Insurance Education :: New flood boundaries, higher premiums

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Released: August 15, 2010

New flood boundaries, higher premiums

Source: Fredrick Kunkle, Washington Post (Free Registration)

One day your house is outside a hazardous flood plain - and the next day it’s in, potentially costing you hundreds of dollars a year in higher insurance premiums. Or vice versa. And it’s all the doing of the feds and a funky new map.

Fairfax County [Virginia] is updating and digitizing its map showing the boundaries of flood-prone areas, as part of the National Flood Insurance Program run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Landscape changes, new hydrological data and better mapping technology often alter the boundaries of flood-prone areas as marked on paper maps that are sometimes decades out of date.

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