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By DAVID CLOUSTON

Salina Journal

Calls and questions concerning FEMA's effort to remap the floodplain for Salina and Saline County were coming into the city's planning department Friday, the day after a meeting Thursday night at the Bicentennial Center for property owners.

City planning director Dean Andrew supplied answers for some of the questions raised by callers and in responses on the Journal's Web site, www.salina.com.

A written exemption, known as a Letter of Map Amendment, from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is proof that the property in question is elevated out of the floodplain and, therefore, the owner is most often not required to buy flood insurance. However, a decision about flood insurance is the mortgage lender's to make, not FEMA's, Andrew said.

"If a lender chose to, they could ignore your LOMA. But it's not my experience that they do," Andrew said. "Lenders do act on LOMAs."

He also said the city began working with FEMA and the Kansas Division of Water Resources in 2004, a year before Hurricane Katrina prompted FEMA to proceed with a map modernization project for the whole country. The new maps are based on digital surveying and aerial photography.

The remapping project initiated by FEMA with the city in 2004 came about because Salina had 1,700 LOMAS, and federal and state officials recognized that many letters of map change meant that the old map had become inaccurate. The project was funded by $65,000 from the Kansas Division of Water Resources and $20,000 from the city, Andrew said.

The individual Salina remapping project got swept into the map modernization project and became an effort to map both the city and county.

Thursday night, consultants with AMEC, the firm hired by the city to assist with floodplain remapping and levee recertification issues, said that Katrina, and the devastation visited upon New Orleans and parts of Mississippi, helped FEMA determine that it would have to rework floodplain maps for the entire country.

n Reporter David Clouston can be reached at 822-1403 or by e-mail at dclouston@salina.com.

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