FMPC Minutes 08/02/2024 Page 1 of 22
MINUTES OF THE COLLIER COUNTY
FLOODPLAIN MANAGEMENT PLANNING COMMITTEE
Naples, FL
August 2, 2024
LET IT BE REMEMBERED, the Collier County Floodplain Management Planning
Committee (FMPC) in and for the County of Collier, having conducted business
herein, met on this date at 9 A.M. in REGULAR SESSION at the Collier County
Growth Management Community Development Department, Conference Room
#6091610, 2800 N. Horseshoe Drive, Naples, Florida, with the following
members
Eric Johnson Growth Management Department Chairperson
William Lang Community Planning & Resiliency Vice
Chairperson
Jibey Asthappan Emergency Management
Dan Summers Emergency Management (Absent)
Deborah Curry Communication & Customer Relations
Division (Excused Absence)
Amy Ernst Volunteer Citizen (Excused Absence)
Kelli Defedericis City of Marco Island
Robert Dorta City of Naples
Terry Smallwood Everglades City
Lisa Koehler South Florida Water Management District
Stanley P. Chrzanowski Volunteer Citizen
Paul Shea Volunteer Citizen
Dennis P. Vasey Volunteer Citizen
Kenneth J. Bills Volunteer Citizen
William N. Miller Volunteer Citizen
Linda M. Orlich Volunteer Citizen
ALSO PRESENT
Tonia Selmeski, Community Planning and Resiliency Division
Kari Hodgson, Director for Solid Waste for Collier County
Matt McLean, Collier County Public Utilities
Natalie Hardman, City of Naples
Any persons needing the verbatim record of the meeting may request a copy of the
audio recording from the Collier County Management Community Development
Department.
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1. Call to Order - Chairman Johnson
2. Approval of Minutes
FMPC Meeting May 3, 2024, minutes.
Correction to minutes, Eric Johnson was absent but listed as
Co-Chair.
The motion to approve the minutes passed unanimously.
Membership
a. Matt McLean nomination
I've worked with Collier County over ten years now in various different
roles within the county. First within the Growth Management Department,
on the regulatory side. Most recently I've been with Public Utilities now for
two and a half years, helping to work on their infrastructure, Capital
Improvement Program and Utility Planning. We have an Inspections Team,
a SCADA Team, as well as various groups and Stakes and Locates that all
work collaboratively together on our Utility Infrastructure on behalf of the
Water and Sewer District.
So I'm pleased to be here before you today and hopeful that I'll be able to
help be a valid member of this committee.
Chairman Johnson
Do I hear a motion to nominate Mr. McLean as part of the Membership?
Motion carried unanimously.
b. Kari Hodgson nomination
I'm the Director for Solid Waste for Collier County. I've been here for about
five and a half years.
I'm a licensed Professional Engineer in the State of Florida, Delaware and
Maryland. I've been working with solid waste, which entails a lot of
stormwater management as well as other liquid management for over 21
years.
Chairman Johnson
Do I hear a motion to nominate Kari Hodgson as part of the Membership?
Motion by Mr. Vasey
Seconded by Mr. Shea
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Motion carried unanimously.
c. Vice-Chair Nomination (previously Co-Chair)
Jibey Asthappan
Chairman Johnson
Do I hear a motion to nominate Jibey Asthappan as Vice-Chair?
Motion carries unanimously
d. William Lang, Vice-Chair introduced
Tonia Selmeski
I've been here just over a month with the Community Planning and
Resiliency Division. Prior to that I spent two years in the Planning
Department with the City of Naples. Prior to that I was with Marco Island as
the Environmental Planner there for three and a half years. Prior to that I
had moved from Connecticut and was with the Department of Energy and
Environmental Protection for over 13 years where I worked in the Coastal
Permitting Program.
I have a bachelor's degree in environmental science and a master's
degree in marine policy from the University of Rhode Island. I'm happy to
be working in the County where I live and excited to learn a lot more about
the Floodplain Management Program.
William Lang
We've been running Tonia through the gauntlet of Emergency Management
training. She's been training to become Deputy Operations for Disaster
Operations through Growth Management with me.
She's been in pretty much every meeting that we've had across the board.
Chairman Johnson
Mr. Lang, I wanted to go back to resolution 2016 102 with respect to Kari and
Matt's nominations.
Section two says County membership. It says staff members shall be appointed
by and serve at the pleasure of the County Manager.
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Matt McLean
I can tell you that this item is one that I personally brought up to the Manager's
Office before this meeting. I asked for confirmation of their support to be on this
Committee ahead of the meeting.
