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<br />levees and below dams; and developing alternatives to basements in floodplains, especially in wind <br />hazard areas, <br /> <br />· The National Flood Insurance Program should be modified to provide an insurance policy benefit <br />for coastal erosion and mudslides only where those hazards are clearly mapped and regulated. <br /> <br />. A better way should be found to determine flood risk for flood insurance purposes, so that <br />information useful for conummity planning and floodplain management can be left on flood maps, <br /> <br />· Floodplain managers and the insurance industry should continue to improve their working <br />relationships, State and local floodplain managers are in a good position to advise citizens about <br />the basics of insurance availability and to promote the wisdom of the land management/insurance <br />interaction of the National Flood Insurance Program, Continued efforts should be made to <br />educate floodplain managers about the insurance aspects of the program, and insurance agents <br />about floodplain management. <br /> <br />· Encouragement and support should be given by federal agencies and states for professional <br />certification programs for floodplain managers, adjusters, agents, and others, <br /> <br />Waiting Period <br /> <br />As recommended by the ASFPM and others, the waiting period for a flood insurance policy to <br />become effective was lengthened from five to 3D days under the National Flood Insurance Reform <br />Act of 1994, thus discouraging the practice of some individuals of waiting to purchase a policy until <br />a flood forecast was issued, <br /> <br />· The ASFPM continues to support the 3D-day waiting period. <br /> <br />Flood Insurance Premium Discounts <br /> <br />There exist a number of inequities with current flood insurance premiwns, Three types of discounts <br />(subsidized by other premiwn payments) are notable, but it must be remembered that all three are <br />internal to the National Flood Insurance Program, that is, paid for by other flood insurance <br />policyholders and not by federal taxpayers, <br /> <br />First, because the National Flood Insurance Program is a national program, the nation-wide actuarial <br />rates based on risk may not reflect the true risk in a given location. The effect is an unintentional <br />discount resulting from the fact that not all flood hazards are equal--differences in precipitation <br />patterns, flood depths and velocities, topography, and channel conditions produce differing ranges <br />of hazardousness. <br /> <br />The second, most well-known discount is the grandfathering that results in lowered pre-FIRM (that <br />is, before the issuance of the community's Flood Insurance Rate Map) insurance rates (now being <br />studied by the Federal Emergency Management Agency), For the purpose of determining flood <br />insurance premiums, buildings are categorized and rated as either pre-FIRM construction or post- <br />FIRM construction. The post-FIRM rates are for those structures built after flood hazard mapping <br />was done and the communities or counties passed the necessary ordinances and instituted <br />accompanying pennitting systems with development standards, The pre-FIRM rates are for those <br /> <br />Association of State Floodplain Managers <br /> <br />-41- <br /> <br />National Flood Programs in Review 2000 <br />