St. Charles Parish sues FEMA, seeking information on flood risk assessment model

LULING, La. (WVUE) - St. Charles Parish has filed a lawsuit against FEMA after parish leaders said the agency denied a public records request for information on how flood risk is calculated in the new Risk Rating 2.0 system.

Risk Rating 2.0 is a change in how FEMA calculates flood risk for homeowners seeking to join or stay in the National Flood Insurance Program (or NFIP). It has been blamed for skyrocketing insurance premiums across the parish and region.

Under the Risk Rating 2.0 model, FEMA changed its rating methodology to assess flood risk for individual properties, rather than a flood map. The first phase kicked in October 2021, impacting new policies. The second phase took effect in April 2022 and affects policy renewals.

“At the end of the day, it’s going to cripple Southeast Louisiana, and it’s going to price people out of living here, working here,” St. Charles Parish president Matthew Jewell said. “Areas of St. Charles Parish are going to see premium increases as high as 752 percent.”

Jewell said his own premium is increasing by 400 percent.

“They sold this as the next-best thing since sliced bread, and we’ve been screaming since even before it was implemented that it was going to have a devastating impact on St. Charles Parish and on Southeast Louisiana,” Jewell said.

The new model, Jewell said, does not take into account the effects things like levees, canals and pumping stations can have on an area’s likelihood to flood.

Jewell took a Fox 8 crew to the Ellington reach of the St. Charles levee system, recently completed using FEMA standards of flood protection. But Jewell said he was told in a face-to-face meeting that FEMA doesn’t even consider that portion of levee to exist.

“When you look at the grading criteria -- with some of the main points being your proximity to water -- for a parish that straddles two lakes and has the Mississippi River running right through it, we knew that that was going to be a problem,” Jewell said.

When Jewell and the St. Charles Parish administration requested information from FEMA on how flood risk is calculated, the agency denied their request. He said he felt like a lawsuit was the last resort.

House Majority Leader Rep. Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana) agreed, saying Congress also has had difficulty accessing the information.

“Up until now, they’ve basically been saying, ‘We don’t have to show you how we came to these skyrocketing price increases,’” Scalise said. “Look, they work for the taxpayers, they’re funded by the taxpayers. We deserve better.”

Scalise said bipartisan efforts are being made by Louisiana’s congressional delegation to find solutions to the rate hikes.

“I’ve been pushing for hearings in Congress,” he added. “I think we’ve been getting a lot of support to have those kinds of hearings where we can hold their feet to the fire, but also get them to show where they came up with this data.”

A colleague across the aisle -- Congressman Troy Carter (D-Louisiana) -- agrees that the rates need to be addressed. Carter said that in a recent meeting with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, he was told the program is not set in stone.

“This is not a Republican issue, this is not a Democrat issue, this is a Louisiana issue,” Carter said. “It’s an issue of fairness, it’s an issue of equity. As the parish presidents have said, I don’t believe (FEMA) has taken into account the mitigating efforts that we’ve taken, the fortifying and shoring up of our levees.”

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