We did receive earlier this week direction from the Manager's Office full support
for both Kari and me to join this Committee team, when they ultimately did vote
us in.
It is in writing via email.
3. Mitigation Action Item Updates
Mr. Lang
• This goes back to the items within our floodplain management plan, which
we are in the works of updating. Just so you're all aware, we have an
element of our floodplain management plan is our repetitive loss area
analysis we just began.
• We're in the final process of opening a purchase order so that we can
begin work with our consultant, WSP. That same consultant produced our
floodplain management plan back in 2015 that was approved. And so
they'll be working on our repetitive loss area analysis.
We'll just go through a couple of mitigation action items that we covered in this
quarter.
• Action ID 1.1 is our progress report requirement. We brought that to the
board a little late in the year, but we brought it in the June 11 BCC
meeting, and it was accepted and approved.
• 1.3 has to do with the fact that we need to provide public information
meetings we have this year scheduled through November. At the next
meeting, I will propose the 2025 schedule.
• I will provide that draft prior to that meeting so that we can get some
feedback from the committee directly back to me as the liaison so that we
can determine if there's any conflict of interest with our current approach,
which is the first Friday quarterly. So we've changed those dates over the
years for various reasons. And I'll provide a draft calendar at that time, and
we can go over that schedule at the next meeting.
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• 2.1 is to coordinate roadway stormwater maintenance programs to address
stormwater flooding problems. Just so you're all aware, and you're all
already aware of the June 11 through 13 rainfall event that we experienced
last month. I think it was officially titled Southwest Florida Flash Flooding
event. Through the governor's office, through their State of Emergency.
They're doing a lot of preparatory work to get ready for rapid damage
assessment within this building, in this room that you're sitting in.
• Our job as growth management is to conduct damage assessment
primarily for residential and commercial buildings. Public assistance is a
little bit different. The different divisions within the county, departments
within the county generally cover their own structures for public assistance
reimbursement. So we primarily focus on buildings for residents and
businesses.
• Although that incident was not extremely impactful, I would say across the
board in Collier County, I believe the totals that I got yesterday from
NOAA's story map that they have provided, and I can provide that link after
the meeting, but we got around 20 inches of rain, and so in a three-day
period, it was pretty expansive.
• But what we were able to do was really go through some of the motions
associated with a program that we utilized known as Crisis Track. That's
our damage assessment software program, and we ran a very good, I
would say probably the best drill. We didn't have to deploy, but we did
deploy eleven teams out in the field on June 14 which was that Friday.
• It was still raining but had settled down for the most part. I think the
number one thing that we've learned is scaling. Out to 50 teams, which is
the amount of fleet that we have in vehicles, it is going to be a lot harder.
That's generally a Hurricane Irma type Ian scenario. But we also learned,
and this was the intention of the exercise, was to show the collection
challenges for a post flood environment versus a post wind environment.
And so there was very limited information we were able to collect post
storm specifically, just looking for high water marks was the only thing that
we were really able to do.
Stanley P. Chrzanowski
I think you may be lulled into a false feeling of security, because that event
happened when everything was drained and low and right out of dry season. if
that event were to happen today, you'd be a totally different County.
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Mr. Lang
There is no false sense of security.
I would say we understand that. It was more to show the Collect Team here, the
different division staff, and the challenges of collecting post flood. That was the
biggest thing. Especially when it's not a storm surge and the water stays around
for a little while. This was just rainfall, precipitation, and not a lot of water marks
afterwards.
Lisa Koehler
After storms like that, our team collects high water marks in our canal system. I
don't know how much help that will be, but that data is available.
Mr. Lang
• It is very helpful. I did get some from some requests post event for some
data from the South Florida Water Management District. They were able to
ultimately get the information from FEMA, but I agree. And we attended
training that you guys provided at the basin location off of City Gate. So it
was very helpful.
Understand. I'll leave it at this. With damage assessment here in the building,
we've identified three different collection teams.
• We have our rapid damage assessment for buildings, high water mark
team. We absorbed that responsibility from Collier County Stormwater
within Transportation. And the third one is collection on the preserves, for
their infrastructure, for public assistance reimbursement.
Mr. Vasey
We no longer use NGVD and NAVD. Have all the markers been reset with the
satellites?
Mr. Lang
• That is a question that I could not answer. I must investigate that, Mr.
Vasey. Let me write that down.
