Property owners to benefit from flood improvements

Tuesday, May 13, 2003 | 10:54 a.m.

Hundreds of property owners on the south side of the Las Vegas Valley will save dramatically on flood insurance thanks to new construction, local officials said Monday.

Flood control improvements to Duck Creek will allow 1,300 homeowners and hundreds more property owners to drop flood coverage or get it at dramatically reduced costs.

The change comes from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the regulatory body that oversees the National Flood Insurance Program. At the request of the Clark County Regional Flood Control District, the agency took a new look at areas along Duck Creek that include $36 million in control structures completed over the past several years, much of it since the July 1999 floods.

The result was that 3,000 acres once considered at high risk for damage from floods were reclassified. The areas removed from flood zones span from Interstate 15 to Boulder Highway and include property in unincorporated Clark County and Henderson.

"Because of these important flood control improvements, hundreds of homes and businesses have been removed from flood zones, saving property owners hundreds of thousands of dollars in flood insurance premiums," Clark County Commissioner Bruce Woodbury said.

"More important, residents in this area are better protected from damaging floodwater."

Woodbury is also a longtime member of the flood control district's board, which consists of elected leaders from the region.

Insurance typically has cost $600 to $1,000 a year for most homeowners along Duck Creek, where floods, including the disastrous 1999 flood, have caused millions in property damage.

Gale Fraser, flood control district general manager and chief engineer, said the flood zone revisions are the latest in a progression of work that is guided by the district's master plan.

He said the risk of flood damage has not been entirely eliminated.

"The risk has been greatly diminished," Fraser said. "We're mapping to a 100-year flood."

That means that the area has about a 1 percent chance of being hit by a flood that would overwhelm the district's flood control projects, he said. The five major projects along Duck Creek are the Blue Diamond Detention Basin, Lower Duck Creek Detention Basin, Robindale Road bridge replacements and two sections of channel reinforcement along the creek itself.

The work was funded with a quarter-cent sales tax in Clark County. The district has completed $856 million of work but has another $1.7 billion to do over the next 25 years, Betty Hollister, flood district spokeswoman, said.

Eventually, flood control projects, which usually include concrete channeling and large, open detention basins for temporary storage of storm runoff, will cover the county, "from Laughlin to Mesquite," Hollister said.

Even with the flood control projects, residents have to beware of flooding and should consider some insurance, she said.

"A lot of damage in floods actually happens to homes that are not in FEMA-designated flood zones," Hollister said. "It's always a good idea to remind the community that they need to take precautions."