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Repair of broken levee system in northwest Missouri hindered by weather

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By BRENT MARTIN, St. Joseph Post

Repair of the broken levee system along the Missouri River has been slow going, as a wet fall and a cold winter has delayed assessment of the damage and construction work.

Emergency Management Specialist Mike Dulin with the Kansas City District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says it has been especially slow going north of St. Joseph.

“But in that Holt County area north of St. Joe it’s been a real challenge getting out there and just completing our damage assessments,” Dulin tells St. Joseph Post.

Dulin says even survey crews have had difficulty getting to some levees to assess the damage.

“With everything soggy and frozen the way it is it’s a real challenge to complete those damage assessments,” according to Dulin.

Floodwaters from a swollen Missouri River spilled over the river banks, cutting a path of destruction in northwest Missouri and northeast Kansas truly breathtaking in scope.

“So, overall, we’re looking at a thousand miles of levee system on both sides of the Missouri River and some levees over in Kansas, too,” Dulin says. “I mean, it’s everything, from sod kill and erosion, scour, all the way to breaches being the worst case.”

The Kansas City District of the Corps is working on 67 repair projects, with damage estimated at $100 million. Floodwaters badly damaged 20 federal levees and took out many non-federal levees that are eligible to receive federal money for repairs. That doesn’t even count the damage done to the levee system north of Holt County, from Atchison County to Omaha, which likely will top the KC District total, according to Dulin.

The Corps of Engineers has been able to receive the amount of money needed to make repairs if the weather and conditions finally allow repair to proceed.

Dulin says it has been some time since the Corps faced such a daunting challenge.

“This is the largest levee rehab effort that we’ve seen since 1993,” Dulin says. “So, there’s a very real possibility this could take us up to two years to complete all repairs. So, obviously some repairs will be done much sooner than that, but to fix everything it could take us until the spring of 2021.”

Parson signs executive order to ease requirements during, after Missouri flooding

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This is the aerial view of flooding in northwest Missouri taken on March 21, 2019 (photo courtesy of Governor Mike Parson Twitter page)

Governor Mike Parson has signed an executive order today giving the Missouri Department of Natural Resources Director some flexibility in easing requirements during the flood emergency underway. A press release today from the governor’s office says Director Carol Comer will have the discretionary authority to temporarily or suspend environmental rules or regulations currently under her purview during the emergency and following recovery period.

Northwest and southeast Missouri have especially been hit hard by recent flooding.

Parson says the move will best serve the interests of public health and safety.

The governor and some Missouri state and federal officials have criticized the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers river management.

Nationwide text alert program begins in June

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A new type of text alert could be coming to your cell phone beginning next month.

A sample of what WEAs will look like on some phones. (Image courtesy, National Weather Service.)

Beginning in June, new Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) will come from the FCC, the Department of Homeland Security and the National Weather Service. They will be issued for Presidential Alerts, Imminent Threats and AMBER Alerts.

When issued, WEAs will go out to all phones on towers in the effected area, so users with capable phones will get the warnings no matter where they are or where they are from. The alerts are free to all subscribers and will not count against texting limits on wireless plans.

Weather Service Warning Coordination Meteorologist Andy Bailey’s interest is with the “Imminent Threat” alerts, which would include severe weather warnings.

No action necessary by consumers.

He says there’s no signing up involved. “It’s an opt out, which means everybody with a capable phone will automatically be entered into this. To my knowledge you won’t be able to turn off individual warnings. It’s either all-in or all-out.”

Bailey says most phones currently in use are not WEA-capable but he believes most that are being sold, are.

“I spoke with one of the major providers in the country a few weeks ago and they said out of their 40 million handsets, 3 million are capable to receive these right now. But, they said most people upgrade every 18 months to two years and within a matter of a couple of years it’ll be much closer to 80 or 90 percent.”

Phones capable of receiving WEAs will bear this symbol on their packaging.

Bailey suggests consumers contact the business they purchased their cell phone from first, and then the service provider, to see if it is WEA-capable. All major carriers and many second-tier carriers have agreed to offer WEA alerts.

The warnings won’t contain a lot of information. Bailey says they’re only meant to get a person’s attention.