Mr. Vasey
What is the basis data set that you're trying to develop, and what are the visible
indicators that you're using? We've asked for stilling wells and surge data along
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coast, so that we know what the search is. And there hasn't been any reaction to
that one. The second part is we have some inland data that's always available on
DB Hydro.
But what is the County going to do, and what are the data fields that we're
looking for?
Mr. Lang
• I can't speak for the County as a whole, just for the intent of what we have
for residential and commercial. We are conducting a generalized, what we
call windshield assessment. It's very simple. It's whether a structure is
affected, minor, major, or destroyed. It is an initial marker so that we can
get numbers to the State and the Feds to obtain a proper declaration into
either individual assistance, public assistance, or Small Business
Administration declaration. After that, we start getting into more detail,
specifically when it comes to the hot topic across the region right now of
substantial damage determination. So we're conducting a rapid damage
assessment to try to paint some picture to the State and Feds of whether
we need a potential declaration. Go ahead.
Mr. Vasey
Breaking this down into the smallest detail. I'd probably ask you what the swales
look like, and I'd probably recognize right away that the swale system is not well
maintained, number one. Number two, it's probably pointed in the wrong direction
in most cases. Getting a handle on a flood assessment is really going to take
every bit of that because the groundwater levels are higher, the intensity of the
rainfalls are longer, and the duration of our hazards are greater.
Mr. Lang
• Agreed. I'll share one last thing. We pull data directly from 911 for different
events under their severe weather reporting. It's called signal 66. That's
our primary data pool where we get real time reporting. But what we
identified after this event was the public doesn't call in too much unless
there's some storm surge event.
• A lot of people are normalized to this in southwest Florida. There's a lot of
resiliencies in different communities because they've flooded continuously
over the last however many years. And they also have insurance, so they
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don't want to call us because we are regulatory in nature, and they don't
like us.
• So in addition to 911 , we are looking into some API services tagging or
linking into some other programs, specifically 311 and road maintenance's
cartograph. And I think once we get that connection into our crisis track
program, specifically cartograph, with road maintenance, we can start to
see more trends on just roadway flooding at minimum. And that will give us
more of an indicator on where to send our teams. And so not negating the
points that you just brought up, which are across the board. Duke, we're
just looking at where we can get more real time data to make more
informed decisions on where to concentrate our limited staff and
deployments.
4.1 This is basically about outreach
• We do this very often. And on May 2nd we did provide some outreach to
Acrisure, which was previously Gulfshore Insurance. Wright Flood was
there as well. They're a big flood underwriter across the Nation and they
had very good representatives there that I work with very often. And again,
it was centered around a ton of information pertaining to flood mapping,
flood regulation, flood insurance, and hurricane preparedness. So it's
mainly for the Realty community and we got a lot of good questions and
feedback out of that outreach event.
4.2 Maintain active participation and communication with federal, state,
local organizations and agencies to identify flood hazard information and
enhance flood hazard awareness, including building construction
requirements.
• We'll go into a presentation after this, but we did meet with FEMA Region
Four on July 23 at the South Regional Library for our first meeting of many
to eventually finalize our outstanding physical map revisions to our flood
map for our community. We had a coastal flood map change in February of
this year that began in 2014. These physical map revisions for the inland
portions of Collier County began in 2013. So you can see, eleven years
later we're finally getting our first meeting, the result of this meeting with
FEMA with the City of Naples attending.
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• Mr. Dorta was there as well, along with the City Manager of the City of
Naples because they do have some panels affected and I'll go into more
detail in the presentation on this, but we are under a 30-day comment
review period with the deadline being the 23 August. Luckily for our
division, we have Burt Miller, who used to be GIs head at it, so he's able to
do things very quickly for us within our division. I'm going to have him look
at some of the data sets that they provided so that we can provide any
feedback. If you don't have it already, the presentation I'm about to go over
is a handout and it's up at the desk if you need it.
Mr. Shea
Is AECOM our contractor or FEMA?
Mr. Lang
• AECOM. Our previous consultant was Thomas Ello engineering
consultant, and they retired. So we don't have that current consultant, but
we did for most the physical map provisions. This just goes into activity
360 under the community rating system, which is flood, flood protection
advice, basically through different categories, property protection advice,
flood insurance advice. I get a lot of calls about mitigation.
• What can I do to my structure to mitigate? What can I do regarding flood
insurance? It gets very detailed at times, but we have been providing a lot
of these services lately. Two years after Ian, we get a lot of backlog of
people trying to get different documentation, so we assist them in this
activity.
4.5 Comprehensive Approach provides flood insurance throughout the
community.
