FINDLAY, Ohio (AP) — The slow-rising waters of the
Blanchard River have flooded this northwestern Ohio city so often over
the last decade that its residents are rarely caught off-guard.
Alongside
Kelley McClurkin’s bakery and deli, a dozen sandbags are stacked and
ready. What she wasn’t prepared for this year was a huge jump in her
flood insurance payments.
"I about choked at my new figure," she said.
About
20,000 property owners in Ohio are among the 1.1 million policyholders
nationwide likely to see their federally subsidized flood insurance
premiums rise to help rescue the debt-ridden National Flood Insurance
Program, according to a review of federal data by The Associated Press.
President
Barack Obama signed a law Friday putting the brakes on a 2012 overhaul
that aimed to shore-up the program by requiring policyholders to begin
paying risk-based rates, but for many the measure merely delays the
premium increases.
Homeowners could pay up to 18 percent more
annually until switching to a risk-based rate while business owners and
those who own vacation homes will see their rates rise 25 percent each
year until their premiums reach rates matching what building elevation
surveys indicate is the true risk of flooding.
Findlay has about
800 property owners likely to see higher rates, the most of any city in
Ohio. Other cities with more than 200 affected home and business owners
include Lancaster, Athens, Columbus, Fairborn, Cincinnati, Newark,
Kettering, West Carrollton, Marietta and Toledo.
Some of those who
will see their rates rise live in places like Findlay where flooding is
a constant worry, while many others will pay more despite living in
cities where there have been very few damaging floods since the program
began in the late 1970s.
"It’s a hard piece to swallow," said McClurkin, who has owned the Bread Kneads bakery in
Findlay for 13 years.
Her
bakery, which sits near a creek that flows into the Blanchard River,
has been surrounded by water several times but flooded just once — in
2007 when the worst flooding in nearly a century left behind $100
million in damage. It ruined McClurkin’s ovens, display cabinets and
walk-in coolers.
This year’s 25 percent increase will cost her a
couple thousand dollars. It’s an unexpected cost that means she won’t be
able to put more money into the business or pass along a little more to
her employees, she said.
No one is sure how high flood insurance
rates will go, but the concern is that they could skyrocket so much that
some houses are no longer affordable.
The worst case scenario is
that some premiums would end up equaling a mortgage payment, said Todd
Richard, the flood plain administrator in Findlay. "You can imagine what
the impact would have on the marketability of that home," he said.
Dozens
of homeowners in the city hoping to avoid the huge hikes had their
properties surveyed, and some were eventually removed from the flood
plain, Richard said.
Ken Lewis, whose grandson owns a house along a
creek swollen with melted snow and late-winter rains, said they’re not
sure yet whether he’ll pay more or less for flood insurance after they
had the home surveyed.
They’ve spent a lot of time and money
renovating the house, including moving the water heater out of the
flood-prone basement. Now they hope the potential for higher insurance
premiums doesn’t pull down the home’s value.
"With the upgrades we’ve done, we don’t know if it will pay off," Lewis said.
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