Wozniak v. Colchester

Citations

• 193 Conn. App. 842

Syllabus

The plaintiffs, V and O, appealed to this court from the summary judgment rendered by the trial court in favor of the defendant town of Colchester. The plaintiffs owned an undeveloped parcel of real property located in Colchester in an area that is designated as a flood zone on a map prepared by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). A survey indicated that the map incorrectly located a portion of a brook on the property, which the plaintiffs claimed caused the property to be improperly designated as being in a flood zone. V submitted to FEMA an application for a Letter of Map Amendment to correct the map, and FEMA requested additional information. The plaintiffs thereafter demanded that the defendant file an application for a Letter of Map Revision (LOMR) with FEMA on their behalf, and when the defendant declined, the plaintiffs commenced this action seeking a writ of manda- mus to compel the defendant to do so. The plaintiffs contended that the applicable federal regulations (44 C.F.R. §§ 65.3 and 65.7) impose a ministerial duty on the defendant to file a LOMR application on their behalf to rectify the incorrect depiction of their property on the map. After the plaintiffs appealed to this court from the summary judgment rendered in the defendant's favor, the defendant filed a motion to dismiss the appeal, alleging that the appeal had been rendered moot by certain recent developments. Specifically, in 2016, FEMA officials informed the defendant of a new program that was intended to help communities reduce their flood risk. The defendant's town engineer asked FEMA to review the flood zone mapping in the area of the subject brook for potential conflicts between the flood limits shown on the map and the actual flood limit elevations based on topography. In 2018, FEMA notified the defendant that it had completed the discovery portion of the new program and had selected the brook for an upcoming study. This court denied the defendant's motion to dismiss the app