dbarrett@vicksburgpost.com

Wide open spaces for his now-retired show horses, Wendy and Prince, was reason enough for Jack Virden to make the scenic environs along Sweetgum Lane his home 15 years ago.

His land — surrounded by trees and fronted by a wooden bridge across a creek between his property and the road — has been spared from most of nature’s fury through the years, thanks to vegetation and larger culverts put in to handle storm runoff.

“Now, you don’t get more than about an inch of rain,” Virden said.

Still, he and a neighbor on Sweetgum are at odds with the federal government and the banking industry on just how much of a threat is posed from rising waters and how much it should cost him. His lender says he needs to purchase flood insurance because a Special Flood Hazard Area on new FEMA flood maps now extends to his property.

“This is the first time I’ve ever received (a letter),” Virden said. “It has never come up before.”

The SFHA designation is an area of land that would be inundated by a flood having a 1 percent chance of happening in any given year, referring to events formerly known as “100-year floods.” Generally, homeowners are notified they must insure property against flood, fire and other hazards when closing a federally backed loan.

Proving to the government that one’s property shouldn’t be in that zone requires precise engineering only a registered land surveyor can provide, usually at significant cost. Though the expense of fighting the designation through official channels appears inevitable, Virden has pressed on, contacting public officials at every level.

“It’s the principle of the thing,” Virden said. “Why should I have to pay to prove FEMA’s wrong?”

Flood maps for Vicksburg and Warren County were adopted in November and contained more categories for defining flood risks than previous maps in effect since the 1980s. Counties were divided into sections where a detailed map was devoted for each section, or “panel,” with Warren divided into 45 such areas and printed on pamphlets available for public view at the Emergency Management Agency at the courthouse. It was part of an effort begun in 2003 and spearheaded by FEMA to update and digitize flood maps nationwide.

In Mississippi, it involves the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency and the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality. Contracted for technical work was Mississippi Geographic Information, composed of Jackson-based Waggoner Engineering and two firms with geographic information systems expertise, Watershed Concepts and EarthData International.

What has resulted is a picture with more lines and shading on areas already known to be flood hazards in heavy rain — more detail on low-lying areas along the Mississippi River ravaged from the spring 2008 floods, a broad SFHA along the Big Black River and on smaller drainage bayous branching out countywide.

FEMA officials indicated the digitally enhanced maps were necessary to re-map flood risks nationwide — particularly sparsely populated areas such as nonmunicipal Warren County.

“In Mississippi, many of the previously effective maps had become out of date. Some rural areas were never mapped in detail when earlier studies were done, and other areas have not been re-mapped in more than 25 years,” FEMA Region IV spokesman Jody Cottrill said.

“Over time, water flow and drainage patterns may change dramatically because of surface erosion, land-use changes and natural forces. As a result, the likelihood of flooding in some areas changed,” Cottrill said.

The digital format resulting from the nationwide Flood Map Modernization Program nationwide has made updates easier, “something the local communities and various stakeholders had indicated they wanted,” Cottrill said.

Owners of properties bordering SFHA’s on old maps believe those lines have jumped just far enough to include more than just the periphery.

Avoiding the designation, which triggers mandatory flood insurance coverage on all federally backed home loans, involves filing a Letter of Map Amendment, or LOMA, to FEMA.

Another reason for filing the form is to establish a Base Flood Elevation, or the computed elevation to which floodwater is anticipated to rise. The responsibility falls on individuals to fill the engineering gap.

“It’s incumbent on the landowner,” Cottrill said, adding the federal agency has made finding professional surveying help easier via its Web site. “It makes the process go a lot faster.”

For J.C. Pittman, that process began in January when he offered his home as collateral on a property purchase, which triggered letters from his lender.

Four months of surveys ensued to build a case for exclusion from the hazard area and, by extension, from paying more to insure his home. It seemingly has ended happily, but at costs that ran into the thousands.

“I’m 200 feet on top a hill,” Pittman said of his home and adjacent acreage on Sweetgum, less than a mile from Virden’s but slightly more inside the SFHA.

His monthly flood insurance premiums went up by $200 as a result of his quest to lift from the designation and recoup some of the money paid to his mortgage lender.

“I got my money back,” Pittman said. “It’s so high on flood insurance.”

Virden expects to pay at least $1,500 for a surveyor to establish an elevation not currently confirmed for the Markham Creek tributary that follows much of Sweetgum Lane, perhaps making a wash of the estimated $2,100 he might pay to insure his house, shop and barn.

Including Pittman’s, two LOMAs have been approved in Warren County since the new maps became effective. One near the Oak Ridge community is suspended pending additional information. Fourteen were completed between 2000 and 2008, with 11 outside city limits.

Warren is one of 12 Mississippi counties with effective maps as part of the map upgrade, dubbed the Mississippi Flood Map Modernization Initiative. Two more, Hinds and Hancock, are set to adopt new maps in November. The balance of the state’s counties are in various engineering and review phases.

Public meetings are held in each county where property owners get a chance to examine their flood risks. Representatives from MEMA and MDEQ conducted an open house March 13, 2007, at the Warren County Courthouse. A public comment period followed through September 2007. There, preliminary maps were displayed, but Virden didn’t see them because he didn’t go.

“Would I go to a termite meeting if I didn’t know I had termites?” he asked.