BusinessReport.com

BATON ROUGE (AP) — Coastal Louisiana parishes should try to persuade FEMA that the agency's new flood-zone maps are based on shoddy elevation data and must be replaced, a state coastal restoration committee recommended on Thursday.

Jerome Zeringue, of the Governor's Office of Coastal Activities, said he hoped face-to-face meetings with FEMA officials, on top of parishes' written appeals, might convince the agency to redraw the maps.

"I'm hoping we can get FEMA to work with us on this," Zeringue said.

Zeringue spoke to a committee of the state coastal restoration authority, which agreed to the lobbying idea.

FEMA's new maps have triggered complaints from several parishes that the elevation data put too many towns in flood zones, thus guaranteeing that they'll never rebuild and recover from the hurricanes of 2005 and 2008.

The new maps mean Cameron Parish is blocked from using federal recovery money to build a parish administrative building in the town of Cameron and from rebuilding a recreation center in Johnson Bayou that was damaged in Hurricane Ike, said Clifton Hebert, the parish emergency preparedness director. Under the old maps, 30 percent of Cameron Parish had been deemed a flood zone. The new maps put that figure at 80 percent and put the entire parish seat, Cameron, squarely in the flood zone, Hebert said.

FEMA last week rejected a request from the state to suspend use of the maps.

In a news release, FEMA said its mapping was based on "the most technically advanced scientific analysis ever performed for Louisiana," done by "leading experts in the fields of engineering and coastal sciences, including technical consultants, universities and leading Louisiana experts."

Cameron is one of several parishes that plans to submit a written appeal to Federal Emergency Management Agency asking that it use different data and redraw its maps.

The written appeals can include data and analysis to back up the argument that FEMA's maps are flawed, agency spokesman Bob Josephson said.

Each parish has its own three-month appeals deadline, after which the new maps would be considered permanent if the appeal is rejected. Cameron must submit its appeal by March 18, Hebert said.

Zeringue said five coastal parishes are unaffected by the dispute because they're scheduled to have new flood control structures built by 2011: Orleans, Jefferson, St. Bernard, St. Charles and Plaquemines.