early October, preliminary maps will be shown to the affected communities. Reviews, appeals and other processes will follow for about a year before final maps are published.

Missouri's schedule is three years behind that. FEMA officials have not estimated how many Missourians might be affected, in part because the corps has not yet looked into which levees are unsafe.

A $1 billion appropriation by Congress is financing the work.

Even in areas where levees are declared sound, flood insurance may be required.

Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, R-Mo., wrote FEMA officials that the language on the new maps "could be interpreted by lenders as a requirement for property owners to purchase flood insurance." She said the move could hinder development "on millions of acres of land in Southern Missouri, which is based on the protections now in place."

But corps spokesman Alan Dooley said it is critical to warn residents of possible dangers.

"People need to understand that they're living behind aging infrastructure," he said.

"Would the people in New Orleans not have been better off if they had known more about the risks, if more of the risk had been conveyed to them?"

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Information from: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, http://www.stltoday.com