City Hall
By Donald Wittkowski
Mayor Leonard Desiderio announced Tuesday that Sea Isle City has been upgraded in a community rating system for the National Flood Insurance Program, meaning that local property owners will receive even bigger discounts on their flood insurance premiums.
Sea Isle, which had been in danger of being thrown out of the program in 1993, has undergone a dramatic transformation since then and is now considered one of the nation’s leading communities in flood prevention, Desiderio noted.
“We have gone from the worst to the best,” he said.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which oversees the flood insurance program, has boosted Sea Isle’s community rating from Class 5 to Class 3. By moving up the ladder two steps, it means that Sea Isle property owners will now be eligible for a 35 percent discount on their flood insurance policies. Previously, they had received a 25 percent discount.
“This is a very, very good Christmas present for Sea Isle City,” Desiderio said.
Sea Isle is now the only municipality in New Jersey designated by FEMA as a Class 3 community. Only a handful of cities and counties across the nation are considered Class 3 or higher, Desiderio pointed out.
“We’re in some really, really good company,” he said.
More than 6,000 properties in Sea Isle are insured through the National Flood Insurance Program. Overall, the higher designation to Class 3 will save policyholders in Sea Isle an average of $291 annually on their flood insurance premiums. Previously, the discount was $208 annually, Desiderio said.
As a town, Sea Isle and its property owners will save a total of $1.9 million annually in flood insurance costs under the new Class 3 designation. The savings had been $1.3 million when Sea Isle was a Class 5 community, the mayor said.
Bigger dunes along the beachfront have helped to protect the town from ocean flooding.
While making his announcement at a City Council meeting, Desiderio contrasted Sea Isle’s flood-mitigation efforts these days to those when he first took office as mayor in 1993. He recalled that during his first week on the job in 1993 he learned that the town was on the verge of being removed from the National Flood Insurance Program for not doing enough to prevent flooding.
If FEMA had expelled Sea Isle from the program then, it would have meant Sea Isle property owners would not have been able to get flood insurance coverage for their homes or businesses, leaving them exposed to the ravages of Mother Nature.
The new City Hall, which opened in 2015, was built at an elevation of 5 feet above the minimum flood standard.
Despite its gains in flood protection over the years, Sea Isle, a low-lying barrier island, is hardly immune to flooding.
Almost on a regular basis, residents and business owners appear before City Council to complain about flooding in their neighborhood and demand that something be done to stop it.
The city is in the midst of a major flooding study that is moving along in phases and scheduled for completion in August 2018.
City officials have warned that it will take a huge amount of money to finance a comprehensive flooding plan, including the construction of better drainage systems, new pumping stations, dikes and road projects.
Although the study will focus on a long-term strategy, a series of flood-control measures are underway in Sea Isle or have already been completed, such as beach and dune replenishment projects and new road and drainage improvements.
