The federal government allowed Camp Mystic, the all-girls summer camp along the Guadalupe River, to remove multiple buildings from government flood maps, even though private data suggests the flood threat remained, and was even worse than the government reported, according to documents and data NPR has reviewed.
The camp requested that FEMA, the agency responsible for creating maps that help warn Americans where water might rise, remove more than a dozen buildings from what FEMA designates a floodplain at least twice in 2013, 2019 and 2020, the documents show. That last request in 2020 coincided with a major expansion during which the camp built a number of new structures but does not appear to have taken down any cabins from dangerous flood areas.
This “asking to be removed from flood maps” is as common as people disputing their property valuation for tax purposes. In the immediate term, no owner wants to go from not in a flood plain to on a flood plain. Of course the reality is that maps don’t dictate nature’s behavior, but property value goes down in addition to property expense going up.
One possible solution is government buying out flood prone areas, but I’ve only seen this happen in more affluent communities. This still leaves some risk, though, since there will always be a threshold where there is some flood (or hurricane or wildfire or windstorm or hailstorm…) risk, but not enough risk to be relocated by the government.
Doesn’t matter why they wanted to be removed. At that point they knew they were in the flood plain and did nothing. Hell, they built more.
The proper solution is fining anyone stupid enough to ask to be removed from a flood map 300% of their gross earnings during the past decade, and submitting them to every possible inspection, since they’re surely trying to hide other criminal idiocies.