ANTIGO — DNR officials hosted an open house Wednesday afternoon in the multipurpose building at the Langlade County Fairgrounds to explain proposed changes to Langlade County’s floodplain maps.
Chris Olds, the DNR’s statewide floodplain engineer, said the new maps, which are not yet in effect, may impact insurance requirements.
“Every time somebody gets a mortgage, they pay that $10 or fee or whatever it is,” Olds said. “The title company, they look at the floodplain maps and see, ‘Is this property we’re going to be doing a mortgage for in the floodplain or not?’ So people might not notice that little line item at the title company of that being checked, but usually people don’t realize it until they find out that their structure’s in the floodplain.
“They have a federally-backed mortgage, and because of federal laws, if you have a federally-backed mortgage and your structure’s in the floodplain, you’re required to get flood insurance. So unfortunately, a lot of people find out that they’re in the floodplain by getting a letter from their lending company saying, ‘You are required to pay flood insurance.’ So this open house is our attempt to try to make people aware of this before they get that phone call. But sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.”
The updated maps are based on more advanced technology now being used to map land elevation.
One of the key technologies in use is Light Detection and Ranging (Lidar), according to Olds.
“Lidar is millions of individual points,” Olds said. “It’s flown on a plane and a laser is shot down and bounced up to the ground. Based on how long it takes, that’s how it determines the elevation. There’s millions and millions of those points in Langlade County. They’ve got all these little points that are incredibly dense — I don’t know how close those points are, but inches, we’re talking, throughout the whole county. And then, based on what those elevations are, you can draw contours through the points.”
Langlade County Land Records and Regulations Department Head Duane Haakenson commented further on the significance of the maps, saying several large flood events have impacted the county’s floodplains during his tenure with the county.
“It keeps development from occurring in the floodplains so then the federal government doesn’t have to keep dishing out disaster money in some of these flood-prone areas,” Haakenson said. “I’ve been with the county 37 years. We’ve had a couple flooding events. The flood of 2004 was devastating for the city…Then, there was also a small area flooding event up in the Town of Peck. It actually blew out the Ormsby Dam. That has not been replaced and probably will not be replaced, so that forever changes the floodplain now.”
Haakenson said the new maps will be much more accessible than those currently in use.
“These are going to be digital maps,” he said. “The old ones are paper maps and very vague. These have the aerial photos, so you can see structures, buildings, all of that really well. The old are on white paper and just show the stream and the shaded areas, and that’s about it. There isn’t much to go off of or go by. These are very detailed.”
In the fall, a 90-day appeals process will begin, during which county residents will be able to dispute changes in the maps. After that 90-day period, it will still be possible to lodge appeals directly with FEMA, the organization that ultimately is in charge of the mapping.
Olds advised county residents to look at the updated maps themselves, links to which will soon be available on the county’s web site.
“It’s important that people check out these maps and see them before they get a message from their lender. Finding out now is better than finding out in two years,” Olds said. “I think it’s important for people to see what the floodplain is before somebody tells them that they have to do something because of the floodplain.”
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