Ft. Morgan Owners Seeking Relief

The following article describes the mess created by
Cobra and I fully support their efforts.

Residents look to Congress and state's insurer of last resort for help in getting reasonable insurance rates

Published By Mobile Press Register
Saturday, October 28, 2006
By RYAN DEZEMBER
Staff Reporter

Fort Morgan residents unable to obtain federal flood insurance because they live in Coastal Barrier Resources Act zones are hoping that a bill signed by President Bush this month removing a Georgia island from the law's oversight foreshadows the possibility that their south Baldwin County properties can also be exempted.

Emboldened by the passage of a bill to exclude Georgia's Jekyll Island from CBRA zones, a grassroots campaign has begun to exclude Fort Morgan property from the law. The island, which sits just north of Jacksonville, Fla., was written out of the act when the president signed a bill -- nearly two years in the making -- on Oct. 13.

Those local homeowners -- who have been forced to pay annual premiums in the tens of thousands of dollars or even forego coverage as private insurers retreat from Alabama's beaches -- are also hopeful that the state's insurer of last resort, the Alabama Insurance Underwriting Association, will lift restrictions that prevent them from buying wind coverage from the so-called beach pool.

Along the Fort Morgan peninsula, a narrow spit of sand extending about 19 miles from Gulf Shores into Mobile Bay, nearly half of the land is affected by the 1982 Coastal Barrier Resources Act.

That law aimed to conserve ecologically important lands susceptible to storm damage along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts by eliminating the availability of subsidies that might encourage development, be they money for roads and sewers or federal flood insurance.

On Friday morning, Kathy Taylor, a Fort Morgan resident who was recently offered flood insurance on her family's home with an annual premium of $12,500, spoke before the beach pool's board at its annual fall meeting at the Perdido Beach Resort in Orange Beach. While the beach pool doesn't offer flood insurance, it could provide wind damage policies available to others along the coast that are less costly than those offered by the few private carriers writing policies along the Gulf of Mexico.

Taylor, one of the organizers of a campaign to remove Coastal Barrier Resources Act restrictions from Fort Morgan, said she told beach pool board members that the exorbitant insurance premiums being charged in CBRA zones are thwarting home sales and could lead to foreclosures.

"We're not asking for subsidized rates," she said in an interview later. "We're just asking for solid insurance rates that won't drive us into bankruptcy or foreclosure."

Foley Mayor Tim Russell, who is the beach pool board's treasurer and president of Baldwin Mutual Insurance Co., said he asked the board to consider lifting its ban on covering CBRA zone residents.

The beach pool had originally decided to exclude CBRA property owners because it didn't want to run counter to law and encourage development where the federal government did not want it, Russell said. But with private insurance prices so steep and often unavailable, Russell said the beach pool board will reconsider that decision based on whether homes were built before the law took effect and if other insurance options are available.

"They are going to study it very extensively and we hope to have an answer in the months ahead," Russell said Friday afternoon.

In the meantime, residents are pushing Alabama's congressional delegation to draft a law lifting the CBRA designation from Fort Morgan.

A letter to U.S. Rep. Jo Bonner and U.S. Sens. Jeff Sessions, R-Mobile, and Richard Shelby, R-Tuscaloosa, dated Oct. 24 and signed by more than 100 Fort Morgan property owners asks the lawmakers to consider the Jekyll Island law as precedence.

Their reasoning: Jekyll Island was let loose because Georgia, which owns the entire island, mandates 65 percent remain in a natural state, which backers of that bill say offers plenty of protection for the barrier island.

Fort Morgan residents claim that of the peninsula's 9,000-odd acres, nearly 5,900 are conserved as part of the Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge and various state conservation areas.

Gene Cobb, who wrote the letter, said Friday that residents don't necessarily want access to subsidized flood insurance as much as they want the CBRA designation removed, which is a "stigma" and scares off private insurers.

"We're going to have to go through Congress and convince them that we don't want a handout and that we just want them to get ... out of the way so we can get some commercial carriers down there," said Cobb, president of the property owners' association for the Morgantown subdivision where the CBRA zones divide neighbors.

Cobb, who also has a home in the Atlanta area, said he was trying to put Bonner's staff in touch with those of the Georgia lawmakers who sponsored the Jekyll Island bill.

Bonner, a Mobile Republican, said Friday afternoon that while he hasn't received the letter yet, he has talked with affected residents and with his peers on the state's congressional delegation. He said that the first order of business would be to determine if errors were made in the original mapping that put some homeowners in CBRA zones while excluding their neighbors.

Also he said he would have to research the Jekyll Island situation and another recent CBRA exclusion involving parts of Grayton Beach in the Florida Panhandle to see if there was precedent for removing populated areas from CBRA.

Democrat Vivian Beckerle, a Mobile attorney who is opposing Bonner in the Nov. 7 election, did not reply to a message seeking comment Friday.