FEMA agrees to correct errors on flood maps

Officials with the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s flood insurance program agreed to update local maps to include flood mitigation projects implemented almost three decades ago.
Poplar Creek and Rock River watershed areas will be studied and maps updated before the final approval process starts again, possibly late this year or in the spring of 2025.
That’s according to Jeff Weiss, surface water and floodplain engineer with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, who confirmed plans on April 18 with Rock County Commissioners.
“There has been additional discussion and investigation and FEMA decided they are not going to go ahead with the draft maps that are out there now,” Weiss said via Zoom.
“They’re going to decide to put the process on hold until the issues in the city of Luverne are addressed.”
Weiss, who began working with the DNR in 2020, reflected back to the initial mapping meetings between FEMA and local officials in 2016 to update the 1970s flood maps.
The completed draft maps were revealed in December 2022 when Luverne and Rock County officials noticed flood plain surrounding Poplar Creek had remained unchanged.
It failed to reflect an extensive flood mitigation project after 1993 that slowed the water flow through the Poplar Creek watershed located on the west side of Luverne.
Local officials estimated 30 to 40 homes would no longer be in the flood plain as the result of those mitigation efforts, but they were still in the flood plain on FEMA’s December 2022 draft map.
FEMA officials later noticed that mitigations efforts in the Rock River watershed east of Luverne were also not included.
“Those two streams, Poplar Creek and Rock River within the city of Luverne, were not specifically included in the scope of work so that’s why they were not done with that (updated) study,” Weiss said.
“From what I understand, there was some miscommunication in productivity and mismatched expectations between what we are doing with the work and what the city and the county wanted to get at with these maps.”
Weiss said FEMA is committed to amending the scope of work to study the effect of the mitigation projects on future rain events involving Poplar Creek and the Rock River.
Weiss further clarified the reason for his Zoom presentation to the county commissioners with a letter to County Administrator Kyle Oldre dated April 17.
“FEMA has committed to fund this work, and the MnDNR has committed to complete it,” he wrote. “Work will begin after funds are available in October 2023.”
The April 18 commissioners meeting was also attended by city of Luverne representatives, including city building inspector Chad McClure,
McClure first pointed out at the public meeting in December about the possibility that the preliminary flood maps were missing mitigation information.
His sentiments about FEMA finally updating the maps mirrored those of the commissioners.
“From the city standpoint, we don’t care how long it takes,” McClure said. “Working off the old paper maps is arduous, but I would rather do that than work off something that is inaccurate.”