Guard done with levee patrol

Jul 25, 2011 Music Info

The City of Omaha wanted the levee watchers from the Nebraska National Guard to stay.

Officials had asked Gov. Dave Heineman and his adjutant general to keep Guard members monitoring the city’s 13 miles of levees through August.

That help meant the city could focus its efforts elsewhere and be spared some of the costs of the metro area’s flood fight.

But in a letter from the Nebraska Emergency Management Agency, the state said it believed the city was capable of monitoring the levees itself and that Guard monitoring would end Sunday.

“We certainly were disappointed,” said Marty Grate of the city’s public works department.

The good news, if any, he said, is that the city’s in a better position to take this on than at the start of the flooding.

That’s because Omaha has moved from construction of flood protection measures to monitoring. The city estimates it will spend $80,000 in August to monitor the levees with city employees and private contractors. As of mid-July, the city had spent $5.4 million to counter flooding.

Twenty guardsmen have been assigned to Omaha since June 17. The city will begin training today and hopes to use about a dozen of its own employees and additional private contractors.

Grate said the Guard kept good records of the levee problems they noticed, so the city will be able to pick up where they left off. Omaha’s levees have a number of sand boils and sinkholes.

The Guard, according to the letter, will continue to monitor the levees by air daily, maintain stocks of sandbags and slings and keep high water vehicles in Omaha for any high-water evacuations.

Local officials up and down the Nebraska side of the river have been working on plans to take over levee patrols when the Guard stops Sunday.

The areas affected include Douglas, Sarpy, Cass, Dakota and Nemaha Counties, said Dan Stolinski, an assistant fire chief in Omaha who helps lead local flood response efforts. The Guard continues to monitor levees in western Iowa.

Nebraska Guard members have been staying in dorm rooms at Peru State College, and college President Dan Hanson said they are preparing to leave.

Floodwaters had come within 6 inches of the top of the levee in recent weeks but have receded by about 4 feet, said Allan Adams, vice president of the Peru Dike and Drainage District.

Now the district is working to line the levee with several hundred tons of rock. Starting next week, he and a group of volunteers will monitor the levee at least once a day until the river returns to normal.

“It’s not over,” he said. “You still have the issue of saturation. That’s our biggest concern from here on out.”

World-Herald staff writers Maggie O’Brien and Joe Duggan contributed to this report.

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