Leland’s Disastrous Flood Ordinance Changes on Hold for Now

On Thursday, July 17, the Leland Town Council voted 3-2 not to enact proposed changes to its flood ordinances (Code of Ordinances Chapter 26 – Flood Damage Prevention). While the proposed changes would do nothing to prevent or alleviate flooding, they would have ensnared hundreds of existing home and property owners in costly, damaging, and unnecessary regulations that undermine property values, restrict the ability to improve homes and properties, make it harder to sell homes and properties, and introduce new insurance complications.

What the proposed ordinance changes sought to do:

1. Raise the required building elevation (freeboard) from two to four feet above the base flood elevation. The proposed elevation requirement is so extreme, it is virtually unmatched anywhere in the region. It even exceeds many island and beach communities by as much as 100%.

2. Extend these extreme new regulations beyond the 100-year flood zone by imposing them on homes located in the 500-year flood zone, even though this zone only faces a 0.2% chance of flooding within a given year. This likelihood is so low, elevating structures in this area generally offers no insurance incentive and is not supported by FEMA’s hazard modeling.

3. Prohibit the use of structural fill to elevate a home out of a flood zone. This common practice is often used when just a few inches could remove a home out of a flood zone entirely and save the homeowner on insurance premiums. Instead, costly crawlspaces or pilings would need to be constructed, adding substantially to a homeowner’s costs of construction, maintenance, and insurance. These costs are borne directly by homeowners.

4. Impose an across-the-board downzone on all property within the 500-year floodzone, allowing no more than two residential units per acre, which places a blanket new limitation on the rights of existing homeowners and property owners. This practice is expressly prohibited by North Carolina law (G.S. 160D-601(d)) and opens Leland taxpayers to expensive litigation by those who would simply seek to protect their property rights and values.

What these proposed changes would mean for home and property owners:

• The proposal to increase the freeboard by two feet would create potentially hundreds of nonconforming properties. These include existing homeowners whose houses would no longer meet the elevation standard.

• Owners of these nonconforming homes and properties would be severely limited in their ability to improve their homes, such as adding onto their home or enclosing a screened porch.

• When selling their home, potential buyers would know these homes are not compliant with flood elevation standards, very likely reducing the property’s value and making the home harder to sell.

• These nonconforming homes face serious insurance complications. Were one of them to be significantly or completely destroyed for any reason, the homeowner would be on the hook for the major added expense of elevating the home to the new standard.

• As a result, these homeowners would face reduced home and property values, major limitations on their rights to improve their homes and properties, major insurance complications, and serious obstacles to selling their homes and properties in the future.

• There has been a concerning lack of direct communication and engagement with home and property owners whose properties will be directly affected by these proposed changes. Changes of this magnitude would benefit greatly from direct communication, stakeholder engagement, and community meetings to listen, understand, and resolve problems and concerns.

In comments to the Leland Town Council, BASE CEO Jerod Patterson said, “I applaud noble intent, but public policies are measured by their effect not their intent. These proposals would do harm, lack basis in science, violate best practices, and hundreds of your constituents have no idea your vote tonight could directly impact them and their properties in a profoundly negative way. These text amendments are fundamentally flawed.”

In a lengthy letter to council, BASE expressed its core commitment to growing a safe, resilient, and prosperous region and welcomed the opportunity for engagement on developing sound public policies that support these aims. BASE will continue to actively monitor the situation.