• We have annual letters that we send out specifically to repetitive loss
properties and repetitive loss areas.
• I don't want to get into the definition of that. I've gone over that several
times in these meetings. Basically you put in a certain number of claims
within a certain number of years with FEMA and you get put on a list,
which is why we're here in this committee. We have a Floodplain
Management Plan responsibility for this community because we have
many repetitive loss properties. I'd say over just over 250 properties.
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• Before Ian we had about 50, and before Irma we had about 30. So you can
see what that storm surge event did to us. So we sent those notifications
out, and unlike the past where we got kickbacks from the US Postal
Service, we did not. That did not happen. So this was very successful with
the vendor that we went with, and we've gotten a few calls pertaining to the
letters that we sent out, but we're basically offering within that letter FEMA
grant opportunities.
• Any questions?
Mr. Vasey
Check the updated CRS manual.
Mr. Lang
• That's a good question. They just sent out for public comments for
updating the CRS program. I'd have to get back with you, Duke. For them
to be asking about feedback, means that they're moving in that direction.
But I feel that it would probably be another two years at minimum before
we get an updated community rating system manual.
• Considering everything that's happened down here, post en, and all of the
various feedback that they are requesting for the community rating system
due to Lee County's challenges lately with their CR's program, we usually
run a CR's user group through Lee County, through Billy Jacoby, the
floodplain coordinator. But understanding that they're under a lot of
pressure and time constraints, we haven't requested that meeting, but we
do want to maybe do that soon.
Mr. Dorta
Just to address the gentleman's question. There's a CRS update that just came
out last week, and there were three public online Zoom meetings you could sign
up for. They're coming up in the middle of the month, middle of August, and
they're limited to 500 seats per meeting. So if you need me to send that to you to
populate the meeting. I can do that.
4. FEMA Flood Risk Review, FRR meeting overview, July 23, 2024
Mr. Lang
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• This is again the first step and many steps that we need to go through to
adopt our eventual physical map revisions. One and two that we initiated in
2013. We met with FEMA on the 23 July at the South Regional Library.
These were the staff that participated from FEMA region four.
• The State Floodplain Coordinator was not in attendance through the
Florida Division of Emergency Management, but I work very heavily with
Yong Jung, who's an engineering manager with AECOM, and Zachariah
Cahoon, known as Zach. I've been working exclusively with them since I
came on last year and providing them with the coastal flood map that we
adopted in February and now this future map. So we'll go over scope of
work and deliverables, project schedule, course, communication, next
steps, and action items. Some of this stuff is boilerplate with FEMA.
• We've had this mastered down, but just want to kind of show you the
difference in things. So when I talk about the coastal flood map product, at
any given point in the past, future, or present, the risk map product was the
coastal flood map product that we adopted in February. So this was the
risk map program.
• These were the Southwest Florida Counties that were affected by that
coastal flood map update.
• And this was the result for Collier County. We went over this extensively in
prior meetings, but just understanding that these were the panels of our
flood map that were affected by that coastal flood map update in February.
• Getting into the remaining portions, physical map revision one and two are
based on another reality that I shared with the group. We've had flood
maps since 1979 here we've updated them several times since 1979.
Specifically, we all remember the 2012 flood map update that incorporated
the AH zone into the eastern portion of the County. Right before we
adopted that map in 2012. We got new updated Lidar from 2001 Lidar to
2007. Sometimes people call it to the 2010 Lidar.
• We tried to get FEMA to let us update our 2012 flood map with all of that
lidar. They told us, you have 90 days. We chose the Golden Gate Main
west and Golden Gate east stormwater basins, because those areas had
never had flood insurance. So we figured if we brought in the new lidar at
that point for them, at least when we went through this product eleven
years later, which we thought would be a lot sooner, we wouldn't have to.
Essentially, we wouldn't hit them with new flood insurance requirements
because of changes in the flood map.
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• Again. So you can see the boundaries and either in your packet or on the
screen, but specifically the areas in red outline are PMR two and in purple
are PMR one, and then you can see the portions that are not within there
that primarily were a part of the coastal flood map product. You can see
some overlap there as well, but we'll get into that. So specifically, PMR
number one includes Cocohatchee A, B, and C, district six, and the
Henderson Creek stormwater basins. PMR two includes Ave Maria, Faca
Union, Faka Miller, Faka Union Fakahatchee Strand, and then the
southern coastal portion.
• Not going to get into all this. I'm providing this packet and I can provide
this presentation specifically if you've got questions for the next meeting,
but we'll move on through this portion.
