County approves revised flood-plain rules

Revised flood-plain regulations for Flathead County will take effect Jan. 1.

The county commissioners on Thursday approved the first major overhaul of flood-plain regulations since they originally were adopted in 1984.

Revisions were needed to comply with the requirements of the National Food Insurance Program, according to Planning Director BJ Grieve. Otherwise residents within the flood plain can’t get federal disaster assistance and lending institutions run into difficulties lending money to those residents.

The changes 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 was 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.

The revised rules are not related to the Evergreen flood-plain map revisions, Grieve stressed. That’s a separate project for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s revised flood insurance rate maps affecting about 1,000 parcels in Evergreen.