Re: your Aug. 8 article, "Flood zone is likely to expand":
As a result of a recent remapping project by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, some 1,700-plus Oxnard homes have been designated flood zone, requiring the purchase of federal flood insurance.
After reviewing the documentation concerning the flood plain, I am concerned that the information that FEMA is directing us to use is conflicting and confusing.
For example, at http://www.vcwatershed.org at the subheading "Am I affected?" I was informed that my home is not in the 100-year flood plain behind one of the district's provisionally accredited levees. Another FEMA site we were directed to use, http://www.floodsmart.gov, lists my property as being "low to moderate" risk of flooding. But according to FEMA, I have to buy flood insurance if I have a mortgage, but my home is low to moderate risk to flood. Exactly how much confidence can be placed in the information that we are being directed to use when that information doesn't make sense?
The FEMA-posted flood plain map also shows water behaving very erratically as there are several instances where water stops and makes a 90-degree turn. It also carves out several islands, which could happen if the islands happen to be of a higher elevation than the surrounding area.
How can The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, on Gonzales Road, not be inundated when its parking lot will be? The church is mapped by the U.S. Geological Survey as being 50 feet above sea level, and the parking lot is 52 feet above sea level. How can the Mormon Church not be flooded when the homes directly behind it, which are mapped 49 to 52 feet above sea level, are inundated?
According to FEMA's map, the water will stop at Gonzales Road, conveniently not flood the Mormon Church, the grade school or the high school across the street from the Mormon Church, but will flood the relatively newly constructed Victoria Estates directly behind the Mormon Church?
Is FEMA implying that the U.S. Geological Survey documents are inaccurate and that their flood map knows better how water will behave -- remember the 90-degree turns on their map -- and that we should blindly buy flood insurance to protect our assets when there is no guarantee that a $30 million levee that will supposedly seal a breach in the existing levee will ever be built?
-- Sharon Schumann, Oxnard