Recently revised federal flood plain maps -- which may cause hundreds of Bedford County residents to purchase expensive flood insurance -- have led county officials and some residents to seek second opinions.

The county's board of supervisors last month approved spending up to $20,000 to have a certified flood plain manager to review the maps after the Federal Emergency Management Agency moved more than 1,000 county parcels into a higher-risk flood zone.

The maps have not been updated since the originals were drafted three decades ago, and with the growth and development that's happened since, some modifications were expected as part of a regular FEMA process. But the addition of a significant number of parcels around the Lake Vista community in Forest and Smith Mountain Lake raised the eyebrows of the county's director of community development, George Nester.

"It is a two-sided sword," he said. "We want to make sure those areas subject to flooding are properly identified, but we do not want areas not affected to be added."

To double-check FEMA's assessment, the county hired an outside consultant to study the maps and prepare a report by FEMA's July 15 deadline for public comment.

"The big thing we are trying to do is determine the accuracy of where the flood plain should be," Nester said. "We know we are going to have one, we just want it to be identified correctly."

At Lake Vista, which consists of nearly 500 town houses and condominiums, the homeowners association is paying thousands of dollars to have its dam surveyed, association President Bob Warrick said.

"We looked at our the numbers for Lake Vista and thought the elevation set on the flood plain map was significantly too high," he said.

At the 721-foot elevation contour set by FEMA, Warrick said the water level flowing over the dam would be 5 to 6 feet high, which he doesn't believe is realistic.

"We felt at that point there was something wrong with the maps," he said.

FEMA's consultants who updated the maps did not have data reflecting modifications to the dam after flooding in 1995, which is what Warrick thinks may have caused the discrepancies. Additionally this is the first flood-plain mapping of Lake Vista because the body of water did not exist in 1978 when the original maps were drawn.

The association decided to pay for the study, which Warrick hopes will prevent some of the residents from having to buy flood insurance policies.

Flood insurance, which costs about $500 per year according to FEMA, could be required for some county homeowners. Most federally backed lenders require flood insurance if a mortgaged home or other physical structure touches a flood plain or is built below the specified elevation.

There were 115 active flood insurance policies in Bedford County with a coverage value of about $28 million as of April, according to FEMA.

Although Larry Salmons of Goodview won't be required to purchase flood insurance, the experience was enough to rattle the 70-year-old veteran.

Salmons was one of many county residents ringing Nester's telephone and visiting his office to refute the new flood zone classification. In Salmons' case, an edge of his property abuts a flood plain, but his home is about 60 feet vertically above his driveway, seemingly putting it out of the reach of flood waters.

Homes at Smith Mountain Lake built above the 802-foot contour elevation should not require flood insurance, county engineer Kevin Leamy said.

Regardless of whether he has to buy insurance, Salmons is concerned the designation will cause a drop in the value of his property.

"If they label me in a special flood-hazard area, it lowers the value of my property thousands," he said.

There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to assessing the value of a property in a flood plain, said Harold Wingate of the Roanoke reassessment firm Wingate and Associates.

"You have to take each case on its own merits," he said. "If you have got a piece of property in the flood plain, just because the map says I am in the flood plain, it does not do anything automatically [to the value of the property]."

In Bedford County, preliminary maps can be viewed in the County Administration Building. The upgraded maps are part of a five-year, $1 billion federal initiative to digitally convert all maps from paper, said Bob Pierson, a civil engineer with FEMA.

Flood maps in Roanoke and Roanoke County were updated in 2007, Franklin County's maps are being revised and Botetourt County's map are slated to be redrawn next year.

On the Net: www.fema.gov/plan/prevent/fhm/