Lawmakers move to freeze money for digital mapping effort

House and Senate appropriators are hoping to freeze funding at last year's level for a five-year, billion-dollar initiative to modernize and digitize the nation's flood maps.

The House and Senate this summer approved $30.8 billion in fiscal 2006 funding for the Homeland Security Department, and that includes $200 million for the flood-map modernization fund. That is the same level Congress allocated last year and $68,000 less than what President Bush requested. House and Senate appropriators plan to negotiate a compromise bill for the department in September.

House appropriators took the action because they said they were misled by officials. The lawmaker said the program was "originally portrayed as a means to update all of the nation's flood maps."

The department last year began updating 25,000 of the 100,000 maps with geographic information systems and posting them on the Internet. Seventy percent of the maps are more than 10 years old, according to the Government Accountability Office.

House lawmakers responded this year by directing the department's the Federal Emergency Management Agency to spend next year's funding on modernizing maps in specified counties in Arkansas, Kentucky, North Carolina and Texas -- states represented by lawmakers on the House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, including Subcommittee Chairman Harold (Hal) Rogers, R-Ky.

FEMA uses the flood maps to determine premium rates for a national program that lets property owners purchase flood insurance that is unavailable in the commercial market. The maps include data from recent flooding caused by hurricanes and other natural disasters so cities and counties can determine flood plains and reduce the risk of flooding. The information also helps federal, state and local emergency officials develop disaster response plans.

GAO told a House Financial Services Committee last month that floods inflict more damage and economic losses upon the United States than any other natural disaster. From 1992 through 2001, flooding caused 900 deaths and about $55 billion in damages, GAO found.

A 2004 GAO report found that the maps become outdated because of property development that can cause erosion and changes in drainage patterns of rainwater.

The GIS technology would let FEMA meld different types and sources of data by linking multiple digital databases and graphically displaying layers of information on the Internet. GAO said an example includes layers of a map of all the streets in a specified area, on top of the area's topography or elevation data, and aerial photographs and streams in the same area.

"These themes are all key elements needed to create flood maps that accurately depict floodplains and can be used to identify properties in these areas," GAO said. FEMA said it also would use light detection and ranging remote-sensing technologies to collect highly detailed and digital elevation data.