HAVRE, Mont. (NMB) – A public meeting to discuss the project to repair deficiencies with the Milk River Levee is scheduled for September 21st at 7 PM at the Chuckwagon at the Great Northern Fairgrounds.
Jeremiah Theys of Great West Engineering says these repairs are crucial to protect much of Havre and the surrounding area from potential flooding and flood insurance.
“If there was a breach in the levee and flooding, the (Army Corps of Engineers) has a program where they come in and help do flood protection and mitigation and assistance. And another element is FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) is going to be re-mapping the Milk River. And if the levee is not certified, it won’t be represented in the modeling of the new floodplain maps. That could have a big impact on requiring folks to purchase flood insurance.”
Theys says all of the deficiencies are minor, but they all add up.
“They’ve got to do some well testing of the seepage relief wells, there’s a few that will need to be abandoned and then replaced. They’ve got to clean some of the drainage culverts. There’s a lot of encroachments into the levee easement which are not allowable. So there’s trees and vegetation, some fencing, things of that nature that will need to be moved out of the easement or out of the levee. There’s some enclosures, they call them, which are the two railroad crossings, the west crossing and the east crossing, that we need to have a mitigation plan in place to be able to close those if there was a flood event. So those are kind of some the minor things. But there’s just a lot of little things that need to be completed.”
Much of the money for the project is coming from the County’s COVID-relief funds, but funds will also be provided by the creation of a new Special Improvement District, which will replace RSID 10.
“This is to incorporate folks that are actually protected by the levee, as a funding mechanism to help offset some of the costs that are going to be needed to complete those levee improvements…The new proposed District will have around 1,000 parcels in it, and that’s what the levee currently protects.”
