By STEPHEN BEALE
Goffstown News Correspondent
 

GOFFSTOWN -- The town is forming a committee of residents from the Lynchville and Danis Park areas as the first step toward a second application for flood buyouts. The committee will collect information on flood damages for the application. The first applied in 2007 on behalf of about two dozen residents.

The buyouts are part of a Federal Emergency Management Agency program intended to prevent future disasters. Through the program, the government buys a home from its owner. In return, the home is razed to the ground and future development is not allowed.

Richard Verville, the state coordinator for the program, told residents at a forum convened by town selectmen Wednesday, April 2, that the cost of buying the homes from their owners and demolishing them is weighed against the benefit of not having to spend money fixing them up after a flood.

As a result of that comparison, a computer program assigns a number to the application. If it is one or above, the town is eligible for a FEMA grant. The Goffstown application came out at .037, meaning that the cost of acquiring the homes outweighs the estimated benefit, according to Verville.

Applications, he said, must reach 1, leading several at the meeting to question what chance the town had of succeeding in a second application.

“It doesn’t seem like 1 is a very competitive number, is it?” asked Gardner Browning, of 100 Danis Park Road.

Verville said the ratio of 1 was a threshold the application had to meet in order to be eligible. He said numbers higher than that were not necessarily better as far as getting applications approved.

The application, according to Verville, also asked for too much money. Since the estimated $4.1 million cost was well over the $3 million cap, he said the town should submit two smaller applications.

Old data is one of the main reasons why the application was disqualified, he added. The town used information from a 1978 flood study – the last official one – to calculate the damage done to homes in the recent floods of 2006 and 2007.

The town can improve its application by collecting data on the actual damage done by the floods.

“Everything’s in there that needs to be in there,” Verville said. “We just need to do a solid benefit cost analysis.”

Sue Desruisseaux, town administrator, said Goffstown did not have time to get that data for the first application. She said the FEMA workshops on the buyouts for town officials were in November 2007. The applications were due one month later.

The town is thinking about applying a second time for the buyouts, but Selectman Scott Gross said he personally believes the odds were low that it would be successful.

“I’m not trying to paint an overly pessimistic picture. I’m trying to paint a realistic picture,” Gross said. “My gut instinct is we’re chasing a pipe dream.”

Several residents said they have no choice but to hope. Lynn Lizotte said her family now deals with constant water in their 48 Cove St. home and is battling chronic sickness because of persistent mold.

“My family is getting sick and there is nothing I can do about it,” Lizotte said. “If there is a chance, I think we should try it. Even the slightest chance.”

Ronnie Dachowski, a resident of the Lynchville Park area, however, said he did not want the community to waste effort on another application. Verville said the town could determine its chances quickly by looking at the cost-benefit ratio for some of the lowest lying properties susceptible to the most damage.

Nick Campasano, chairman of the Board of Selectmen, said he thinks the town owes it to residents to go through the process of doing another application.

In New Hampshire, Allenstown, Merrimack and Salem also applied for the buyouts, according to Desruisseaux. Since the program was created in 2003, New Hampshire has received money for planning and for two projects in 2005. Congress cut funding for the program from $150 million to $50 million in 2006, according to Verville.