MOUNT VERNON—Mount Vernon Mayor Matt Starr asked Knox County on Thursday for help conducting a flood plain study outside the city limits.
Starr noted the city’s west end has been in a flood zone “since forever.”
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built the Kokosing Reservoir in 1970, which helped dramatically with flood control. However, the Federal Emergency Management Agency classifies the west end as being in the flood plain.
The agency requires about 640 property owners to buy flood insurance unless they can demonstrate their properties are above the 100-year flood mark. Some owners have done so, and FEMA has released them from the insurance requirement.
“But that just masks the symptom, it doesn’t really take away the problem. It allows them to invest in their home, which is what we want them to do, but it does nothing to reduce the size of this green area and this red area,” Starr said, pointing to flood plain areas on the county auditor’s GIS map.
The city is conducting a channel and bridge survey and will use the data to run flood models within the city.
“We would love to partner with the county in running a channel and bridge survey outside of the city limits at the same time,” Starr told the commissioners on Thursday.
“Because what’s happening up here and what’s happening on Dry Creek are leading to this problem here,” he said, pointing to areas on the flood map.
“It’s outside of our jurisdiction, and we need help to handle that.”
County commissioners took no action on the request.
Upstream solutions
Starr said that besides maintenance work on the levee, the city wants to examine what can be done upstream to mitigate the city’s flooding risk and shrink the flood plain.
“We want the storm water to run into the river slowly so that it doesn’t become this massive flow,” Starr explained. “We want to slow down everything up here on the North Fork and on Dry Creek and reduce that storm water so that it reduces this [flood plain area.]”
Starr said he didn’t know the cost of expanding the flood study.
The city’s current elevation survey measures the distance from a property owner’s yard to the top of their front porch. The data helps property owners determine whether they are in the flood plain FEMA set in 1974.
The county undertook a similar procedure with the West Chestnut Street parcel designated for Knox County Transit’s maintenance facility.
“The maintenance facility showed up as in a flood plain when we were working with the the feds on that. But in the determination through elevation, it’s not,” county administrator Jason Booth said.
Starr noted the studies would help with development along Harcourt Road and the west end.
“We have to make sure that the stormwater infrastructure is in a good place, and some of this is taking place upstream in both directions, Dry Creek and also the North Fork of Kokosing,” he said.
