AUBURN — A city review of proposed federal flood plain maps could lower the flood threat around Taylor Pond and create big savings for some residents.

City Planner Eric Cousens said he was notified Thursday that the Federal Emergency Management Agency would be lowering the flood elevation of Taylor Pond from 247 feet to 246 feet.

That’s the upper-limit level the pond would reach in a 100-year flood and is used to determine which properties would flood and to set rates for flood insurance.

City Engineer Dan Goyette said that lowering that elevation by 1 foot would remove several Taylor Pond homes from the flood plain.

“It’s tough to say exactly how many homes will be affected, but it should be significant,” Goyette said. “It’s probably wise for those homes to keep their flood insurance. But if they’ve moved out of the flood plain, it makes the rates much more affordable.”

Cousens said he expects to see new proposed flood plain maps of the entire city, based on the new elevations, in February. He plans to schedule at least two public reviews of the maps with property owners, as well.

The new maps will be reviewed and revised and are scheduled to go into use in March 2013.

Standard home insurance policies don’t cover flood damage. The federal government created the National Flood Insurance Program in 1968. FEMA creates maps of the flood plains that are used to set those rates, and is updating the maps for all of Androscoggin County.

Auburn officials first saw the new proposed flood plain maps for Auburn last May, Cousens said.

The proposed maps made few changes around the city but would have raised the flood elevation in Taylor Pond by a foot, to 248 feet. That would have required 35 new properties to get flood insurance and would have increased insurance rates for 540 other residences in the Taylor Pond area that were already in the flood plain.

“The big concern we had was, for 540 homes paying an additional $1,500, that’s three quarters of a million out of taxpayers’ pockets,” Goyette said. “That’s money that’s not going back into the local economy.”

Cousens said the effect of increasing Taylor Pond’s elevation to 248 feet was biggest along the southern end of Taylor Pond, pushing the flood plain well past Garfield Road and Valview Drive.  

Cousens said they told FEMA officials that the city planned to challenge the new maps, and FEMA took another look, resurveying the Taylor Pond watershed in November. That new survey now calls for reducing the pond’s flood elevation.

“We’re very curious now to see what those new boundaries are going to look like,” Cousens said. “When they draw that flood plain on the shoreline, that’s when we’ll be able to tell how many homes will come out. The 1 foot increase added 35 homes. So maybe 30, 35 could fall out. That’s a guess.”

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