Urgent -- US Senate Debating Whether LB Residents Shall Be Mandated to Buy Flood Insurance

Barbara Boxer, United States Senator from California (Photo credit: Wikipedia)Dianne Feinstein, member of the United States Senate. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)1:55 pm Wed. June 27 -- Just received word that the Flood Control Insurance is being debated right now. Please call Senators Boxer and Feinstein immediately and tell them to remove Long Beach from the list of cities to be required to buy flood insurance even though the threat of flooding is minimal!

Office of U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer
112 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
(202) 224-3553

Senator Dianne Feinstein

United States Senate
331 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510

Phone: (202) 224-3841
Fax: (202) 228-3954
TTY/TDD: (202) 224-2501

Wall Street Journal Reads Councilwoman Schipske's Blog

Just received a news alert that the Wall Street Journal has included me in an article about the proposed increase in flood insurance which would impact Long Beach and is unnecessary.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304458604577488990400234060.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Reporter Alan Zibel called me from Washington, DC after he read my blog on how I sent an alert to my constituents that this legislation was on the US Senate floor, encouraging residents to contact both US Senators from California to oppose this expansion.

Gerrie Schipske, a member of the Long Beach, Calif., city council who opposes that plan, sent an email to her constituents over the weekend aimed at rallying opposition. Ms. Schipske says the Long Beach and San Gabriel rivers, which flow through concrete channels in her city, stand little risk of flooding. If the Senate bill isn't changed, she said, "a great portion of the homeowners will have to pay this flood insurance.…It's an unnecessary burden."

 Glad we got their attention in Washington, D.C. The bill is still pending Senate action this week. Apparently an abortion related bill is getting in the way from the US Senate doing its real work.

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Join LBreport.com in calling upon California Congressional Delegation to Fight Flood Insurance Bill

From www.lbreport.com:

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 would re-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 Boxer's email: http://boxer.senate.gov/en/contact/policycomments.cfm
Senator Feinstein's email:  https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/e-mail-me

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