Senator wants Alaska to set up its own flood insurance program

Alaska property owners have paid more than four times as much in premiums than they received back in claims under the National Flood Insurance Program going back to 1980.

“It’s kind of ugly,” Lori Wing-Heier, the state’s insurance division director, told legislators this spring. “We don’t have the storms they get in Texas or Louisiana.”

The nationwide program, which is voluntary for states and communities, has been around for more than half a century. It pools together property owners from all the states and territories, much like group health insurance programs take in high-risk people, with...