Louisiana Parish Presidents band together to fight Biggert-Waters Act

Parish presidents band together to fight against Biggert-Waters, flood insurance rate hikes

By Juliet Linderman, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune

May 17, 2013

St. Charles Parish President V.J. St. Pierre is one of a coalition of parish presidents from across South Louisiana fighting to amend the Biggert-Waters Act.

Five area parish presidents will gather Friday morning at the home of St. Charles Parish residents Lisa and Robert Taylor in Bayou Gauche to discuss the anticipated ramifications of the Biggert-Waters Act on local communities, and lay out a road map for fighting against the implementation of the controversial law.

The Biggert-Waters Act was signed into law in July of 2012, and eliminates flood insurance subsidies to homeowners, as well as the practice of “grandfathering” – allowing a property to maintain its current flood insurance rate because it was built in accordance to previously established standards. By eliminating the grandfathering clause, homeowners who built in compliance to prior codes will be faced with astronomical flood insurance rate hikes as their communities are re-mapped. The reason for the increases is to stabilize the National Flood Insurance Program, which is roughly $27 billion in debt.

Two weeks ago, seven parish presidents and representatives from 14 parishes across Louisiana traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet with the Louisiana congressional delegation and advocate for amending the law, and reinstating an updated version of the grandfathering clause in which insurance rates would remain attached to the properties rather than individual homeowners.

The projected flood insurance rate increases, especially for residents living in Bayou Gauche, Des Allemands and Paradis – where an existing levee that was reflected on previous flood insurance rate maps was removed from the most recent maps, increasing base flood elevation levels for residents by a measure of ten feet – are astronomical.

“You can do everything right: our home was built to the standards FEMA gave to the builder; our home was above [the standards],” said Robert Taylor, the meeting’s host. “Now FEMA is coming back after the game and saying, ‘Sorry, we were wrong. This is what the flood elevation should have been, and this is what it costs.' They’re telling me I have to pay $28,000 to ensure my home for flood. I can’t do that; my home is going to go away. All of the hard work my wife and I have done to put money into paying off our home, trying to do the best we can to pay it off early…now my home is being taken away.”

St. Charles Parish President V.J. St. Pierre, who traveled to Washington, D.C., with the Louisiana delegation, said that although the fight against Biggert-Waters consists of “baby steps,” he and other Louisiana officials are “not ready to give up the fight. There’s a lot of work to be done,” he said. “We don’t want a hand-out – we want the National Flood Insurance Program to be self-sufficient, too – but it needs to be reasonable.”

St. Tammany Parish President Pat Brister who also traveled to Washington, D.C., two weeks ago, and returned to the nation’s capital last week, said the most important thing to understand is that “when we talk about flood insurance plans, it’s more than just South Louisiana, even though we’re leading the charge. The biggest message is, this is going to affect a lot of people around the country,” she added. “It’s about more than just us.” Brister said that outside of the Louisiana congressional delegation, other lawmakers – including Sen. Chuck Schumer, D–N.Y. and Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J. are also on board.

“Two solutions are, grandfathering has to be reinstated for structures that have been built to code, and not suffered from repetitive losses,” said Michael Hecht, president and CEO of GNO, Inc., the economic development organization that organized the Washington, D.C. trip. “The second is that the [flood] maps need to be made more holistic, to take into account physical features like levees and pumping systems that mitigate flooding, as opposed to considering only 100-year hurricane protection levees.

“This is one of the purest examples of unintended consequences that I think we’ve seen,” Hecht added. “I don’t think anyone thought [Biggert-Waters] would punish those who followed the letter of the law. One of our challenges is managing this period of uncertainty, as we move from unintended ocnsequense to statutory and administrative solutions.”

St. John the Baptist Parish President Natalie Robottom said that she and her fellow parish presidents have been working together to draft a new piece of legislation regarding the grandfathering clause, and may attempt to move it through Congress. Just this week, an amendment sponsored by Sen. David Vitter,R-La., and Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., that would have delayed the new federal flood insurance rules for five years failed by one vote.

"We've started working on draft language that we think would be fair...and may be looking at introducing a new bill," said Robottom. "We need to have solutions."