Congresswoman Chellie Pingree asked FEMA to reconsider decision last year to place much of waterfront in high-risk flood zone
 
Congresswoman Chellie Pingree announced today that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has agreed to redraw flood plain maps for the City of Portland.  The new maps remove nearly all of the area that had been previously placed in a flood zone that would have made development almost impossible.  In a pair of letters to FEMA last year, Pingree asked the Agency to reconsider proposed flood zone maps for the Harbor and take into consideration additional scientific data.
 
“The original flood zone FEMA proposed last year was based on flawed data,” Pingree said.  “And it would have been devastating to the working waterfront and brought future economic development to a halt.  I’m glad FEMA listened to us and went back to the drawing board.”
 
The original flood zone proposal would have put nearly all the area between Commercial Street and the Harbor in a “V” zone, which would have made it almost impossible to get flood insurance and bank financing and severely limited the future of Portland’s working waterfront.  FEMA officials told Pingree that nearly all of that area-except for a small portion of the Maine State Pier--had been removed from the “V” zone.
 
When Pingree first wrote to FEMA last August, the Agency was a week or two away from releasing the final draft of the maps that would have put much of the land area around the Harbor in the “V” zone. Federal regulations meant it would have been very difficult to appeal the new classification once those maps were released.  
 
“We asked FEMA to listen to the City of Portland and they did,” Pingree said.  “City officials did an excellent job making their case and I particularly want to commend Fred LaMontagne and Penny Littell for working so hard to solve this problem. “
 
LaMontange is Portland’s Fire Chief and Littell is the City’s Planning Director.
 
“Under the circumstances and given the risk of serious economic harm to the waterfront from these maps…please consider postponing the release of the draft maps,” Pingree wrote last August.  She also asked FEMA to consider additional data and the fact that the Harbor has been an active commercial port for 375 years.

Pingree’s letters to FEMA attached.