SACRAMENTO—A state-funded task force is mulling solutions to farmers’ rising costs as the National Flood Insurance Program is set to be reauthorized by Congress next year.
A panel of growers, local flood control officials, state water officials and others is developing recommendations to try to offset the high premiums and new building requirements that resulted when parts of California’s Central Valley were remapped into the most severe flood zone.
Colusa County Supervisor Denise Carter, whose family’s Benden Farms mainly grows rice, said the insurance premium for structures on the ranch would be about $32,000 a year if the operation had to get a federally backed mortgage or other financing now.
“Just to put that into perspective, our liability policy on the same buildings is about $4,700 a year, so the increase is a big hit for agriculture,” Carter said during a Sept. 7 panel discussion at a flood-management conference in Sacramento. “We live with risk, and that includes farming in a floodplain.”
When water in the nearby Sacramento River and its tributaries are rising, Carter’s family has time to take motors off pumps in the flood plane and move valuable equipment to higher ground, she said.
“Flooding in our valley is typically a slow process,” she said. “Back waters are what causes flooding in our area.”
State Assemblyman James Gallagher, R-Plumas Lake, said many farms in the valley have federally backed mortgages or financing and must pay $20,000 to $40,000 a year for insurance if they’re in a flood zone. He said some structures, such as rice dryers, can’t be flood-proofed under the rules.
“If we don’t have our processing and other things we need on the farm, we’re going to be trucking more” and increasing carbon emissions, said Gallagher, an agricultural law attorney and partner in his family’s farming business.
Farmers in flood-prone areas along the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers want to reform the rate structure and building requirements so that they take into account protection provided by the current levee system and so that agricultural buildings aren’t assessed at the same rates as homes.
“We need a long-term fix,” Gallagher said. “We really need something that addresses the differences in agricultural areas.”
Source: www.capitalpress.com