San Mateo and Foster City Residents, FEMA Has Updated Their Flood Insurance Maps
Last year, here, I wrote about the possibility of FEMA updating their flood maps for San Mateo and Foster City and including Foster City into a flood zone. The maps came out last month and FEMA released preliminary drafts of revised Flood Insurance Rate Maps (FIRM) for the entire County of San Mateo.
FEMA Has New Methodology
They have determined that a section of levee within the City of San Mateo does not meet FEMA’s requirements for adequate flood protection. Because of these changes in their methodology being used to generate flood plain data, the revised maps show all of Foster City to be in a Special Flood Hazard Zone, or Zone A.
Once upon a time, Foster City would have told San Mateo to go fix their own levees, but that was then and this is now, and Foster City is working hard to help San Mateo get their levees fixed. If this is done by the Spring of 2010, we will be saved from being placed into the flood zone. Foster City’s website has a great deal of information about this now.
The Man to Contact
Ray Towne, Foster City’s Public Work Director is the man to contact if you want more information. He can be reached at rtwone@fostercity.org or 650-286-3288.
If you are thinking about buying flood insurance now, there is a deep discount for you that will stay in effect should FEMA maintain that Foster City is in a flood zone, a subject I wrote about here. It’s worth consideration, just in case.
[...] Do you live near the bay in San Mateo? Do you live in the Village, Fiesta Gardens or Sunnybrae? Are you paying for Flood Insurance right now? It’s expensive, isn’t it? There is an opportunity to save some real money if you are willing to pass an annual assessment on your property for a new South Bayside Levee Improvement Assessment District. By passing this assessment, and you have a few weeks left to do this, you’ll be assessed an annual cost between $28.28 and $76.42 on your property tax bill. The price depends on where your property is, but that is one huge savings over paying for Flood Insurance. FEMA updated their flood maps and San Mateo has a levee issue. I’ve written about it before. [...]