• AECOM performed a combined probability analysis on the provided
Riverine study to create a final mapping for FEMA risk map. The point of
me showing you this is that we currently have what's called a water surface
grid layer that gives us the exact BFE between BFE contours. We also
have what's called a combined probability analysis, our CPA raster file,
which allows us to click on the map and tell us the exact BFE within
coastal areas. What we are looking for from AECOM in this particular map
product is an advancement from the water surface grid layer to a raster file
that we can use across the County to give us exact BFE contours.
Because as you move into the eastern portions of the county, we have
BFE contours in half foot increments, and it can get very, very difficult for
the development community and engineering firms, surveyors, and us to
make the correct base flood elevation determination per property, per
project.
• If we can obtain that raster file, that will give us a lot more clarity moving
forward for everyone involved, external and internal, to assist us.
Mr. Shea
Define base flood elevation. Because base flood elevation is different depending
on whether you have a surge, whether it's still raining, and there are so many
different variables. Under what condition do you define the base flood elevation?
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Mr. Lang
• I will generally say that the base flood elevation is based off of a calculated
1% event, or the 100-year flood is what you commonly hear it referred to
as, which I don't like.
• It is the 1% event within a given year. You could have multiple 1% events,
which will eventually result in what's called advisory base flood elevations
after a disaster or a flood event. And then ultimately all that data is being
collected, and then eleven years later, they take all that and incorporate all
those changes to try to account for the lidar at the time, and then the
changes that have occurred, specifically from natural disasters and the
amount of rainfall that we may have encountered, the amount of storm
surge we may have encountered. But all those different types of events will
contribute to a 1% event, potentially.
• To give you an example. Outside of the 1% event if you are higher than the
1% event, then you are in an x-500 zone. If you are higher than a less
chance event known as the 0.2% event, 500-year flood, if you're higher
than the 100 year and the 500 year or the 1% or 0.2%, you are considered
what we would call a true x-zone. So the higher you are up, but between
the 100 year and the 500-year event determines if your x-500 or x-zone.
• The base flood is the 1% event calculation.
Mr. Shea
It's a flood elevation. No matter how it got there, what contributed doesn't matter.
You're measuring the elevation. It could have happened in a lot of different ways.
Mr. Lang
• Correct. And those floodways and outside of those floodways in Lee
County, they have a special flood hazard area. It's just that floodways are
very restrictive, in those unlike other areas, you must calculate not only the
base flood elevation... ...
Mr. Shea
My only point was that we are always going to be in that category.
Mr. Lang
• We always will be in that category. It's just the floodways are more
restrictive in those other communities. Put it that way.
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• When they say 0.2% annual chance decrease, I don't know if that means
that that would tell me that is a good thing, but I'm going to have to get
more clarification from FEMA on this legend. This is one good example
where I can at least digest this. 1% annual chance decrease. You can see
in blue here. I believe the orange is not on the legend.
That would be the structures. They're using some type of building footprint
layer. And that's why you're seeing orange and then in gray there.
Throughout, you're seeing no change in the base flood elevation. But
getting to a table very soon you'll understand these decreases.
• This is an example where you have increases in the base flood elevation.
And these are the panel references at the top. These are map panel
references which are all throughout the county. But this is just an example
showing increases versus decreases.
• This is where we need to review the data a little bit more to validate with
FEMA. What are they using as the metric? What building footprint layer are
they utilizing? I'm sure they have some national data set that they're
utilizing, or maybe they got something from the property appraiser. But at
the end of the day, this is good news overall.
• The City of Naples has some changes, doesn't look like they have any net
change in their SFHA to non SFHA and vice versa. But for us specifically,
this is good news. And it makes sense considering how much area in the
County, specifically the eastern portions, are being updated with this
physical map revision. So I would say for the City of Naples, it's a little bit
less impact and is probably the reason you're not seeing much of a
change. But for us, it's a big change, and we like to see a negative number
when it comes to this.
Chairman Johnson
There are 11 ,721 footprints being removed from the special flood hazard area. Is
a footprint a building or a unit or a property? Could you explain a little bit more?
Mr. Lang
• It would be a structure, essentially different types of structures. It is a
structure versus a property.
Chairman Johnson
Over 11 ,000 is significant
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Mr. Lang
• Just structures that fall within that panel and how are they affected based
off various things, but primarily Lidar.
• Okay, this is where we start getting into questions with FEMA specifically,
we're trying to project out what we need to do for the community. So our
flood risk review meeting again was on July 23. You see a big jump from
July to December.
