FLOOD02476

• County: Fremont
• Community: Florence
• Stream Name: Oak Creek
• Basin: Arkansas
• Title: Florence Community File
• Date: 1/1/2001
• Prepared For: CWCB
• Prepared By: CWCB
• Floodplain - Doc Type: Community File

TO:
FROM:
DATE:
SUBJECT:

Chuck Lik and Peter Evans
Larry F. Lang
September 20, 1993
Potential Lawsuit Regarding Floodplain in the City of Florence

DRAFT

Background

The City of Florence is located along the Arkansas River about 5 to 10 miles east of Canon City.
It is subject to flooding from the river and from three tributaries joining the river from the south,
Coal Creek, Oak Creek, and Chandler Creek. A substantial portion of Florence is in the lOO-year
floodplain of one of these streams or another.

In 1984 a Flood Insurance Study was completed for Florence, It was based on work perfonned
by a consultant contracted by FEMA. In 1989 a Flood Insurance Study was completed for
unincorporated Fremont County. The county study made use of existing reports prepared by
other agencies rather than pursuing new analyses. In the case of Oak Creek in the vicinity of
Florence the county Flood Insurance Study was based on a study prepared by the Corps of
Engineers in _' In 1990, after the county Flood Insurance had been published, FEMA and
the CWCB and the City of Florence became aware that there were substantial discrepancies in
flood elevations between the county and the city studies. The issue of these discrepancise arose
because the City annexed property to the west of the old corporate limits, in the Oak Creek
floodplain.

Flood Insurance Restudy

The subject annexation was prompted by the construction of a new Federal prison complex near
Florence. The City anticipated a need for additional housing and the developers saw an
opportunity to provide that housing. When the developers began their initial planning, the
question of which flood elevation to use arose. The difference between the two studies is as
much as four feet. which obviously makes a very big difference in tenns of site preparation.

At the urging of the City of Florence, in _ the CWCB encouraged FEMA to fund a restudy
of the Oak Creek floodplain in Florence and Fremont County under the Limited Map
Maintenance Program (LMMP). The LMMP is designed to fund small studies for relatively short
stream reaches where there are identified errors or discrepancies, where changes have occurred,
or where no previous infonnation had been generated. FEMA approved the Oak Creek restudy
in and it began in _. In May of 1992 a meeting was held in Florence to discuss the
delineation of the floodplain with City officials and the developers. Later in 1992 a meeting was
held with City officials to discuss how a floodwav could be delineated once the floodplain had
been settled on. The draft restudy was finalized and submitted to FEMA in March 1993 and is
still being reviewed prior to the preparation of a Preliminary Study.

One of the findings of the restudy should be noted because it greatly displeased the developers
and some City officials. Despite the fact that the IOO-year flow is smaller than what was used
in the previous studies, flood elevations are higher and the area subject to flooding is larger. The