CAROLINA BEACH — Approximately 2,500 structures in Carolina Beach will be added to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s 100-year floodplain designation after Town Council approved FEMA’s new flood zone maps.
RELATED: Nearly 500 Wilmington properties added to new FEMA flood zone map
FEMA’s new zoning system in Carolina Beach follows trends similar in southeastern North Carolina, where the VE Zone – associated with the risk of high-velocity wave action – is scaling back.
“Flood hazard areas identified on the Flood Insurance Rate Map are identified as a Special Flood Hazard Area (SFHA). SFHA are defined as the area that will be inundated by the flood event having a 1-percent chance of being equaled or exceeded in any given year. The 1-percent annual chance flood is also referred to as the base flood or 100-year flood,” according to FEMA.
FEMA’s mapping system uses two major zoning designations to determine associated costs to insure properties at risk of flooding, VE and AE Zones.
Approximately 1,000 ocean and marina-front properties along Carolina Beach’s north end are set to be downgraded from the VE Zone to the AE Zone, the less expensive and less risky zoning designation.
Further inland, approximately 600 properties are being zoned out of the flood zone completely.
When do the changes take place?
Carolina Beach’s Town Council held a public hearing Tuesday evening to review the proposed changes after which they were adopted. Municipalities in the area have been given a deadline of Aug. 28 in order to update their zoning designations and flood ordinances according to FEMA’s new requirements.
If municipalities choose not to adopt FEMA’s changes, residents will no longer be eligible to receive federal subsidies through the National Flood Insurance Program.
According to FEMA, “The National Flood Insurance Program aims to reduce the impact of flooding on private and public structures. It does so by providing affordable insurance to property owners, renters and businesses and by encouraging communities to adopt and enforce floodplain management regulations.”
- To look up your property according to FEMA’s new floodplain designations, visit FRIS’s interactive online map.
- On the right side of the map, click on “effective” and select “preliminary.”
- The “preliminary” results represent FEMA’s new floodplain designations.
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