NEW VINEYARD – Eighteen residents voted unanimously to adopt a flood plain management ordinance Monday during a short, special town meeting.

While New Vineyard’s wetland area is small, explained Selectman Frank Forster, the ordinance will designate the town’s flood plain area using the county flood plain map and by doing that, the town would be eligible for federal flood insurance and Federal Emergency Management Agency funds for water damage.

FEMA will not fund flood damages without flood-plain management, he said. Flood-plain management involves a community program of corrective and preventative measures for reducing flood damage, according to FEMA’s Web site.

“When the town voted not to join the National Flood Insurance Program in 1990,” he said, “the repercussions were not great. But, they can be great.”

He urged residents to look at the recent Newry-Bethel area storm damage.

“If something like that happens here,” he said, “we’re done. We can’t come up with the money as a town. FEMA has to come in.”

New Vineyard is the only town in Franklin County, he said, that has not joined the National Flood Insurance Program. In response to a resident’s question as to why it was voted down before, he explained, it was because someone wanted to build in the flood plain but did not want to go through the extra paperwork required by the program.

Joining the program, he explained, would create extra work for the town’s Planning Board and code enforcement officer when someone wanted to build or to change a structure located within the flood plain. Anyone can build within the flood plain, but it would just mean more paperwork because they would have to apply through the town, the Department of Environmental Protection and FEMA, Forster said.

No one in the town can get flood insurance without the town’s participation and anyone who wants to build in the flood plain, mostly along Route 27 beside Lemon Stream, cannot get a mortgage without flood insurance, he said.

“There are just more upsides than downsides,” he said.

Code Enforcement Officer James Cahill also endorsed the town’s participation.

“Any roads that wash out,” he said, “people will have to take it upon themselves. Any money from FEMA will stop.”

While the town received minimal damage from the April Patriot’s Day storm, the town realizes that no more money will be given for future damage without the ordinance and joining the program, explained Town Clerk Arlene Davis following the meeting.

Adoption of the ordinance would not cost the town anything other than the extra paperwork involved that would be added on to the work of the Planning Board and code enforcement officer, he said.

Selectmen Chairwoman Fay Adams said selectmen have had the plan for four years but no one pursued adopting it until the recent Newry incident. “I can’t see any reason why the town wouldn’t adopt it,” she said. “It’s for the good of everyone.”