The City of Malibu has hired the marine engineering firm Moffat & Nichol to review the controversial FEMA flood maps revealed to the city earlier this summer.
The maps, once they are formalized in 2018, will become key tools for developers, planners and, crucially, insurance companies, to determine what risks properties face from water intrusion.
Key areas of interest in the flood maps include stretches of PCH, the Malibu Lagoon and Malibu Road. At one point on Malibu Road, for instance, a baseline elevation of water rising up 17 feet—as published in the previous 2008 maps—was recently revised to an elevation of 31 feet. This left many residents and engineers scratching their heads.
Aaron Holloway of Moffat & Nichol said his team would work with FEMA to help answer one of the largest questions raised after the maps were released—what was the methodology behind the calculations?
“We’ll at least be able to describe why what’s done has been done,” Holloway assured council.
Some engineers, including civil engineer Janelle Lau who has worked on coastal engineering with David C. Weiss Structural Engineer & Associates in the Malibu area for 24 years, raised issue with the scenarios drawn up by FEMA that were described in a seminar in Ventura County earlier this year.
“One thing that I disagree with is … they’ve taken … one percent of all the worst storms,” she said. “Basically, that’s like designing for the worst earthquake possible, and we don’t design for the worst earthquake possible. It’s a fraction of one percent of the worst highs and the worst storm waves.”
Council Member Laura Rosenthal raised issue with Lau’s analysis.
“When you were talking about, ‘Do you plan for the worst storm possible?’— I thought that’s kind of what they’re doing, and I understand that with climate change, that our storms are going to be less often and more violent, and we’re going to have higher tides, higher king tides, so I’m not an engineer—I don’t really understand half this stuff, from an engineering … perspective. But, just from a lay woman’s point of view … isn’t that what this is all about? That we are planning for climate change?”
Holloway replied that the maps “do not account for any effects of climate change or sea level rise.”
City council voted unanimously to hire Moffat & Nichol and take other steps to ensure residents are aware of the maps and what they could mean for their property.
Council has until Nov. 6 to make a formal appeal of the FEMA maps, which are set to be finalized in 2018.