Flood Plain Services

Flood plain surveys involves locating the position of the line of flood plain as delineated by the FEMA maps. This delineation is important for the insurance companies to know where you stand in relationship with the 100 year flood plain.

The surveyor usually provides a map of his findings in the field and how the flood plain impacts your property. Insurance companies will determine if you will need to acquire flood insurance for your property based in this information. It may be that they determine that your property is in such a position that they will not give you flood plain insurance.

Streams and rivers are nature’s way of collecting and carrying rainfall from higher grounds to lakes and oceans. When unusually large amounts of collected water build-up along a watercourse, flooding occurs. The land areas adjacent to the streams, rivers, lakes and oceans that are inundated when flooding occurs are floodplains. Under purely natural conditions, this flooding causes little or no damage. Damage does occur, however, when man attempts to occupy the flood-plain.

The Federal Insurance Administration (FIA) within the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) began producing temporary maps to show approximate boundaries of floodprone areas in identified communities. These maps are called Flood Hazard Boundary Maps (FHBM).
The FIA/FEMA has entered into cooperative efforts with other federal agencies and contracts with private engineering firms to prepare more detailed maps. The Flood Insurance Study (FIS) produces the detailed Flood Insurance Rate Map (FIRM) with floodway and base flood elevation data (BFE).