Agency advises state eye on levees

Draft lists ideas for better system

Arkansas Natural Resources Commission officials have compiled a list of ways to address the state's mostly unregulated levee system, beginning with identifying the existing levees and the parties responsible for them.

The system has been a topic among state legislators and local leaders upset about levee problems communities faced during the spring floods along the Red and Arkansas rivers.

This is the second time in seven years that legislators and other officials have taken up the problem. After flooding in 2008, lawmakers requested an audit of the levee system that found little oversight and a lack of guidelines.

Natural Resources Commission officials will present the recommendations to Gov. Asa Hutchinson and plan to work with him on developing legislation to give the state more oversight of the levee system.

Commission Executive Director Randy Young told the commission's board last week that the commission was the likeliest among state agencies to oversee the levees in the future. The commission currently is prohibited from overseeing them.

But without legislation, that prohibition and other levee matters won't change, J.R. Davis, Hutchinson's spokesman, wrote in an email.

The recommendations presented to the board are a draft "levee safety approach," basically describing what a new levee system would look like and how it would be maintained.

The new levee safety program would retain "as much local control as possible," said Trevor Timberlake, engineer supervisor of the dam-safety and flood-management sector at the commission.

County judges would have the authority to reappoint levee district board members -- a responsibility that could be transferred to the local conservation district if the board is inactive.

Timberlake told the commission's board that in many cases, levees were built a century ago and haven't been maintained by a local board in almost as long.

He cited a case along the Arkansas River -- Perry County Levee District No. 1 -- where a levee was built at the beginning of the 20th century and was last improved in the 1940s. It no longer has a district board. Residents who believed they were protected by the levee discovered the lack of a district board only after flooding this spring when the levee was overtopped.

The levee didn't meet the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' minimum standards, Miles Brown, a spokesman for the Corps' Little Rock district, said in a later interview. Many others are in the same situation.

"That created the anxiety we're currently dealing with," he said.

Right now, the Corps inspects only major levees every five years, Brown said. That covers 93 segments totaling more than 1,200 miles. Few are owned or operated by the Corps. Some were built by the Corps and turned over to local authorities. Thousands of miles of private levees have never been checked by the Corps.

When the Corps finds a problem with a major levee, officials send a report to the local levee district, if one exists. Otherwise, reports are sent to county judges.

"But that's all," Brown said. The responsibility to fix the levee is left to local authorities.

Most levees in Arkansas were built after the 1927 flood, and "very, very few" have been built since the 1960s, Brown said.

Individual levees may have multiple districts covering individual portions. But Timberlake believes many of the districts have disappeared.

He noted that in Conway County, only levee districts 1, 6 and 16 exist.

"Logic would tell you that there's a levee district 2, but they're not here," he said.

The commission will have to identify levees not currently listed by the Corps of Engineers, Timberlake said.

The commission's recommendations for legislation also include reporting and auditing measures. Levee districts that tax would have to file reports jointly with the county clerk and the Natural Resources Commission.

Levee districts also would be subject to audits, and levees would be inspected by the commission. Those inspections would require two to four new commission employees.

Education and outreach to local authorities would be additional priorities for the commission. Commission officials would work with such groups to include levees in state and local hazard-mitigation plans and would allow levee owners to receive federal funding for repairs and flood mitigation.

The recommendations were presented at the commission's July meeting Wednesday, gaining some interest among commissioners.

Bill Poynter of Texarkana said the levees represent an opportunity for Arkansas, as one of many states with the problem, to create a law to address it. He urged his fellow commissioners to read the legislative audit from 2009.

"We've had this problem for quite some time," he said.

Metro on 07/19/2015

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