FEMA Drops Plans to Expand Downtown Flood Zone

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has decided not to expand the flood zone for downtown Washington and the Mall, sparing the need for stricter insurance requirements and tougher building codes for private and government buildings.

In a brief letter to Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) on Monday, FEMA Deputy Administrator and Chief Operating Officer Harvey E. Johnson Jr. said the agency had "rescinded" the new maps that were to take effect in September.

FEMA's letter announcing the decision came after the District filed a lawsuit against the agency Monday in federal court. In the filing, city lawyers called the new flood maps "arbitrary and capricious."

Interim D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles said the lawsuit will be withdrawn.

"It was a protective lawsuit because they had not gotten back to us," he said. "We filed it at 3 p.m., and it was resolved by 5 p.m. It had a good effect."

FEMA spokesman Butch Kinerney said his agency had agreed to rescind the flood maps after the District submitted a plan to strengthen its levee system at 17th Street and Constitution Avenue NW that the agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers deemed acceptable.

"The city had upheld its end of the bargain and has been working proactively and aggressively to mitigate the issues raised in the early spring," he said.

In negotiations with FEMA over the past several months, the District promised to spend $2.5 million to improve flood control by the end of next year.

D.C. Office of Planning Director Harriet Tregoning said that if the District falls short in its flood control improvements, FEMA could reinstitute the maps.

The maps would have drastically expanded the 100-year flood zone for downtown. The review was part of a program looking at 90,000 flood maps across the country.

The Corps of Engineers had found that levees designed to protect downtown were inadequate. The main concern was the planned use of sandbags across 17th Street near the National World War II Memorial during high flooding. Sandbags have been used six times since the 1940s.

The corps was concerned that the sandbags would not hold and proposed installing infrastructure that would allow taller and more substantial panels to be put in place during flooding.

Tregoning said the city would work on other sophisticated flood control barriers.

"Sandbags are kind of unreliable for more than three feet" of water, she said. "We took the corps and FEMA at their word. We believe them when they said our risk has increased."

If the maps had been adopted, it would have meant homeowners with mortgages from federally backed banks would have needed federal flood insurance. New buildings would have been required to be built higher, and officials said the expansion of the Department of Commerce building and construction of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture would have faced new review.

Staff writer Del Quentin Wilber contributed to this report.