On Monday June 25, the U.S. Senate is poised to discuss a bill which includes verbiage -- removed from the House version that the City of Long Beach wants removed from the Senate version -- that would impose mandatory "flood insurance" on tens of thousands of homeowners and commercial property owners in much of LB and southeast L.A. County, claiming they are at "residual risk" of a "500 year" (0.002 annual chance) flood from federally certified levees to prevent a 100 year-flood. The real reason for this section of the bill is to bail out the Congressionally-created "National Flood Insurance Program" (administered by FEMA) which is financially unable to cover major flood claims.
If you want to take action, we urge you to send an email (suggested text below) to Senators Boxer and Feinstein (links below) so their offices will receive it by Monday morning east coast time. We suggest the following cut-and-paste text but feel free to compose your own:
Senator: My family is among many in Long Beach and southeast L.A. County who will be harmed by section 107 of S. 1940 that the Senate is scheduled to discuss on Monday. One section of that bill wouldSenator Boxer's email: http://boxer.senate.gov/en/contact/policycomments.cfmre-impose federal "flood insurance" impacting hundreds of thousands of residents, draining money from my family that we could otherwise spend on our family and children and at neighborhood businesses. The City of Long Beach and Mayor Bob Foster have urged you to do what the House of Representatives (including our two House incumbents, Laura Richardson and Dana Rohrabacher) did last year: delete the "residual risk" section of the bill. This is especially justified here, where we fairly recently completed costly 100-year flood protection levee improvements advanced by the late Congressman Steve Horn and enacted with your support.
The issue now isn't about flooding. It's about funding. Congress shouldn't do what predatory insurers do elsewhere, trying to gouge middle class and working class families to gain revenue.
Please make a floor amendment to do what the House did and delete the "residual risk" verbiage of S. 1940. If that fails, please offer an amendment that will unambiguously exempt the Long Beach/Los Angeles County Drainage Area (LACDA, where the L.A. river has no history of flooding since it was channelized decades ago and 100-year flood protection was recently improved) from any "residual risk" designation. .
Simply voting against the current legislative text while your colleagues vote for it won't do what we need done. We need your advocacy to ensure that the "residual risk" section of the bill doesn't advance to a conference committee where it could become law.
Senator Feinstein's email: https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/e-mail-me