• Basically, we'll provide the 30-day response by August 23.
• Then there'll be a three-to-four-month period where they take those
comments while still finalizing the map.
• We will then get what's called a preliminary flood map, like we did the
coastal flood map in 2020. We will then hold open house meetings with the
public in various strategic locations throughout the County.
• Considering this map update will affect Collier County, Unincorporated
Collier County primarily, and the City of Naples, I would guess that we
would have at least two map meetings, one for the City of Naples and one
for Unincorporated.
• But it also depends on the affected areas. And when we look at the data
that's been provided to us, if we start seeing concentrations of BFE
increases, like Immokalee or Ave Maria, we may look at having those
meetings at other areas in the further eastern portions of the County where
traditionally we would meet at the South Regional Library as a Central
Point for the County. So again, you see the preliminary maps are provided
in December, tentatively. Then we will have our open map meetings
tentatively in February.
• And then you can see with the appeal period, that can drag out for quite a
bit of time depending on how many appeals they get from Collier County,
this could go into late fall of 2025 for an adopted, finalized map. This is just
a timeline version graph of how that works. So again, this is a little
confusing. Between the FRR to the preliminary map issuance, it looks very
short, but again, from July to December is what they're projecting, open
houses occurring in early 2025, this appeal period.
• And then we would obtain the Soma letter. It's not mentioned here, but it
would probably be at the beginning of this resolve, appeals and finalized
map product. Then we would get our letter of final determination. Excuse
me, that is our soma. Our summary of map action is included in this LFD or
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the letter of final determination. And then those effective maps would
probably be towards the end of 2025.
• Let me just clarify one more thing. We are hoping that unlike the coastal
flood map product that went through Covid-19 we won't have such a lag of
four years between a preliminary map and a finalized map like we did. So
usually it's a lot faster. We're looking at a one year, one-and-a-half-year
process here versus a four-year process theory.
• And this just tells the difference between an appeal and a comment.
They're asking for comments from us currently. An appeal would be
something generally from an engineering firm hired by someone. I'll give
you an example. Mark did an appeal for the coastal flood map product and
that dragged that out for a little bit.
• But that's the difference between an appeal and a comment. An appeal is
an official kind of submission with engineering data to say, hey, we believe
that the flood zone, the BFE, or the flood risk in general is either too low or
too high in this location. And here's why.
• This just goes into what happens at open house meetings across the
Nation and this is the general schedule across the board for FEMA.
• This talks about the different flood zones. I would just say back to the
context of the discussion of the 100-year versus the 500-year. An example
here is low risk would be higher than 100 year and 500-year. Medium risk
would be between 100-year and 500-year. It would be between that on
your elevations and then high risk would be where you're a-zone or v-zone.
• You're not x or x-500 basically. This is just stating that if you are in a high-
risk flood zone or you are remapped into a high-risk flood zone and you
have an FDIC backed mortgage, you will be notified that you have to get
flood insurance within 45 days or they will force place your escrow. I have
been helping homeowners consistently with this issue since February.
• So we're very familiar with this chart. We're in the red.
We like to assume that it's just a safe assumption.
• This is showing the link between this and the result which is our local
mitigation strategy plan.
• Collier County is in the purple, which means that we have a requirement to
update our LMS by the beginning of 2025. That is being spearheaded by
Amy Howard, the staff liaison for emergency management. She is the new
Rick Zyvoloski, if you remember Rick Zyvoloski. And she's been with the
County for quite a while in emergency management. She was our human
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services program manager or our special needs program manager. She
ran all the special needs shelter expectations during Hurricane Ian. She
works with Jibey, very knowledgeable.
• We are down to getting critical infrastructure to WSP. They're working with
WSP as well for their threat assessment. So we've got to get a threat
assessment done.
• We're under a bit of a time crunch with the LMS. I'm the chairperson for the
LMS, and so I'm working with her to give her that information.
• Not going to get into risk communication. We do that quite enough with the
community, but basically, again, we met with them on the 23rd. They're
asking for comments back by August, and then they're claiming they'll do a
30-day quality review. But then the preliminary product comes out in
December. So it sounds like to me they have some time requirements
beyond just the 30-day quality review before they can get to the
preliminary map where they're finalizing some of their engineering
environmental portions.
• When we get that letter of final determination, that is where we start to see
the potential effects on letters of map change through that summary of
map action letter. And then the day after the map is adopted, we will get
what's called a revalidation letter. And that is the official document saying
these passed muster and these did not.
