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Rising hopes of raising homes dashed

Flood Recovery
Sunday, November 4, 2018

Another round of applications for flood recovery assistance has closed, and while homeowners who applied with the city can expect funds for unmet needs or repair work that needs to be redone, elevating homes more than is required is not an option.

There is a grant from the Federal Emergency Management Program that is administered by the Texas Water Development Board and can be used to raise eligible structures after a flood. Flood Mitigation Assistance funds can be used to “reduce or eliminate the risk of repetitive flood damage to buildings and structures insured under the National Flood Insurance Program,” according to the grant description. Such funds were used to raise some previously homes along the Guadalupe River in Guadalupe County.

San Marcos considered the flood mitigation assistance option, engineering chief Laurie Moyer told the San Marcos City Council at a work session meeting on Oct. 16, but there were problems with eligibility, feasibility and the cost-benefit ratio.

Moyer mentioned that at public meetings about the city’s Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Relief (CDBG-DR) infrastructure projects, the idea of raising houses instead of spending millions on berms and new channels had come up in discussions.

“We did submit a FEMA request for hazard mitigation funding” right after the 2015 floods, Moyer said, “and we went through the benefit-cost analysis for Blanco Gardens. … Actually, the elevation of homes had the lowest benefit-to-cost ratio on it.”

City spokesman Trey Hatt said that information from Guadalupe County indicated that the cost of raising a 1,000- to 1,100-square-foot home would range from about $135,500 to $178,000, depending on the type of foundation. Those numbers did not improve the cost-benefit ratio.

Moyer said that many homeowners had concerns other than just keeping their houses above water.

“The issue that we heard after the flood … is the financial impact is not just to folks’ homes, but also to their cars and to other property they have,” Moyer said. “And that’s why elevation was not as appealing to our residents.”

Moreover, there are many qualifications for eligibility for the funding, Moyer said. The applicants would have to have owned the home during the flood event, pass a duplication of benefits check and, in many cases, have maintained flood insurance.

“If you’ve taken federal dollars before and you haven’t maintained flood insurance,” Moyer said, “you are no longer eligible to take federal dollars again.”

Moyer also pointed out that structural issues could arise if older homes are raised, so elevating some of the homes in Blanco Gardens could end up creating more problems.

The city is moving forward with its CDBG-DR infrastructure project plans, including the Blanco Riverine Project, which is meant to keep water from the Blanco River out of the Blanco Gardens neighborhood. Residents of Martindale, downstream from the confluence of the Blanco and San Marcos rivers, have voiced concerns that engineering projects affecting the path or speed of the Blanco’s waters could end up flooding their homes. One of the conditions of the $34 million in CDBG-DR money is that flood mitigation projects cannot worsen conditions for any other area.

The city has held two community meetings so far on the Blanco Riverine Project. The next step is a preliminary engineering report, expected in January, and another public hearing in March. The city is considering building a berm, a diversion channel and a partial bypass channel for the Blanco to mitigate flooding in Blanco Gardens.

San Marcos Record

(512) 392-2458
P.O. Box 1109, San Marcos, TX 78666