CENTRE — After 20 years of doing almost nothing to enforce its flood damage prevention ordinance, the Cherokee County Commission appears to be on the verge of taking decisive action.

Passed in 1991 at the insistence of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the ordinance applies only to unincorporated areas of the county.

The objectives of the ordinance include protection of human life and health, minimizing damage to public utilities, minimizing expenditure of public money for costly flood control projects, and ensuring that potential home buyers are notified if property is in a flood area.

As The Post first reported four years ago, failure to properly enforce the ordinance could result in the county being dropped from the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), which means loss of federal grants, flood insurance, federally-backed mortgages and disaster assistance.

In 1999, FEMA officials followed up with the County Commission and found that no attempt had been made to enforce the '91 ordinance. At FEMA's demand, commissioners appointed Roger Hall, then-chief engineer of the Highway Department, as administrator.

It became Hall's job to approve application permits for development in areas designated flood hazard zones – known more familiarly as the 100-year flood plain. It also became Hall's job to enforce any permits after they were issued.

Hall, who has since retired, told The Post in 2006 that he spent the ensuing seven years administering the ordinance as best he could, but admitted there was very little he could do by himself with table-sized folding maps, no staff, and token federal assistance.

“The ordinance has been minimally enforced,” Hall said in '06. “We've been trying to help people who are building houses, making sure they can get flood insurance if they need it. A lot of other areas fell through the cracks.”

Last week, Hall's successor, Corey Chambers, told The Post that newly-arrived digital maps recently created by FEMA will help him, as the new administrator, to seal over a few of those cracks.

“We were never able to be proactive,” Chambers said. “The new maps go into effect July 24, and those are what we'll abide by going forward.”

Chambers said the Highway Department received the maps a couple months ago, and will use them in conjunction with Revenue Commissioner Johnny Roberts' new satellite imagery-based software to provide a much more detailed picture the flood plain.

“We can use Johnny's software to look at a structure, pull up the property card, find out when it was built, and who the homeowner is,” Chambers said. “If we can clearly see that the structure is not in the flood plain, we're going to mark it in blue on our map, which means OK – and we won't have to contact that homeowner.”

For structures that are too close to call on the computer screen, Chambers recently had the County Commission approve two forms of a letter than will be sent to property owners asking them to provide documentation that proves their structures do not lie inside the flood plain.

“One will be sent to people who are proposing construction,” Chambers said. “The other will be sent to people who have already completed construction and who are somehow, someway not compliant.”

Chambers said any permanent structures built before June 1991 – when the county's original flood ordinance went into effect – are grandfathered in and will not risk facing punishment for non-compliance.

Punishment is laid out in the ordinance – a $500 per-day fine, 30 days in jail, or both.

Probate Judge/Commission Chairman Melvyn Salter said it will be up to the current commissioners to change two decades of apathy by their predecessors regarding enforcement.

“We can't waiver once we get started, we've got to enforce it with fines, citations, whatever,” Salter said. “We can't make an exception for one guy and not for another. We're going to have to deal with this evenly and fairly, or this situation is going to repeat itself again.”

Salter also said he believes the county will eventually have to relieve Chambers of the burden of administrating the flood ordinance by hiring someone full-time.

“Guntersville has a compliance officer who deals with all these things, kind of like a building inspector,” Salter said. “And we badly need someone in that area here. If we could combine those responsibilities and find the right person who is willing to go out and do the job, it would be a huge benefit to the county. Right now, not to have this service is a nuisance to the county.”

Commissioner Elbert St. Clair agreed that the time has come to enforce the law.

“Anyone should have known to start with if they weren't in compliance,” St. Clair told The Post. “We need to be willing to bite the bullet, back the ordinance and fine people who don't come into compliance.”