I was looking at the Flood Hazard Awareness document that the City of Bryan sent us this month, and I noticed something concerning: In the Community Rating System section, it says "...Bryan currently has a Class 8 rating (with Class 1 being best), which provides most of our citizens with a 10% reduction in their flood insurance rates."

Anybody know why Bryan's rating is so low? (The ratings range from 1 to 10. College Station's is 6, which results in a 20% reduction in rates.)

earwigfly said:

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I was looking at the Flood Hazard Awareness document that the City of Bryan sent us this month, and I noticed something concerning: In the Community Rating System section, it says "...Bryan currently has a Class 8 rating (with Class 1 being best), which provides most of our citizens with a 10% reduction in their flood insurance rates."

Anybody know why Bryan's rating is so low? (The ratings range from 1 to 10. College Station's is 6, which results in a 20% reduction in rates.)

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I suspect it's based on the % of each city's area is in each FEMA's flood zone. The more land in a city in a more severe risk of flooding, the lower the class.

The flood zone maps for Bryan, CS and the rest of Brazos county can be found here. https://www.bcsunited.net/fema/

Rating system is based on what the government entity is doing to reduce risk. Most effective way to change classes is to institute higher standards for new construction. Cities can pass a floodplain ordinance that prevents development in the floodway and receive credits for that. You can also require freeboard (house slab has to be built 12" above the 100-year floodplain for instance), detention, floodplain mitigation (if you put a scoop of dirt in a flood area, you have to remove a scoop of dirt). You can do additional drainage modeling of your streams to further reduce rates.

If CS has a higher rating, it's because they have more restrictive rules about developing in the floodplain, and are probably slightly more expensive to develop in. How much flooding you have is irrelevant. Houston is at a 5 and they flood worse than anyone.

It can cost a city a lot of money to increase their rating. I'm not as familiar with Bryan as some other cities, but most know what it takes to get to the next level, they know how many people are paying for flood insurance that would get the discount if they move up, and use those numbers to decide whether if it's worth the expense to move up. If you want to know more, contact the Bryan Floodplain Administrator and they can tell you all about it.

You can get a huge discount yourself if you get an elevation certification from an engineering firm. I did this with my previous house, and my rate dropped by a ton. This is assuming that your house's elevation reduces the flood risk, which mine did.

Well we are between two rivers.