“What this is really meant to do is not provide folks with all the information they need to deal with whatever hazard they’re facing. It’s more like a bell-ringer or an alert to let people know they need to seek more information from other sources, primarily the media.”

The types of weather warnings offered varies by area. In Missouri, the Weather Service will issue WEAs for tornado warnings, flash flood warnings, blizzard warnings and ice storm warnings. Other parts of the country might see texts for things like tsunamis and hurricanes.

Redundancy in this case is a good thing.

Because systems can fail especially in emergencies, Bailey encourages people not to opt out of the WEAs even if they have already signed up for other text alert systems.

“None of the systems are 100% reliable. They all have their weak points and when we’re dealing with systems like this, they’re all prone to failure at one point or another. So, just having another system, in this case a system that you’re already paying for through your cell phone … it’s not an additional charge … I’d really encourage people to remain signed up.”

Consumers can opt out of the Imminent Threat and AMBER Alert warnings but not the Presidential Alerts, by contacting their service providers.

For more details, visit these information pages at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s website and CTIA’s website.

Weather Service to test new warnings in most of Missouri this year

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Residents in most of Missouri might notice something different about the severe weather warnings they hear this year. Whether they notice or not, the National Weather Service will be watching for results.

The Weather Service will issue updated warnings this year when seeing images on its radar like this April 15, 2011 tornado in Pike County. Image courtesy, National Weather Service.

The Weather Service offices that serve all of Missouri except the bootheel and Scotland and Clark Counties will be among the five testing new warning language beginning April 2. The changes have been developed following years of work by the Service and social scientists studying what people did in events including the Joplin tornado. The test is called the “Impact Based Warning Experimental Product.”

St. Louis Warning Coordination Meteorologist Jim Kramper says the goal is simple. “We’re just trying to get as much critical information in a very easy format so people can make quick decisions very easily.”

What’s new

One addition is a set of three new lines. “One line is going to simply say ‘Hazard,” and then we’ll put what is the storm producing, whether it be strong wind gusts, hail or potentially a tornado. The next line will be ‘Source.” Is this a radar indicated only event or do we have actual reports of it from spotters or somebody else? Then the next line will be the impact. What do we expect this storm to do? So for example if it’s hail, we’ll put we expect the hail to dent cars, damage roofs … or if it’s mainly a wind storm, we may say we expect trees and power lines to be down along with minor roof damage or structural damage; something like that.”

Another change will be an update to the Call to Action statements; the part of the warning where the Weather Service tells the public what to do. These have been updated by the social scientists. “They’ll simply say something like, ‘You need to move to shelter now.’ Very quick, short and sweet, this is what you need to do. Maybe not a lot of explanation, but that’s OK. This is not the time for explanation. It’s the time for very quick … this is what you need to do, otherwise you could be in big trouble.”

Kramper says the Weather Service will be looking for feedback. “From our partners in the media, to see what they think about it, how did they use it, what did they use, what parts of the new stuff in the warning did they feel is helpful, what parts would they like to see changed, what maybe could be added to make their job easier. Then also we’re going to try to get some feedback from the emergency managers. How did they use it, did it help them? There will places where the public can actually respond to the things that we’re doing as well.”

Visit this webpage to offer feedback to the new warnings this year.

Kramper says more changes could be coming, but the Service had to start somewhere. “We think the warning process and the result is going to be overhauled eventually in a bigger fashion, but we just can’t do it at once. We’re going to take steps and this is probably the first step.”

Why here, why now?

This map shows the areas covered by the five offices that will be testing the new warnings this year. Image courtesy, National Weather Service.

The five offices that will be testing the new warnings are St. Louis, Pleasant Hill (Kansas City), Springfield, Topeka and Wichita. Each has in the last year received an upgrade to its radar that will help the weather service in issuing the updated warnings.

Kramper says of the new dual-polarization radar, “In most cases it should help us differentiate between hail versus rain a little bit better. We should be able to get better train estimates from the radar so that should help in flash flood situations.”

If a tornado is occurring and throwing debris into the air, that should also show up. “If we see that debris and that lines up with everything else that we’re looking at … here’s a circulation, there’s a good signature, now we’ve got a debris signature as well, so far the research has shown, that’s like 90 to 95 percent sure there’s probably a tornado there.”

