Some Pasco County homeowners are about to get flooded with an insurance bill. New maps just put many property owners inside a flood zone.
“Flood insurance for here, I think is a joke,” said Kathryn Clark, a Zephyrhills resident added to the flood zone.
“It’s never come here,” said Arlene Gehrke, a Zephyrhills resident.
Clark has lived on Sunshine Road for almost half a century.
“It just runs right down, like a river it runs down, but its sand [the road] and it sinks right in.”
After all these years Gehrke now lives in a flood zone after the county updated the maps for central Pasco and the eastern parts of the county.
The county went from an old paper map to a digitized version which gives it better topographic information.
Some residents like Kathryn Clark aren’t too thrilled, she says her backyard floods but for not long.
“In a few hours it’s gone, it’s not a flood issue per se as far as this property goes,” said Clark.
Clark’s one of the 8,600 properties added to the flood zone list. There were another 4,000 taken out.
“If a property is shown partially in a flood insurance zone or a flood zone, it does not mean the structure is, and that’s what insurance is based on,” said Cindy Jolly, the Pasco County Floodplain Administrator.
The county said it will look at homes on a case by case basis.
“We will have to look at where the structure actually is on the property and where the 100 year flood line is, and we are much better able to do that with these new digital maps,” said Jolly.
According to the National Flood Insurance Program in 2012, the average flood insurance policy premium was $650 a year. Something Clark said just isn’t going to work.
“I’m retired, my husbands retired, so you know we live on a fixed income so it will be a real problem I’m sure.”
Letters from lenders will likely be going out to affected property owners within the next couple of months.
The western part of Pasco County will be remapped within the next few years. That could put thousands more properties inside flood zones.