Bay St. Louis Challenging FEMA Flood Maps

BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. (AP) - Bay St. Louis officials are looking for technical or scientific errors to challenge FEMA's flood elevation maps. City Council member Jim Thriffiley says FEMA experts apparently didn't tour Bay St. Louis before coming up with the new maps.
Some city officials say future rebuilding in the wake of Hurricane Katrina will be almost impossible if FEMA's flood zones and elevation requirements are used. Officials have 90 days to file an appeal. One setback: city officials had turned to specialists with a national engineering firm to review the FEMA maps, but that firm, which had done work on the maps, recently withdrew because of a possible conflict of interest.

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