FEMA PROJECT Funding coming for flood maps

Published 11:27 am Wednesday, July 25, 2012

A slice of more than $1.4 million will be spent in Warren and other Mississippi counties to study flood risks, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said Tuesday.

Flood maps are to be updated and a report prepared for the Lower Big Black Watershed here and in Hinds, Claiborne, Yazoo, Madison and Holmes counties as part of an ongoing mapping program by the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality.

Also, flood risk data will be developed for the Lower Pearl, Big Sunflower and Mississippi Coastal watersheds in 19 counties, including Warren, Sharkey, Yazoo, Issaquena, Washington, Coahoma, Bolivar, Sunflower, Tallahatchie, Leflore, Humphreys, Lamar, Marion, Walthall, Pearl River, Stone, Hancock, Harrison and Jackson counties.

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The money will also pay to collect topographic data in the Middle-Pearl Strong and Lower Leaf River watersheds, which comprise Madison, Leake, Scott, Hinds, Rankin, Copiah, Smith, Simpson, Jasper, Clarke, Jones, Wayne, Lamar, Forrest, Perry and Greene counties.

The activities dovetail onto work completed since 2002 to update flood maps in Mississippi.

In 2011, technical adjustments to Warren County’s maps took areas less prone to hundred-year floods out of special flood hazard areas.