By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
A levee system built to hold back Missouri River floodwater has been destroyed by this year’s flooding and a levee association official says levees don’t just need to be repaired, but improved.
Missouri Levee and Drainage District Association chair Tom Waters of Orrick says the task ahead is a costly one.
“These are multi-million dollar repairs that are going to take place,” Waters tells St. Joseph Post. “In 2011, in Holt County, there was a $50 million repair and a $60 million repair. These levee districts don’t have that kind of money to do this so that’s where the federal government has to step in.”
Waters worries, though, that other pressing issues will siphon money away from levee repairs. He points out that money was secured to repair levees after the 2011 flood, until Hurricane Sandy hit the next year and disaster funding was shifted to help recovery in New Jersey.
Waters expects that for now the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers will simply try to prop up the levee system.
“What will happen is they’ll get some temporary protection put in there. A levee that was maybe a 100-year levee might get a 25-year protection temporarily to try to hold some of those rises in the river,” Waters says. “But, no, totally repaired and back to where they were pre-flood, it’s going to be a long time.”
The destruction of the Missouri River basin levee system is evident.
The Omaha district of the Corps of Engineers reports 54 broken levees along 350 miles of the Missouri River. That doesn’t even count non-federal levees breached in the Kansas City district.
“So, I think that’s 10 or 11 levees in that reach between St. Joe and Kansas City that are sitting wide open,” according to Waters. “So, all these areas where the levees are sitting wide open, it doesn’t take much of a rise in the river to start flooding again.”
Federal levees protecting St. Joseph and Elwood held.
Waters says the levees don’t just need to be repaired, the entire system needs to be strengthened.
“We’re operating the system in a manner it wasn’t designed to be operated in and so we’re going to have to make some improvements to the flood control infrastructure or we’re going to continue to see this.”