Levee Concerns

LEVEE CONCERNS: FARMERS QUESTION FUTURE OF REPAIRS

BY JOSEPH L. MURPHY

As farmers across the state are busy planting, many acres lie fallow along the Missouri River. That is the harsh reality for farmers like Jeff Jorgenson as they continue to assess the damage caused by historic flooding.

"There are serious questions down here,” says Jorgenson, district 7 director for the Iowa Soybean Association. We are wondering if the Corps [United States Army Corps of Engineers] will be able to repair breached levees.”

Producers in the area have been attending informational meetings conducted by various government entities but some say there are still more questions than answers.

"We mistakenly thought 2011 was bad," says Richard Payne, a landowner near Percival and one of Jorgenson's landlords. "This is a lot worse. I’m just about ill."

According to Major General Scott Spellmon, Deputy Commanding General for Civil and EmergencyOperations for the Army Corps of Engineers, at least 32 levee systems were completely underwater during the floods. As of late April, officials counted 114 breaches in those levees, he says. Army Corps officials are working to close those breaches and regain flood protections for cities and farms in the Missouri River basin.

Major General Scott Spellmon

“One of the more substantial breaches is in a levee that protected the city of Hamburg,” says Gen. Spellmon. “The breach willrequire nearly one million cubic yards of material to complete the initial emergency closure. That is the equivalent to approximately 100,000 dump truck loads of material.”

Corps officials say a bidding process needs to take place for breached levee repair contracts. Then equipment will need to be mobilized, possibly from Louisiana, before dredging and repair work could begin. At the earliest, he fears, it could be mid- May before the most crucial of levees can be plugged.

Major damage to infrastructure.

Farm-to-market roads, bridges, railroad tracks and Interstate 29 all took serious hits as a result of the Missouri River flash flooding. Mike Steenhoek, executive director of the Soy Transportation Coalition, says there isn't a quick fix for those losses.

"It’s had a really negative impact on the industry," Steenhoek says. "I don’t know of a rural bridge, a rural road or frankly any mode of transportation that has a happy coexistence with flooding conditions."

He says the damage to county roads and bridges put pressure on budgets that are already stressed. Combined with the uncertainty of continued flooding he fears that engineers could be more hesitant to fix some of the roads in the near term.

Flood damage near Percival.

"I think this challenge could manifest for a long period of time," Steenhoek says. "This is the level of government that has the least amount of money. Their ability to make these types of investments is already constricted."

He added that investment in transportation infrastructure in the flooded areas would impact the bottom line of the farmers who work in that area.

"For farmers, there is the impact to their fields. But there are a lot of farmers who chose to store their crops in hopes of having a more favorable climate to market their grain. Now, all of a sudden you have washed out bridges and other crumbling infrastructure that is less capable of accommodating those deliveries,” he says.

Contact Joseph L. Murphy at jmurphy@iasoybeans.com.