Paradise Residents Grapple with Change in Flood Zone

Residents in the Paradise community of Catonsville have been grappling with necessity of flood insurance, after a map was re-drawn,  changing the area where flooding would likely to occur.

Many residents were first alerted to the change by their mortgage companies, which sent them letters saying that they were required to get flood insurance.

“They told me I had to have it,” said Mary Claire Jeske, who lives on Symington Avenue. “So I went and got it.”

Before the area was developed in the 1920s, a stream ran above ground through the area, but it is now buried in an underground culvert.

David Thomas, assistant to the director for the Baltimore County Department of Public Works, said the initial flood maps for the area were completed in a hurry in the 1970s by FEMA. Baltimore County has been working to re-map many areas in the county for the past several years.

“In Paradise, it was a particularly difficult area to map because it was all underground,” Thomas said, who came to the Paradise Community Association meeting in November to talk to residents.

“Many folks have no idea there is a river going under their neighborhood,” he added.

The new map more accurately predicts the 1 percent chance of flooding in the area over 100 years.

The silver lining for some residents who previously had to carry flood insurance no longer have to. Other residents, like Jeske and Edmondson Ridge Road resident Kim Foster had to investigate getting insurance for the first time.

Like many other home-owners, Foster first received a letter from her mortgage company when she was re-financing her house.

Foster bought the insurance, but then after speaking with Baltimore County, she was able to receive verification from them that she wasn’t required to have flood insurance after all.

“If you look at the [FEMA map] you can’t tell,” she said. “That house has been in our family for 65 years and we’ve never had the basement flood or anything.”

Any residents in the area who have questions about the flood area can call the public works department at 410-887-3300.

To see more about FEMA and flood insurance, go here.