Hundreds in Nassau neighborhood to challenge FEMA

A Nassau neighborhood of more than 800 homeowners is banding together to challenge the federal government's new flood zone maps.

It would be the first group challenge on Long Island since the Federal Emergency Management Agency approved the maps in September.

The new maps added 25,000 Long Island properties, and owners of 347 of them have filed individual challenges to reduce the cost of flood insurance premiums or eliminate the requirement to carry the insurance if they have a mortgage. Ninety-two of them were successful in getting removed from the map.

Residents of Mill Brook, an unincorporated neighborhood of 811 homes south of the Green Acres mall, adjacent to Valley Stream, were added to the maps when FEMA raised the expected minimum flood elevation in that area from 8 feet to 11 feet.

The Mill Brook Civic Association is organizing a group challenge, rather than filing hundreds of individual appeals, said Steven Epstein, who is heading the association effort.

After the maps were unveiled, he said, six Mill Brook residents filed individual appeals and were removed from the flood maps. "We figured if six of them won, why can't all 800 of us win?" because the whole area is at roughly the same elevation, said Epstein, who added that "I've been in the community for 31 years and we've never flooded."

He said the association has been talking to engineering firms about the cost of surveying the entire neighborhood in the hope that it will be cheaper than what individuals have been paying surveyors: $450 and up.

Mary Colvin, head of FEMA's regional flood insurance branch, said "the maps can be revised at any time" by individual "letters of map amendment" applications or a large-scale revision. The latter requires "engineering analysis and modeling that's new or better than what we used," she said.

FEMA will have representatives at a community meeting next Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. at Valley Stream Village Hall to answer questions about the maps and appeals process.

The meeting was organized by Hempstead Town Councilman James Darcy.

The Mill Brook association also has been meeting with leaders of the Gibson neighborhood of Valley Stream to discuss the maps. Carol Crupi, leader of the effort in Gibson, said residents there want to try to persuade FEMA to reverse its decision to raise the flood level three feet rather than pay a surveyor to try to prove homes in the neighborhood are higher than 11 feet.