• These are the contacts.
Comment - Mr. Bills
Is FEMA pricing flood insurance based on the preliminary map, or will they adjust
based on the final map or something in between.
Mr. Lang
• Pricing off the effective map, not the preliminary map. The only way they
could do that with a preliminary map would be if we had in our flood
ordinance that we adopt preliminary maps before finalized. And we're not
going to do that. But also understand, and this is an adjustment from the
legacy program of the FEMA flood insurance program or the National
Flood Insurance program, is that the flood zone is not the driver anymore
it's several factors to not only include the base flood elevation, but the flood
zone. If your flood zone changes from x to a or v, that is only a mechanism
for the mortgage lender to decide whether you require flood insurance. So
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the flood zone is not so much of an issue if it changes, but it is the base
flood elevation, if it increases, it will potentially affect your flood insurance
premium annually.
5. Committee Correspondence
Chairman Johnson
This is an email from Dennis Vasey on June 2, 2024, titled
Rethink Coastal Development in light of rising sea levels?
I came across this article that highlights the urgency of considering the long-term
impacts of climate change on our coastal communities. While beach
renourishment provides a temporary solution, it's becoming a costly bandaid. We
should be reevaluating permitting for new development in flood prone areas.
Long term sustainability should be a key factor in approving construction
projects.
William Lang
He's asking, I think collectively, our opinion as the County. Is this an agenda item
for the FMPC? It's here now. Yes, it is. If it isn't, then the community can ensure
our coastal areas remain vibrant places.
• In my response I included Andrew Miller with Coastal Zone Management,
and he provided some information back on a particular individual that he is
indicating might be able to shed some more light on this. I will share that
email as well after this meeting, but I really would like Coastal Zone
Management or the Coastal Advisory Committee to provide feedback as
well. That would be, I think, the appropriate place for that currently.
• I think once we start getting through some of our studies here in
Community Planning and Resiliency, specifically our VA study, our
repetitive loss area analysis, our floodplain management plan, our US
Army Corps of Engineer Coastal Storm Risk Management study, I think
that we will be able to then start looking at our resiliency plan as a whole
and be able to address many of these factors. One of the other things that
we're identifying, and just so everyone is aware, we were initially going to
run the FDEP's vulnerability assessment through this committee as a
subcommittee. What we determined was that due to the repetitive loss
area analysis that is coming up for us, for this group, which is part of our
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job, to update our Floodplain Management Plan, we redirected that
subcommittee to the LMS working group, and for various reasons. The
primary reason is we don't want to burden this committee with another
project in addition to the RLAA, which is our primary objective. But number
two is that the LMS working group has a large majority of internal and
external stakeholders that can provide us with a lot of infrastructure
information that we need, specifically government entities.
• In our LMS meeting, our last one that we held on the 19 July we had a
subcommittee meeting. Even though the LMS meeting is public, it wasn't
considered our first VA public meeting. We have one meeting that we must
conduct with the public, but it was really our initial kind of grounding
meeting to say hey, I need critical infrastructure from the various entities
here. What we're discovering, unlike public utilities, I will speak very fondly
of public utilities, is that many groups in the County and outside the County
don't have a robust asset management group, and we need that
throughout the County. I think Mr. Vasey has talked about the community
tracking system, if I'm not mistaken with that terminology, the CTS, and
essentially what we would like to see, and I I'm speaking accurately based
off my Director Mr. Mason's agreeance, is that we would like to be the one
stop shop at the end of the day for critical infrastructure.
• At minimum. I'll be very blunt, I'm getting tired of not having a living,
breathing critical infrastructure list. And again, Public Utilities is the
exception. I've been working with Drew Cody, currently Patrick Thier, and
they're amazing. They have their stuff together, they have the information,
they can provide it in a spatial data format for the vendor, which is very
easy.
• But we need, and I'll give credit to South Florida Water Management
District as well, because they've been working directly with our vendor
without us even having to get involved. So not to speak ill of any other
division, everyone has their stove pipes and they're working very hard, and
we have had a lot of feedback from different divisions, but I'm not seeing
something that has stood the test of time. We're either going to have to
decide if we're going to hire a consultant to get it done, or whether we'll do
it ourselves. We'd like to do it ourselves because even with a consultant
you do all the work anyways. We'd like to take ownership, but we're going
to have to agree to a universal template that we can move forward with so
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that if anybody needs this for any study moving forward throughout the
county, they can tap us on the shoulder.
Mr. Vasey
I rely on big cyber spaces and there are a lot of things that I can imagine, and I
can't imagine, but I would like to see this massive amount of data considered.
