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Stakeholders seek solutions in area that has seen flooding every year since 2013.

Tyler Harris, Editor

March 6, 2020

7 Slides

Leo Ettleman brings his white Chevy pickup to a stop and rolls down the window to give a grain hauler directions to a bin site not far north of this gravel road intersection in Fremont County, Iowa. In recent years, navigating the back roads of Fremont County and adjacent counties on the Missouri River floodplain has become a chore.

On this February day, the rural county of less than 8,000 just across the river from Nebraska is booming with traffic — grain trucks, side dump trucks hauling loads of clay, and farmers such as Ettleman navigating the gravel to reach farm sites, bin sites and levees in need of repair.

"They've been mining the sand and clay, and they're taking it up north [to breached levee L-575], and they're staging the clay up here," Ettleman says. "It's too wet, so they're staging it, so it will dry out."

This includes farmers and other residents contracted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to haul sand and clay to staging areas, where the clay dries out to be used to repair the breached levee L-575 east of Nebraska City, Neb.

After the devastating floods of 2019 and 2011, it might seem hard to believe there was a time when the Missouri River didn't flood as frequently. But for some farmers along the Missouri River bottom in Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas and South Dakota, flooding has become an almost annual event since 2013.

"We've had flooding in this area in 2008, 2010, 2011, 2013 and every year since 2013," Ettleman says. "That doesn't mean we've had levee breaches every year, but we've had plugged drainage for extended periods, and if the river stays high for so long, we start getting seep water."

About 2.2 million acres weren't planted in Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa and Missouri in 2019 because of flooding, and many of those were along the Missouri River. Many fields, especially south of Omaha, Neb., were underwater for nine months.

Ettleman notes that even though the 2019 flood happened fast, he fortunately was able to move most of his equipment to higher ground — with the exception of a bulldozer and a excavator. Like many farmers, he wasn't able to move his stored 2018 crop.

"We had a tremendous amount of grain in bins, but we couldn't get it out because the frost was thawing," he says. "We had rain that melted the snow and took the frost out of the ground. We couldn't even get auger wagons in and out because the roads were so bad.

"So, we had a tremendous amount of grain go through the 2019 flood. Luckily, none of our bins burst, but the water got right up to the bottom 24 inches of the grain in some places. But we saved a high percentage of our grain."

Recurring problem

Why the recurring flooding? Plaintiffs in Ideker Farms Inc., et al., vs. United States of America — which included 372 farmers, landowners and business owners along the Missouri River floodplain in multiple states — attest that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, mandated by the current Missouri River Master Manual, have managed the river in a way that deprioritizes flood control — instead prioritizing all functions of the river, including wildlife habitat, equally.

More specifically, the plaintiffs say the Corps has changed the hydrology of the river for the sake of improving wildlife habitat.

The Missouri River Recovery Program first was implemented in 2004 based on an amended biological opinion by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that emphasized habitat for pallid sturgeon.

Plaintiffs have pointed out that changes outlined by the opinion require the Corps to hold water in upper reservoirs to build pallid sturgeon habitats, reducing room available for flood storage. It also requires the Corps to "pulse" water levels for sturgeon habitat.

In 2018, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, finding the Corps responsible for extensive property damage along the river, constituting a "taking" under the Fifth Amendment.

Ettleman points out that the river wasn't always managed this way. After the 1944 Flood Control Act — which authorized construction of dams and levees, and authorized the Pick-Sloan Missouri Basin Program — the river was channelized, creating a self-scouring system that sped water up and prevented flooding. This involved the construction of wing dikes, which directed water away from banks and kept a fast channel of water moving in the center of the river.

"They've let the wing dikes deteriorate," Ettleman says. "They've notched the dikes at the bank to shoot water at them, which erodes the bank. The riverbank is your first line of defense in a flood. These rock dikes were helping to force the water around to speed up the river. Notched dikes get the water swirling on the backside against the bank, and it slows the whole river down."

"So it has to flow laterally, connecting the river with the floodplain," adds Scott Olson, who farms along the river near Tekamah, Neb., and with the exception of 2012, has dealt with flooding on his farm every year since 2011. "They're making a braided river. When that river starts to wander, who knows where it will go? When the Missouri River is that much higher, you also have higher groundwater levels. That water has to go somewhere, and it slows that flow down."

Management of the Missouri River is a hotly debated issue, however. Mike Sotak, principal engineer with Fyra, an Omaha-based engineering consulting firm that has been contracted to help design and rehabilitate levees in Sarpy County, Neb., notes the Missouri River basin encompasses a huge area. It drains the largest area of any watershed in the lower 48 states, and it's difficult to manage an area encompassing thousands of square miles.

