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Local officials are fighting an
uphill battle against rising costs and federal bureaucrats in
their effort to repair the levees protecting the American
Bottom. The deadline is being cut; red tape is delaying action,
and the price tag could jump to as much as $400 million.
According to Alan Dunstan, Madison County board chairman, one
problem has been with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
From the outset, FEMA's District 5 office put the remapping of
the American Bottom on a fast track, according to Dunstan. FEMA
released preliminary maps of the area last summer showing the
entire American Bottom as a high-hazard flood zone. These maps
were set to become official this summer, with all owners of real
property in the area who have federally backed mortgages being
required to buy expensive flood insurance.
However, that deadline was delayed by a deal worked out
between U.S. Rep. Jerry Costello (D-Illinois), U.S. Rep. John
Shimkus (R-Illinois), U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) and
FEMA. The agreement, that was subsequently codified into federal
law, prohibited FEMA from enacting new maps of the American
Bottom until the Missouri side of the St. Louis watershed was
also mapped. This, officials estimated, would buy the Illinois
side as much as three years to repair the levees and stave off
the insurance mandate.
But FEMA has now fast-tracked the Missouri side, Dunstan
says. Preliminary maps are due out soon, with the maps becoming
official in the summer of 2010.
"Where FEMA threw us a curve ball is they had a different
standard in Missouri than they had in Illinois," said Joe
Parente, Madison County administrator. "Missouri was allowed to
go back and research engineering records to find where they
previously had an engineer that certified that their levees met
the protection standards. Based on that, FEMA concluded there's
no evidence that deficiencies exist, so the Missouri side
qualified as a Provisional Accredited Levee. So, FEMA is going
to go ahead and move forward with the mapping based on that."
According to the agreement reached with FEMA last year, when
the Missouri-side maps become official (now 2010) the Illinois
side will as well, triggering the flood insurance mandate.
Officials are suspicious that FEMA green-lighted the Missouri
side process to negate the effect of the agreement.
"Clearly, what FEMA did was to speed up the process in
Missouri for the purposes of triggering the remapping process in
Illinois and, to be honest, we believe that FEMA exercised
differential standards in evaluating the Missouri levees," said
Les Sterman, executive director of the East-West Gateway Council
of Governments. "We made that argument pretty strenuously to
FEMA a couple of weeks ago without much effect."
According to FEMA estimates on www.floodsmart.com, flood
insurance on a $100,000 home would jump from $287 currently to
$1,143 when the maps become official next summer. Local
officials say that estimate could be low; they worry about the
impact that such a cost could have on the communities of the
American Bottom.
"Our complaint to FEMA is that they’re not prepared for the
impact that the flood insurance mandate will have on the people
in the Bottom, particularly people of lower income," Dunstan
said. "This creates major consequences, including people
possibly being foreclosed on because they don’t have flood
insurance and can’t afford it. There’s a ripple effect, but it
doesn’t seem like they (FEMA officials) care. They’re
sitting out in Washington D.C. just looking at a bunch of rules
and regulations. They need to realize what it’s going to be like
on the ground here," he added.
Early last year, the EWGCG had submitted an application to
FEMA to have the Bottom declared an AR (restoration) zone. This
is a designation that means that an area is currently at risk
for flooding but has a plan to remedy the problems and is
actively working on implementing that plan. Under the AR
designation, while flood insurance would still be mandatory, the
price would be significantly lower than under the high- hazard
designation. The effort to achieve AR status had been moved to
the back burner because of the agreement that had been reached
with FEMA, but it's being moved to the front burner once again
in light of the escalated Missouri timetable, Sterman says.
While the AR zone designation will offer some relief to
homeowners, businesses will still be hard hit, according to
Sterman.
"I think one of the biggest impacts is going to be on
medium-sized businesses that will have to go on the open market
for insurance," Sterman said. "The AR zone designation doesn’t
really help them; their insurance carriers can charge them
whatever the market will bear. And institutions like hospitals
and all kinds of other entities are going to see flood insurance
rates go up dramatically...I mean three, four, five times, maybe
more."
