Response to Natalie

In the May 3rd issue of the Page News, Natalie Zuckerman wrote a letter to the editor about the flood plain ordinance. This is my response to Ms.
Zuckerman.

1. Page County Watch is a group of 45 citizens who have houses in the flood plain. We are not developers. Instead, we are ordinary people, driven to extraordinary action when we were hit with the realization in December of 2006 that Ms. Zuckerman nearly managed to get a law passed that would take away our homes.

2. Ms. Zuckerman, on her own home computer, wrote the draft flood plain ordinance and presented it to the zoning subcommittee of the Planning Commission, according to our research of the minutes of meetings over the last three years. The minutes verify that the commission members and the Board of Supervisors were told that there was a letter from the state saying our current ordinance was not in compliance. This is not true. Our current ordinance is in compliance. In Natalie's new ordinance, it says that we, citizens of Page County, will have to abandon our homes if they are damaged by any reason -- fire, vandalism, trees falling, termites, whatever. Why? So that the 100 year flood plain can be pure and pristine and only animals and birds can live there. It also says we have to register ourselves as "nonconforming" and APPLY for new occupancy certificates, in our own homes. The flood plain can
only be used to pitch tents and have circuses, in Ms. Zuckerman's plan.

3. There is a current flood plain ordinance. The current plan requires any new building in the flood plain to meet FEMA requirements for floodproofing, meaning it has to be elevated 1 foot above the 100 year mark. That's fine with us. However, it is apparently not good enough for Ms. Zuckerman, as she refers to her own 7 acres (most of us have 1/2 acre) as being "selfish" if she were to build there, since her land is apparently under 15 feet of water. The
current ordinance would not let her build there unless she elevated it above the 100 year watermark. The land we all live on only gets flooded once in a hundred years. That's what makes it a 100 year flood.

4. Ms. Zuckerman calls for reasonable people to meet on common ground. If she had approached us, the people who live in the flood plain, before she tried to get a law passed to throw us out of our houses, and she had named some reasons why she had something specific she wanted done, she surely would have found some reasonable people to talk with about her issues. Having attacked us by attempting to take our houses, however, has made us feel
disinclined to be reasonable.

At least, I am disinclined to be reasonable toward Ms. Zuckerman.

When there is a water quality issue with the river, and the chicken farmers, the industries in Waynesboro, and Merck want to sit down and talk about it . . . I'll be there.

Until then . . . Natalie, go find something else to do.

If any other readers of Page County Watch would like to post a response to Natalie, hit the Comments button. Or, if you would like your own Blog, email me
your letter and I'll post it as a main Blog.

Alice Richmond