News Brief: LA Parish Gets Flood Insurance Break

It’s often said that improving property can help save money on insurance, but it’s rare that doing so saves money for an entire neighborhood, and yet, in a sense, that’s exactly what’s happening in Louisiana.

Residents of an unincorporated part of the state, St. Tammany Parish, are going to receive a decrease of $1.9 million in premiums for federal flood insurance, and it’s because the parish’s flood rating has been improved, which translates into an average drop in premiums of 10%.

How did this happen? Well, according to Parish president Kevin Davis, the community has been working very hard on various flood prevention projects.

At the end of the first quarter of this year, there were 35,720 flood insurance policies in place in St. Tammany Parish, at a cost of about $19.7 million a year to the residents.

So far, the federal flood insurance program (NFIP) has paid almost $1 billion in claims there.