Agenda - 04-21-2009 - 5b - Laserfiche WebLink

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68 • Concems with an elevation certificate with which the County assisted. • Experience with the County elevation certificate surveying and the COMA and the need for ground frothing with the maps. • Experiences with an insurance carrier and the need to notify persons affected by changes in flood maps and the acxuracy of such data. • General discussions regarding how the proposed change would affect an individual's ability to improve one's property. Staff response to these comments and concems: • Flood Damage Prevention standards and the Flood Insurance Rate Maps will not be changed, except to place them within the Zoning Ordinance and Atlas. Property values and the ability to improve an individual's property remain exactly as they are now. The public interest is served by this change and no contractual arrangements will be affected. • The Lake Orange area's long-standing concems involve docks.and stream buffers and are not affected by this proposed change. • The text amendments were available to the public on February 11 and were posted to the County's website on February 13, 2009. • The accuracy of the mapped floodplains is always in question. FEMA recognizes this and has developed and protocol through the approval process for a Letter of Map Amendment (COMA). Five property owners have taken advantage of this approval process in Orange County since February 2007. Floodplain elevations were plotted out using the best available technology for watershed-wide topographic determinations - LIDAR. This is the same technology used by NASA and is in wide use throughout the world today. The topographic coverages found in the county's GIS are generally accurate, but not to an engineering standard. The county GIS topographic maps were not used to compute the base flood elevations. The flood elevations are much more accurate, but are not a substitute for on-ground three-dimensional surveying to determine predse topographic contours of the floodplain. FINANCIAL IMPACT: While there will be no finandal impacts associated with the implementation of amendments to the Subdivision Regulations, Zoning Ordinance, and Zoning Atlas, Section 20.6.3 of the Zoning Ordinance requires that all properties affected by a Zoning Atlas amendment and all properties within 500 feet of an affected property be sent notifications. Over $10,000 was spent to mail out 6,531 postcards and 1-,826 certified letters. This cost indudes $640 in materials (labels, paper, postcards and envelopes), $7,448 for postage, and $2,100 in staff time. However, not making the revisions to the Flood Damage Prevention Ordinance may put the County at risk of losing its FEMA accreditation. RECOMMENDATION: The Planning staff recommends the Planning Board: Receive the February 23, 2009 BOCC referral; 2. Make recommendations back to the BOCC in time for the agenda process for the April 21, 2009 BOCC meeting regarding: a. Incorporating the amended FDPO text into the Zoning Ordinance text; b. Making bona fide farming operations subject to Special Flood Hazard Area Overlay District standards, regulations, procedures, and definitions; c. Creating a new Zoning Overlay District - Specal Flood Hazard Areas (SERA); d. Affirming the various amendments to the FIRM (future SFHA Overlay District) that FEMA approved on February 2, 2007; and e. Correcting definitions and references in the Subdivision Regulations to reflect FDPO terminology.