Flood Zones Near Coffeyville, Montgomery County, KS

Montgomery County's flood-risk picture centers on Coffeyville and the Verdigris River, and it's more nuanced than a simple floodplain map suggests. The city's levee is a FEMA-accredited structure engineered to hold back three feet more water than a standard 1%-annual-chance (100-year) flood -- and the river still overtopped it by more than four feet in July 2007, flooding roughly a quarter of the city. That's the kind of fact a buyer needs before assuming an accredited levee means a parcel is safe from flooding.

This page covers what's specific to Montgomery County. For the general explanation, see the national guide.

An accredited levee, and a flood that beat it anyway

Coffeyville's levee along the Verdigris River is a FEMA-accredited structure, meaning it has been certified as providing protection against the base flood -- the flood event with a 1% chance of occurring in any given year, sometimes called the '100-year flood' -- and by design it was built to a level three feet higher than that base-flood elevation, an extra margin of safety. On July 1, 2007, the Verdigris River crested at 30.70 feet in Coffeyville -- more than four feet higher than the levee itself, overtopping it despite that built-in margin. The flood affected an estimated quarter of the city, damaging 497 structures and 71 businesses, and the same flooding was what caused the Coffeyville refinery's well-documented 2007 oil spill into floodwaters covered separately on this county's hub page.

This is a genuinely different fact than 'Coffeyville has flooded before' -- it's a specific, sourced illustration that FEMA levee accreditation describes a structure's design standard, not a guarantee against every possible flood, and it happened here, not in a hypothetical elsewhere. The Verdigris River has continued to produce significant high-water events since: a multi-day high-water episode between Independence and Coffeyville was recorded in late May 2019. A buyer evaluating land in or near Coffeyville -- or anywhere along the Verdigris River corridor through Independence -- should treat 'the levee is accredited' and 'this parcel has never flooded' as two separate questions, not one.

How to check a specific parcel, and what to ask

For a specific address or parcel, start with the Kansas Department of Agriculture's Kansas Floodplain Viewer, the state's current effective floodplain mapping tool, and cross-check it against FEMA's own Map Service Center for the community's current Flood Insurance Rate Map (FIRM) and any recently issued Letters of Map Revision (LOMRs), which can change a parcel's mapped zone after the original FIRM was published. Because Coffeyville's levee is an accredited structure, land immediately behind it may show as outside the mapped Special Flood Hazard Area on FEMA's FIRM even though the 2007 event demonstrates the area's real exposure when the river exceeds the levee's design capacity -- ask the city's own Flood Information office (maintained on Coffeyville's city website) directly whether a specific parcel sits inside the area the levee is meant to protect, and whether any FEMA levee re-certification, deficiency finding, or maintenance issue has been identified for that segment since 2007.

Practically, that means: confirm current flood-zone designation and levee status directly rather than relying on a real-estate listing's flood-zone claim, ask a lender or insurer early whether the specific parcel would require flood insurance regardless of its mapped zone (some lenders require it for property behind a levee as a condition of financing even outside the mapped Special Flood Hazard Area), and, for property directly along the Verdigris River corridor through Independence or Coffeyville, ask the seller directly about flood history and any past insurance claims tied to the 2007 event or the 2019 high-water episode.

Flood Zones in Montgomery County, Kansas: The Coffeyville Levee Story

An accredited levee, and a flood that beat it anyway

How to check a specific parcel, and what to ask

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