VAN BUREN : City, county levees get funding for tests
Posted on Thursday, July 17, 2008
VAN BUREN — Crawford County officials will meet next week to consider hiring a Fort Worth consultant to conduct certification studies on levees in Van Buren and Crawford County.
The Crawford County Quorum Court on Tuesday approved $ 200, 000 for certifying the 21 miles of levees in the county outside Van Buren. On June 26, the Van Buren City Council appropriated $ 140, 000 from its capital improvements fund for certification of its 1. 5 miles of levee.
The Crawford County Levee Board has agreed to contribute $ 33, 000 toward the levee inspection cost, County Judge John Hall said.
Crawford County’s share of the money comes from three sources: $ 100, 000 from an Arkansas Economic Development Commission grant.
$ 50, 000 from state general improvement funds. $ 50, 000 from the county’s general fund.
Van Buren passed a resolution to retain Freeze and Nichols Inc. of Fort Worth to conduct the certification that the Federal Emergency Management Agency requires as part of its flood map modernization program.
Hall said officials from the city, county and levee board will meet Monday with Freeze and Nichols for a rundown on the services the firm intends to provide. He said the contract for the firm’s services probably would be signed Tuesday.
FEMA is giving Crawford County until April to certify its levees or the agency will erase the county from its current flood maps. That would put Van Buren’s industrial park and much of its downtown area in the flood plain and require property owners there to purchase flood insurance.
“It’d be incredibly expensive and devastating to our industrial base,” Hall said.
If hired, Freeze and Nichols would inspect the levees, take soil and core samples to test their composition, test valves and flood gates and test whether they would be strong enough and high enough to withstand a 100-year flood, or a flood that has a 1 percent chance of occurring each year, Van Buren city engineer Brad Baldwin said.
The U. S. Army Corps of Engineers originally agreed to perform the certification work for Van Buren and Crawford County as well as other levee owners around the state.
But the Corps of Engineers announced in March that it couldn’t do the work, citing an amendment to the Water Resources Development Act of 2000 that barred the Corps from providing services if they could be provided by private companies.
Baldwin said Freeze and Nichols will have nine months, right up to the April deadline, to complete its work.
If the consultant finds a problem with the levee that has to be repaired before it can be certified, the repairs may not be completed before the deadline.
Baldwin said he hoped FEMA would extend the deadline to allow for the repairs since officials in Crawford County have been working in good faith to complete the levee certification.
He has been keeping the agency updated on the county’s progress on the project since officials were notified in 2006 of the need to certify the levee.
Hall stressed that the levee board would be responsible for making any repairs to the county levee. Van Buren owns its stretch of levee and would be responsible for making whatever repairs might be necessary there.
Baldwin said he didn’t anticipate any problems with the levee.
He said the Corps of Engineers inspects the levees annually and would alert the owners if any defects were found.
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