Now, I know there are firewalls out there and there are other restrictions, but my
heavens, the change that we're observing and ours is just a recent one, the last
30 years, areas that we've taken photographs of, we don't see the same data in
the county, but there's a photograph of what it was. And it's not too hard to figure
out what it's telling you. It's telling you that there are massive changes taking
place.
And they're almost, we're almost unable to keep up with them simply because
they're that fast. But then again, they've been coming for a hundred years, and
they just aren't sexy enough for us to want to grab ahold of them and give them a
big hug. And we've got to do that now.
Lisa Koehler
The Water Management District has also been studying rainfall and how that is
changing over the last few years. We've had a study with the University of Miami,
and there was a presentation to our Big Cypress Basin Board earlier this spring,
if anybody cares to go and watch it. But it's still in the process. But they are
preliminary results. Our rainfall is changing both in the amounts, its intensity, in
its duration.
So whenever we're looking at our infrastructure and County Standards, State
Permitting Standards for how much rain you need to hold back for certain
flooding, that is going to change. So a heads up that that's out there, it's being
studied and it's coming.
Comment - Mr. Chrzanowski
I was born and raised in Bayonne, New Jersey, right across the Hudson from
New York City. And I go to their website, I keep in touch, and I see they have a
lidar and I pop it up and I look. I'm zooming out and it's within 3ft. and I wonder
why. So you know that contour interval.
And I keep zooming out and I see it's not just them, it's all North Jersey and then
all of New York. And then I see the whole northeast and you can take the pointer
and put it anywhere and it'll tell you what the elevation is. And I keep zooming out
Page 21 of 22
and I pan down to Florida and there's Naples and I go to different and it's
accurate within a few feet. But you know, when you get down to Naples 3ft.,
that's 3 miles in the difference. So I wonder how far it goes.
And I keep zooming out. And I go to the Barringer meteor crater out in Arizona
and I go to Mount Everest, which tells me it's 29,000ft. tall, it's got the whole
world. And every time you go to a different area, the legend in the upper right
hand corner changes by the area you pick, and it picks the lowest point and the
highest point automatically and it prints a lidar that is for that area, the Grand
Canyon. It's amazing that they can do this for the whole world.
I sent an email to the Board suggesting they find the person that did this.
And we have a lidar that's accurate within a 10th of a ft. for most of the County.
When we ground truthed it, it was the 2007, 2008. It's deadly accurate.
We went to intersections that, you know, an intersection doesn't change from
year to year, ten years, unless you have post glacial rebound or subsidence or
something, that ground is not going to change. The 2007 lidar, McKenna and I
checked it when it came out with the county surveyor. And we went to
intersections where you can find a striping and go to the exact point, pick that
point, check it, and everything was within a tent. We were amazed.
Whoever wrote that program that does it for the whole world, you would think
they could do it for Collier County, 2000 sq mi. You pick a square and you zoom.
You know, once you zoom in, it gives you the lidar for that area. And that would
be so handy for a lot of what we do because I still get people call me up and ask
me questions about drainage even though I've been retired for 15 years.
And it used to be I could get a lidar from the County, but now they won't do you a
lidar. I wrote the letter to the Board and did not get any response at all. I don't
see why they can't do this.
I just figured I'd get on record to say that it is possible to do. I've seen it done. If
you go to the Bayonne, New Jersey website, look at the lidar, zoom out, look at
the world, you will be fascinated by what you can find and, and that's a lot more
data than would be in Collier County.
Mr. Lang
Page 22 of 22
I've been working with our GIS Manager, Jason Regula. We're trying to get a
cost on that. I spoke with him a day or two ago and he requested a price from our
ESRI rep.
Comment - Mr. Chrzanowski
Tell him thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Chairman Johnson
Welcome, Matt and Kari. Thank you for joining.
Note: Kari Hodgson temporary left the meeting for approximately 15 minutes
(9:30am — 9:45am) AND Jibey Asthappan left the meeting for approximately 3
minutes (9:50am — 9:53am), per Chairperson Johnson's record keeping during
the meeting.
6. Adjourn
Motion to adjourn by Mr. Bills
Seconded by Mr. Miller
Meeting adjourned at 10:13 a.m.
COLLIER COUNTY
FLOODPLAIN MANAGEMENT PLANNING COMMITTEE
Eric Joh s , Chairman
These minutes were approved by the Committee/Chairman on 11/01/2024.
(choose one) as presented , or as amended X