The Federal Emergency Management Agency has offered to withdraw proposed flood maps for a portion of Cumberland and York Counties, Sen. Susan Collins announced today.
Collins in a press release said that a FEMA official telephoned her today and offered to withdraw the maps.
Collins the official pledged to increase collaboration with affected communities to help ensure that revised maps appropriately reflect the risk of flooding along Maine’s coastline and establish a comprehensive strategy to mitigate flood risks.
The decision ends the current appeal process.
In her Sept. 23 letter to FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate, Collins wrote that the failure to reflect local information in the proposed flood maps had placed local communities and residents in the “untenable position” of appealing maps that FEMA already knows will require modification. She said it is “unfair to ask these municipalities and residents to shoulder the costly and time-consuming burden of drafting appeals against maps that FEMA knows do not represent the most accurate scientific and technical data.”
More information about the decision will be available in Saturday’s Portland Press Herald.
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