By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
Missouri lawmakers appropriated eight million dollars to help in flood recovery this year.
The money could come in handy now that Congress has approved $19.1 billion in disaster relief assistance. The United States House gave overwhelming approval to the bill reshaped by the Senate. The bill now goes to President Donald Trump for his signature.
State Sen. Dan Hegeman of Cosby, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, says the $8 million state appropriation can be used as a match to draw down federal disaster relief aid.
“Hopefully, we will use that to match the federal dollars that come down from FEMA, which is the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and this will help with the local match to those FEMA dollars,” Hegeman tells St. Joseph Post.
Hegeman adds the General Assembly also added more money in the Department of Transportation budget to help repair roads and bridges damaged by floodwaters.
MoDOT reports as many as 400 roads have been closed because of flooding along the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers.
The federal disaster package will provide aid to offset the cost of recovery for a wide variety of disasters throughout the country, including wildfires in California and hurricanes in the southeastern portion of the United States. Assistance for flood victims was added after the mid-March floods devastated a wide swath of the Midwest, flooding which has been compounded by abnormally heavy rain since.
The relief package includes $1.4 billion to help Puerto Rico with ongoing recovery efforts since Hurricanes Irma and Maria hit the U.S. territory. A partisan skirmish over the additional aid to Puerto Rico help up passage of the bill.
Hegeman says this year will be hard for many living along the Missouri River, especially the farmers who grow crops in the fertile Missouri River bottoms.
“Oh, it’s a struggle, it’s a struggle this year for those who farm in the bottoms along the Missouri River,” Hegeman says. “There is likely a potential for not seeing much of an income for three years. I don’t know how many businesses can manage through something like that. It’s going to be tough.”
Hegeman says a lot of work is ahead for the Missouri Department of Transportation in wake of this year’s flooding. He says a priority of the state is to reopen the two routes from northwest Missouri into southeast Nebraska.
“On one of the roads, I think (U.S.) 159, we have a bridge that twisted and will have to be replaced. It will be likely, at the quickest, a year before we will be able to get that bridge replaced,” Hegeman says. “There are other routes to be able to open up the Rulo bridge so we can at least have a circuitous route to get there, but at least get that bridge opened up.”
Both the Rulo bridge and the Brownville bridge held up under Missouri River flooding. The roads leading to the bridges did not. MoDOT has issued contracts to repair U.S. 159 leading to the Rulo bridge and to repair U.S. 136 leading to the Brownville bridge to reopen vital avenues between Missouri and Nebraska. Highway 2, just across the state line in Iowa which leads to Nebraska City, had been reopened until renewed flooding forced the Iowa Department of Transportation to close it and Interstate 29 again.