Members of Congress are demanding that the Federal EmergencyManagement Agency finesse the impact of steep flood insurancepremium increases mandated by a 2012 law even as a key governmentwatchdog lauded FEMA for its efforts to ensure that flood insurancerates reflect risks.

In a little-noticed recommendation to another report on floodinsurance issues, the Government Accountability Office Wednesdaypraised FEMA for taking steps to ensure that the “methods anddata used to set NFIP rates accurately reflect the risk of lossesfrom flooding.”

GAO said it “continues to support previous recommendations toFEMA in that regard.”

The GAO recommendation was released the same day Rep. MaxineWaters, D-Calif., ranking minority member of the House FinancialServices Committee and a key sponsor of the 2012 bill, joined 26colleagues in a letter to FEMA urging the agency “to use anydiscretionary authority available to address an unintendedconsequence” of the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act, the2012 bill.

In the letter, the House members said that “a small percentageof homeowners are learning that they may be subjected to floodinsurance rates that are ten, a hundred, and in some cases, morethan a thousand times higher than their current subsidizedrates.”

“While Congress has shown it is willing to act to address theseissues, we believe that FEMA has the authority to administrativelyaddress some of the affordability issues arising fromBiggert-Waters,” the letter says.

The letter asks FEMA to take steps to not implement a provisionof the law that ending grandfathered premiums for policyholders,who, as a result of new flood-risk maps, have their riskdesignation changed to “below base flood elevation.”

The issue is of critical importance to the Louisiana Senaterace.

Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., is facing a challenge from Rep. BillCassidy, R-La. Both voted for the bill.

But Cassidy pushed through the House several weeks ago anamendment to the Homeland Security Department appropriationslegislation for the next fiscal year that would bar FEMA from usingfederal funds to implement the provision of the law, Sec. 207,which mandates the rate hikes over a five year period on anycommunity that receives revised or new flood maps.

It would impact grandfathered rates, some grandfathered datingback to 1969, when basing rates based on maps detailing thelikelihood of a flood impacting a community were first imposed, onsecond homes, businesses and areas deemed most likely to beimpacted by a storm.

Louisiana officials contend the rate hike will be devastatingfor some home and business owners, and that the impact could beeven greater than that wrought by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in2005.

As the New Orleans Times-Picayune noted in a story this week onthe issue, “Every member of the Louisiana congressional delegationvoted for the flood insurance reform bill last year, which wasbilled as a way to bring stability to the deficit-plagued floodinsurance program.”

Cassidy said he voted for the reform measure “to bring stabilityto the program,” but that that because of the way FEMA isdeveloping new flood maps, there is a need to delay it to protectpolicyholders from unwarranted, large rate hikes.

Landrieu voted for the bill, even though she acknowledged thatthe provisions dealing with ending grandfathered rates would haveto be revisited, because she was pushing through another provision,“The Resources and Ecosystems Sustainability, Tourism Opportunitiesand Revived Economy of the Gulf Coast Act.”

That provision mandates that 80 percent of the fines that BP isforced to pay because of the 2010 drilling rig explosion andsubsequent oil spill should be sent to Gulf Coast states touse.

Landrieu is also seeking to add to any legislation that hits theSenate floor an amendment to the bill that would delayimplementation of Sec. 207 of law for three years.

It would also require the Federal Emergency Management Agency toprovide to Congress a detailed study of how the rate increaseswould impact the affordability of living in flood zones before anyrate increases were applied.

Some of the grandfathered rates at issue have been in placesince 1969, when Congress first acted to require that FEMA adjustrates based on the potential for flooding in a particularcommunity.