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Bill 151 Flood Management -Brenda Ford Presentation -Transcription Kona Community Meeting - 700PM -October 9, 2007 -State Pavilion -Old Airport Page 1 of 3 I'm here to talk about the Post Flood Control laws. Let me start by saying that the original bill, the very first bill, that was produced, was produced by Public Works. And that was to become compliant with the National Flood Insurance Program in order to keep all types of disaster insurance from FEMA in effect, we have to come up to these minimum standards on flood plain management. And so, Mr. McClure's department sent the first bill over to the Council. And when I looked at the bill, I did not think the bill went far enough because I'm very well aware of all of the flooding problems that we have in the County. And I made REALLY, REALLY drastic changes to that bill. I wanted a hundred year storm event to be the standard. I wanted water retention on everybody's property to prevent the flooding. And I couldn't get that past the Council so I drastically compromised and brought the standazd down to a 25- year standard, took out a lot of things that we can put into other ordinances, for instance grubbing and grading, storm water management, when we get one of those, and went for what I consider [o be the very minimum. And in that minimum was a 1 ft elevation increase all over the island. In the flood plains that are regulated by FEMA. I've wanted to raise the elevation 1 fr above what they call the base flood elevation, which is the known height of water as it comes rushing down that stream. On the shoreline, I wanted that I ft elevation there for an extra safety factor. Then on the rest of the island, about 98% is considered zone X, of 2 flavors. Shaded and un- shaded. The definition is, one of them is minimal flood. Minimal means anything from 1 to12 inches. That's what they consider an X zone. It doesn't mean you're not going to flood. It means you're susceptible to a 1 to 12 inch flood factor. The second X zone is a moderate flooding. One (1) to three (3) feet of water. To me 1-3 fr of water is a lot of water coming through your property, and because of that, I wanted to raise the elevation to 1 foot. I'm having difficulty getting that bill through the Council I had 4 strong votes. People in the West Side who were very conscious about what flooding does and how dangerous it is. And the other side of the island could claim that they don't have flooding issues. They claim there's no flooding in Hamakua. There no flooding in Hilo. There's no flooding in Puna. There's no flooding. And we all know that's not the case because we have flooding all over this island. Just matters where the storm is going to hit. The other misconception that we've got going on in the County is that there's only one reason for flooding, and that's inappropriate or illegal grubbing and grading. That is not the only reason we have flooding. We have flooding because it rains a lot in this tropical area. We get tropical storms. Fortunately we haven't had a hurricane in at least in recorded history, but we do get tropical storms, we got what, 36"