Water from the flooded Mississippi River covers the road in downtown Davenport on Sunday, April 30. CREDIT DAVE THOMPSON
Thirty years after the Quad Cities and other river communities were inundated by the Great Flood of 1993, a quartet of U.S. representatives are championing a levee safety act to help prevent more such disasters. Rep. Eric Sorensen, D-Moline, recently joined Illinois Rep. Darin LaHood, R-Peoria; Rep. Mary Miller, R-Oak Park; and Rep. Mike Bost, […]
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Thirty years after the Quad Cities and other river communities were inundated by the Great Flood of 1993, a quartet of U.S. representatives are championing a levee safety act to help prevent more such disasters.Rep. Eric Sorensen, D-Moline, recently joined Illinois Rep. Darin LaHood, R-Peoria; Rep. Mary Miller, R-Oak Park; and Rep. Mike Bost, R-Murphysboro in introducing the Upper Mississippi River Levee Safety Act. (Find a copy of the legislation here.)The bill is designed to improve flood protection and prevent disasters along the river like the May through September 1993 flood. That disaster, the National Weather Service reported, killed 50 people, caused more than $15 billion in damages, and crippled river commerce. The devastation occurred after hundreds of levees failed along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, according to the NWS website. The disaster also stopped barge traffic for nearly two months and made some Mississippi River bridges inaccessible from Davenport to St. Louis.“I’m proud to work across the aisle to advance this bill that protects our region from the impacts of flooding along the Mississippi, supports our agriculture industry, and helps keep people safe,” Rep. Sorensen said in a news release announcing the act’s introduction. “As the only meteorologist serving in Congress, I know how devastating the impacts of extreme weather can be to families, neighborhoods, and property,” he added.Rep. Miller called the legislation she leads “a critical step to ensure that levee operators have the tools and flexibility they need to do essential maintenance along the Mississippi River.”
Levees protect people, farmland
Those levees, she said, “Protect countless homes and thousands of acres of farmland, and I’m proud to lead the effort in the House to protect Illinois communities from future flood threats.”The Illinois delegation said it plans to work with lawmakers on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee as they take up the Water Resources Development Act. The Upper Mississippi River Levee Safety Act is supported by the Upper Mississippi, Illinois & Missouri Rivers Association (UMIMRA), Corn Belt Ports and the Illinois Farm Bureau. “Flooding in the Upper Mississippi River Valley has been a repeated occurrence for many years. Precipitation events are becoming more intense and happening more often, causing more runoff, leading to more flooding,” UMIMRA Chairman Mike Klingner said in a news release. “It’s time to make some significant progress on adequate levee maintenance and preventing future disasters for the Upper Mississippi River.”According to UMIMRA, existing Army Corps of Engineers’ policy also does not match Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) policy which requires levee districts to maintain their level of protection or risk losing their levee accreditation.To fix that, the proposed act would give local levee districts along the Upper Mississippi River more flexibility to maintain their systems and better prepare for future floods. Currently, the Corps’ policies restrict operators’ ability to adequately adjust levee height along the Mississippi River, making it difficult to respond to changes in rainfall conditions or flood frequency profiles. Under the Levee Safety Act, the UMIMRA said, the Corps would be required to update, at least every 20 years, the Mississippi River levee and floodwall design standards to reflect current flood profiles and rainfall frequencies. The updated standard would only apply to federally improved levees along the Mississippi River between Cape Girardeau, Missouri, and Guttenberg, Iowa. Mr. Klingner’s organization worked closely with lawmakers to craft the legislation designed to correct the discrepancy between federal agencies and help prevent future disasters via the Levee Safety Act, which was introduced on Tuesday, Sept. 26.
Changing weather a challenge
Why are changes needed?Current Corps-mandated policies “are making the Upper Mississippi River less safe by not allowing any adjustments to levees due to change in rainfall conditions and updated flood frequency profiles,” Mr. Klingner said. Those dramatically changing weather conditions have altered flow frequency profiles in the Upper Mississippi and the current level of protection has not been updated to coordinate with these changes, according to the UMIMRA fact sheet.Under the proposed act, regulators would use improved hydrology and hydraulic information to address this change in weather conditions, allowing local levee sponsors to maintain an effective level of protection. Setting Upper Mississippi River levees according to current weather and flow conditions also would save significant federal, state, and local dollars, supporters say.Damages from each of the floods in 1993 and 2008 exceeded $15 billion dollars, UMIMRA cited. In addition, the association said that if the act had been in place 50 years ago, damages from major floods in 1973, 1993, 2008 and 2019 could have been prevented.