While officials are battling FEMA with little effect, they
are finding the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers almost equally
difficult to deal with. The Corps has to certify the levees and
is coming up with rehabilitation requirements. Two problems are
raising their heads here, according to local officials. One, the
Corps is moving very slowly. Two, cost doesn't seem to be a
consideration.
"The Corps now has additional requirements where they have to
do peer reviews and scientific analyses and it’s just extending
the time frame," Parente said. "Before they can spend money,
they have to go through all these processes. They’re not capable
of speeding up the process; what they’ve demonstrated is that
they’re very capable of making the process longer and more
complex. That’s exactly what’s happened since this thing
started. They increased their regulations rather than trying to
streamline it to deal with this emergency in a quicker way."
This go-slow approach, according to Sterman, seems oddly out
of kilter with emergency management.
"I think the irony here is they (the Corps) came in in August
of 2007 and said that we’ve got an emergency that we’ve got to
deal with urgently and we did exactly that," Sterman said. "Our
local officials have been on this on an urgent basis ever since
then. They imposed the tax, put these new flood prevention
districts into place and have signed an intergovernmental
agreement. Our local officials are acting like it’s an
emergency. The irony is that the people who effectively
triggered this emergency are acting like this is routine, using
their same old processes and procedures. It’s certainly an
inconsistent attitude on their part. If they truly believe that
there is a danger to public safety, it is irresponsible to be
taking this long to help us fix it," he added.
In 2008, the state of Illinois enacted a law to allow
counties to levy up to a quarter-cent sales tax to fund levee
repairs. Madison, St. Clair and Monroe counties all adopted the
sales tax, effective Jan. 1, 2009. That money is now being
collected. Prior to the banking crisis and recession, that
revenue was projected to support debt service on as much as a
$180 million bond issue, which was the projected bill for
repairs. The cost estimate has now jumped to as much as $400
million, however, as more facts are uncovered and the Corps
develops more specific plans.
One of the big problems that is driving up the cost is
contaminated groundwater in the Sauget area, according to
Dunstan. The common way to strengthen levees is to install
relief wells that pump out ground water and relieve the pressure
on the levee. Significant contamination has been found in the
groundwater in the Sauget area, however, Dunstan says, causing
the Corps to look at other more expensive alternatives.
Parente says one of these alternate fixes would be to build
slurry walls down through the middle of the levees all the way
to bedrock - more than 100 feet. The Corps has been looking at
installing these slurry walls for a five-mile stretch in the
Sauget area, a massive and extremely expensive undertaking.
"What we’re asking for are alternatives to this very
expensive slurry wall," Parente said. "Is there a way that we
can still put relief wells in? Is there a way we can put in some
of the relief wells and maybe a shorter distance of slurry
walls? Those are the alternatives that we’re asking the Corps
for, but we’re really not getting much information from them."
According to Parente, the Corps' plans do not take into
consideration the actual money available to pay for them. At the
end of April, the Corps announced that it would be allocating
funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to the
Southwestern Illinois levees: $15.3 million to the Wood River
levees; $11.4 million to the Chain of Rocks canal; and $3
million to East St. Louis and vicinity, but that still leaves a
gap of $220 million. Meanwhile, local officials are considering
another run at seeking relief through the legislative process.
"Basically," said Sterman, "what we would like to be able to
do is to say, 'Look, we’ve got financing in place. We’ll do
everything we can to encourage people to buy flood insurance,
and we’ll put an operational plan in place in case of high water
so that we can immediately know when there’s a potential
failure.' We think if we can put those things in place, we can
dramatically decrease the threat to public safety and give FEMA
and the Corps every assurance that we’re going to fix the
levees. Nothing’s going to slow us down from doing that, other
than the Corps itself. We’re basically saying that under those
unique set of circumstances, we ought to be given something of a
pass because I don’t think anyone wants to see people thrown out
of their homes," Sterman added. "That just doesn’t make any
sense." |
