The City of Rome is dodging a bullet with the help of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Public Services Director Kirk Milam said the Corps has agreed to certify the main levee system in downtown Rome — a task the city could not hope to complete by a Sept. 8 deadline set by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Corps officials said they expect to be able to finish the work in six to eight weeks with the help of city surveyors.
“It will be pushing the window, but this is a big deal,” Milam said. “FEMA only told us in June we had to get it done. We definitely couldn’t do it by then without the Corps.”
Missing the deadline would mean downtown Rome would appear on FEMA’s new digital flood insurance maps as having only provisional protection.
The status could be upgraded if the levee is certified within 24 months but, meanwhile, insurance costs and interest in development could be affected.
“We’d rather not have that provisional protection status shown at all,” Milam said. “It’s an unnecessary red flag because the levees do what they were built to do — and that hasn’t changed just because FEMA is making new maps.”
Certification is one-time documentation that the structure is capable of protecting the area it is meant to protect, Milam said.
Newer levees, such as the one in South Rome, are certified when they are built but the Corps built the main levee system in 1939, before certification was required, he said.
The levees are inspected annually for deterioration.
Click here for a FEMA presentation on the Rome levee and other levees in Georgia
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