Floodplain Standards Revisions
In order for the Town to participate in the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) it must administer and enforce standards defined by floodplain maps and model ordinances promulgated by the Feneral Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). FEMA has recently updated the maps and model standards to be used by communites in Cumberland County. The revised maps were issued in January of 2010 and were supposed to go in to effect in July of that year. Due to concerns raised by the City of Portland the adoption date of the new maps was put on hold. The issues raised by Portland have been resolved but FEMA has not yet (July 6, 2010) announced a new adoption date. The Planning Board will be working on revising our Floodplain Standards to have them ready for our May 2011 Town Meeting, or possibly a special town meeting to held before then if the FEMA adoption schedule requires it.
Below you will find links to preliminary maps and ordinances for Long Island. Please be aware that some of these are large documents and may take some time to download. Most of the documents are in PDF format and you will need a program that can view PDF files, such as Adobe Reader, to open them. There are a number of free PDF viewers available on the internet. The proposed flood insurance rate map requires that you have Google Earth installed on your machine in order to view it. Google Earth is free and can be downloaded from the internet.
Maps
Click on the following link to see a copy of the the town parcel map overlaid with the existing and proposed Flood Insurance Rate Maps (FIRMs). This map is color coded to show where the two FIRMs are the same and different. You can use this map to see if your property will be affected by the proposed changes.
Town of Long Island FIRM Comparison File size is 1.4 MB
Existing Flood Insurance Rate Maps
The existing Long Island FIRMs are produced in six panels in printed form and are available for viewing at the Town Hall. The panels that cover the majority of the island are 2300510004B, 2300510009B and 2300510010B. You can view these panels on-line and also make printed copies of portions of a panel at the following link:
Proposed Long Island Flood Insurance Rate Maps
Click on the link below to use Google Earth to view the new Food Insurance Rate Map for Long Island that is being proposed by FEMA. Note that you will need Google Earth installed on your computer to open and view this file. This display shows the revised flood zones superimposed on the Google Earth image of Long Island which you can use, by zooming in, to see if your home or business lies in one of the revised flood zones. Note that the aerial photographs used by Google earth were taken in 2001 so your building may not been shown. The aerial photographs however are detailed enough that you should be able to determine whether or not your home or business lies in a flood zone.
If you click on a flood zone marked by a yellow push pin a box will be displayed that gives three items of information about the zone. The first number is the zone ID, the second is the flood zone type and the third is the base flood elevation for the zone. We have two types of zones, AE and VE. AE zones are subject to level flooding by a projected sea level rise due to a storm surge on top of a maximum spring tide. VE zones are subjected to both level flooding, as in the AE zones, and also flooding and damage to structures caused by projected wave action. The base flood elevation is the projected height of flooding for the zone.
Elevations referenced in the proposed FIRM are with respect the North American Vertical Datum established in 1988 (NAVD 88). You can relate these numbers to the tide levels around Long Island by the fact that the DEP has established the maximum spring tide level for the island as 6.3 feet with respect to NAVD 88. Refer to the model ordinance below for an explanation of the terms.
Structures being built in an AE flood zone shall have their lowest floor, including basement, at least one foot above the base flood elevation. Structures in a VE zone shall be built on posts such that the lowest horizontal structural member of the lowest floor is at least one foot above the base flood elevation. See the model ordinance for the exact requirements.
FEMA Proposed Long Island Flood Insurance Rate Map (you must have Google Earth installed to view this file)
Ordinances
Existing floodplain ordinance.
Model ordinance that the Planning Board will use to create a proposed ordinance to be considered at the May 2010 town meeting.