Flood-plain rule changes revived

A long-awaited overhaul of county flood-plain regulations has been revived and will be the focus of a public hearing Wednesday before the Flathead County Planning Board.

The Planning Office has tweaked proposed revisions that were tabled two years ago by the county commissioners and is bringing the revamp back through the planning process at the encouragement of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the state Department of Natural Resources and Conservation.

Flathead County’s flood-plain regulations haven’t had major revisions since they originally were adopted in 1984.

“The overall reason [for the update] is because FEMA reps in Denver say you have to be compliant with the requirements of the National Flood Insurance Program,” Planning Director BJ Grieve said. “They’re giving us time to make the changes and they understand it’s a lengthy process. That’s why I put it on our fiscal-year work plan.”

If a community is not compliant with the National Flood Insurance Program, residents within the flood plain can’t get federal disaster assistance and lending institutions run into difficulties with lending money to those residents, Grieve said.

The flood-plain regulation revisions being considered are not related to the Evergreen flood-plain map revisions, Grieve stressed. That’s a separate project involved FEMA’s revised flood insurance rate maps affecting about 1,000 parcels in Evergreen.

Local flood-plain rules haven’t kept pace with changes at both the state and federal level, but the revisions should resolve cumbersome and ambiguous provisions in addition to making the county rules compatible with state and federal laws.

The revisions contain rewrites of the variance application requirements and the evaluation of variance applications.

A section about revoking permits has been eliminated, Grieve said. In the new regulations, if someone violates a flood-plain permit, he or she would be required to bring the permit into compliance.

“It favors allowing a property owner to do what’s allowed in the permit and only that,” Grieve said.

For example, if a property owner has a permit to put 50 cubic yards of fill on his property and enforcement officials discover 60 cubic yards of fill, the property owner would be required to remove the extra 10 cubic yards. The permit wouldn’t be revoked and the property owner wouldn’t be required to remove the entire amount of fill, Grieve explained.

In the chapter detailing development uses and standards in the 100-year flood plain — now called the flood-plain fringe — the new regulations would prohibit the creation of cemeteries, mausoleums or other burial grounds. Also prohibited would be critical facilities, including buildings that provide essential community care and emergency operation functions such as schools, hospitals, nursing homes, fire and police stations.

“If something provides critical care, it seems reasonable to keep it out of the flood-plain fringe,” Grieve said. “We’ve tried to take FEMA and DNRC [recommendations] and work them into the most reasonable, understandable and justifiable regulations for Flathead County. It’s not always a perfect match, but we’ve tried to meet local requirements of common sense.”

The Planning Office began addressing the revisions in 2009. That process continued for a year, with the Planning Board recommending the changes in April 2010. The commissioners held a public hearing a couple of months later, but ended up tabling the issue pending further input.

For the latest revisions, Grieve said the planning staff began with a copy of the 2009 proposed regulations and worked off of it to further revise the regulations.

The public hearing will be held at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 12, at the Planning Board meeting in the second-floor conference room of the Earl Bennett Building, 1035 First Ave. W. in Kalispell.

A draft copy of the floodplain regulation revisions is available on the county website at http://flathead.mt.gove/planning_zoning/Drafts.php.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.