See our story on the Pleasant Hill Weather Service Office radar upgrade.

The upgrade to radar systems was not the reason the Service chose the five offices it did. Kramper says, “They wanted to try to get offices that had been effected by strong tornadoes recently and try to get a variety as well. Kansas sometimes looks at their storms a little bit differently than a lot of people in St. Louis did, so we’ll have a lot of variety in terms of the people that are going to be exposed to this new type of warning.

Corps: Missouri River reservoir prep on schedule

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The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ effort to open up storage space on upstream reservoirs to receive runoff this spring is going according to plan.

The Corps updated the media tonight and Water Management Division Chief Jody Farhat said already about 500,000-acre-feet more storage is open now than a year ago. “The total system storage in the main stem reservoir system is currently at 56.4-million-acre-feet. That’s 400,000-acre-feet below the base of annual flood control pool, thus providing an additional 400,000-acre-feet of additional flood control storage for the 2012 runoff season. Last year at this time system storage was at 56.9, about 100,000-acre-feet above the base of annual flood control zone.”

Farhat says that gives the Corps some wiggle room. “What this additional storage gives us is the opportunity perhaps in the spring to hold additional water back if we get rainfall events downstream. Having that additional storage provides just a little bit of additional flexibility.”

The extra space also allows more room for higher inflows upstream as well, but right now Farhat says the snowpack does not look threatening. Farhat says the snow-water equivalence on the plains reported by the National Weather Service remains less than one inch, with few exceptions. NWS shows a below-normal mountain snowpack throughout the Missouri River basin as well, though storms this week have increased that amount.

With the River and most of its reservoirs having frozen up this week, Farhat says the Corps will increase flows into the River beginning tomorrow. “We’ll step up our releases from Garrison at a rate of about 1,000-cubic-feet-per-second every other day until we reach 26- or 27,000 in early February.”

Nixon hopes to avoid tapping Rainy Day Fund, for now

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The State of Missouri’s Budget Reserve Fund has still not been tapped into in response to the disasters of 2011. Governor Jay Nixon hopes it won’t have to be, if only in the short-term.
 

Governor Jay Nixon discussed the use of the Rainy Day Fund following the annual Governor's Prayer Breakfast.

Nixon says it might be used later, as costs are still being assessed from events like the Joplin tornado and flooding in northwest and southeast Missouri. “Because of some of the bills that are yet to come in, because of the insurance claims that haven’t been met, because of the gaps especially in schools and other public facilities down there (in Joplin) between the insurance coverage, we still may have to have that as an option.”

State statute requires that any amount taken out of the Rainy Day Fund be paid back to it within three years, with interest. Nixon says that means taking out money now could compound challenges of balancing the budget in future years.

The Governor says he plans to talk to legislative leadership over the next one to two weeks about how to proceed in the “best and most prudent financial way.”

National Guard aids in flood relief in northwest Missouri (AUDIO)

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The Missouri National Guard is focusing its efforts in Northwest Missouri. Spokeswoman Michelle Matthews says they’re in two areas, one is in Andrew County and Carol County.

She says they’re sandbagging and repairing levees. They are also installing pumps to pump water off the tops of levees so they don’t breach. Matthews says there are three levees in that area that need protecting: the Sugar Tree Levee, Miles Point Levee and Belcher-Lozier Levee. She says if those break, Highway 65 will be flooded.

Matthews says there are about 328 guardsmen on duty now, but the National Guard would add more if they needed to.

(AUDIO) Allison Blood reports on the flood response. Mp3 1:00

Corps of Engineers would pay for part of Mississippi River flooding

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Flooding on the Mississippi River south of Cape Girardeau has already been historic. Army Corps of Engineers Mississippi Valley Division says they’ll use money from their less important programs to repair flood damage if Congress doesn’t give them enough. Spokesman Bob Anderson says recovery is too important to be underfunded.

Anderson says there isn’t a set list of programs to take money out of, but probably some studies and navigation projects. He says it’s better to repair the levees now with the Corps’ own money so the levees can be effective later in the year and next flood season.

He says the Corps’ management this year has prevented 100 billion in damages. There has already been a total of 54 million dollars transferred to date.