Preparing for the worst

At the February 7 meeting of the Saratoga Town Council, the governing body announced they would be challenging the updated flood maps released by the Federal Emergency Management Agency over discrepancies and inaccuracies.

According to Risk MAP Program Manager Maddie Pluss, since the release of the draft maps in 2020, the Town of Saratoga had not reached out to FEMA before now.

The FEMA Flood RISK MAP Program is an effort to update flood hazard information for communities across the nation. The agency recognizes communities have outdated information and paper maps which can be difficult to use. Carbon County’s maps are from 1987 and a lot has changed regarding technology, processing, digital capabilities, and infrastructure.

Since the 2011 flooding, there have been changes to neighborhoods, population growth and general infrastructure. FEMA began this process in 2015 as a partnership with Homeland Security and local communities. Over the past eight years, FEMA representatives have been going through data using various tools including topographic Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) data which provides high-resolution models of ground elevation with a vertical accuracy of four inches.

LIDAR equipment, which includes a laser scanner, a GPS and an Inertial Navigation System (INS) is typically mounted on a small aircraft. The laser scanner transmits brief pulses of light to the ground surface which are reflected back. FEMA also did field survey work between 2016 and 2017 with “boots on the ground” in the area. Individuals surveyed the ground and the terrain, then used hydrology and hydraulics analysis to model the 100 year and 500 year flood events. They use this methodology in all of the mapping projects across the country.

The field survey really helped to accurately capture specific culverts, drainage areas and other structures in Saratoga. FEMA also did various meetings with community officials over the past eight years. They were in Saratoga in 2018 and spoke with community officials then. They walked the floodplains and shared draft maps which look almost identical to the maps they have today. FEMA shared this draft information with the community and did not get any comments. They issued the preliminary maps in 2020 and had meetings with community officials, and again, did not receive any comments or formal concerns with data from Saratoga.

The agency continued on with the mapping and were about to issue their effective maps when, at their last quality check, they found a couple clerical errors. The correction of those errors did not change the flood hazard information. They then issued new maps in 2022 which is when they started to receive comments of concern from Saratoga, specifically about areas west of the North Platte.

Pluss said FEMA shares these concerns. The 2011 flooding in Saratoga did not end up inundating some of the properties showing on the current maps. The National Guard was deployed to sandbag and the sandbagging mitigated the flooding. Pluss said their modeling processes cannot account for those emergency measures. She hopes in the future, if and when it does flood, the National Guard will be able to respond and mitigate the flood waters. FEMA cannot know for sure, however, if the National Guard will be deployed so they must model the risk without those kinds of mitigation actions.