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Josh Evans knew about the federal flood-map revisions in Collier County long before the recent outcry over this government swamping.
Evans, a young engineer and entrepreneur in Bonita Springs, alerted clients last year that the federal government was going to make a mess of the flood maps.
When he started J.R. Evans Engineering in 2010, he discovered that the federal government was proposing to put most of Collier County in a flood zone. That would have devalued thousands of acres because owners are severely restricted on what they can build or rebuild in a flood zone.
Evans has successfully helped large landowners remove their properties from the flood-zone maps. Besides protecting the value of their land, he saved them hundreds of thousands of dollars in flood-insurance premiums.
As people realized their properties were included in the flood zone, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Collier County responded recently by removing about 10,000 properties in the unincorporated areas from the flood zones. The good news is even if a property is now designated in the flood zone, property owners can appeal for a map amendment.
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