"You're managing natural things like snowmelt and runoff with man-made controls," Sotak says. "Things can go well for a long time, and all of a sudden, the status quo changes, because something unexpected happens one particular year. It's hard to pinpoint blame."

Sotak notes that the problem in 2011 was not releasing enough water early on, leaving the Corps unprepared. While this happened to a lesser extent in 2019, Sotak says a big part of the problem was heavy runoff from tributaries below the mainstem dams — in particular, the Elkhorn and Platte rivers in Nebraska and Soldier, Little Sioux and Nishnabotna rivers in Iowa.

"Right now, the Corps does what they're required to do on the Missouri River and in the reservoirs in terms of holding water back," Sotak says. "They still have a responsibility to understand and manage what's coming as far as inflow and react accordingly, and the responsibility to monitor snowmelt. It sometimes gets to a point where they're too late. Then you get a 4- or 5-inch rain and everything melts in a weekend. In this case, by the time they knew, it was too late."

Moving forward

The Corps currently is engaged in a three-phase program to address flooding on the river. The first two phases involve fixing the breaches from the 2019 flood, and getting the breaches up to 100-year flood protection level. The 2019 flood resulted in breaches on 53 levee systems in the Corps' Omaha District along the Missouri River.

While the federal levees along the Missouri River have mostly been repaired, Tom Waters, Missouri Levee and Drainage District Association chairman, notes that many levees still haven't been brought up to 100-year flood protection. However, in the long term, Waters says that 100-year protection isn't enough.

"A lot of 100-year levees have been overtopped," he says. "I think we should take the river from Sioux City to St. Louis to 500-year level of protection, and then we would be able to prevent a lot flooding. We may not protect ourselves from every flood, but we're going to protect ourselves from a lot more floods if we get the level of protection up. I think a lot of levee districts could add as little as 2 to 3 feet on their levee, if FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] and Corps regulations would allow it."

However, when it comes to how the Corps manages the river, only Congress can change the Master Manual.

After the federal court ruling, stakeholders have worked with governors in the adjacent four states — Gov. Pete Ricketts, Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa, Gov. Michael Parson of Missouri and Gov. Laura Kelly of Kansas — to urge Congress to change the Master Manual to reprioritize flood control.

So far, the governors have put together $400,000 to have a seat at the table as part of a five-year, Lower Missouri River Flood Risk Reduction study — part of "Phase 3."

This year, landowners gained another victory when Legislative Resolution 288, introduced by state Sen. Julie Slama, was passed in the Nebraska Legislature. LR 288 urges Congress and the Corps of Engineers to prioritize flood control as the top priority for management of the Missouri River under the authority in the Missouri River Master Manual.

"A good strategy would be reaching out to other governors across the country, because every day in the U.S., it's flooding somewhere," Waters says. "If governors would get together and reach out to their own congressional delegations, I think they could get something done."

Olson notes that for many fields along the floodplain, it will take years to get back to preflood production. Many growers weren't able to plant bottomlands in 2019. However, as the water table dropped, Olson was able to plant 1,000 acres of soybeans across his bottom ground — all within an 18- to 20-hour window.

"It turned out well," Olson adds. "The average yield on soybeans was 51 bushels per acre, but it was a gamble, because we didn't know how it would turn out. We put new sickle bars on the combines and spent about as much time working on combines as we spent harvesting."

In the past year, he built a dam to prevent part of one of his low-lying fields along the river from washing away. While it won't prevent it from flooding, Olson notes the field to the north of the dam has historically had channels cut through it from north to south during flooding, and he hopes the dam will prevent the field from washing away to the south.

"We just started building it, designing it as we went," Olson says. "I wasn't sure if it was going to work, but we had to do something to keep it from flooding down there all the time. It was by the seat of the pants, and we changed a few things as we went."

It took one person running a box blade, one running a payloader and two running scrapers. By the time the dam was finished, Olson had added 140 hours to his tractor. While it won't protect the rest of his farm, he notes it will potentially protect 50 to 60 acres from washing away.

"The dam is 2 feet higher than the water point, but I just don't know if it will hold or not," Olson says. "If I can save it, and it quits flooding so much, maybe I can finally farm it again. I can't give it up."

About the Author(s)

Tyler Harris

Editor, Wallaces Farmer

Tyler Harris is the editor for Wallaces Farmer. He started at Farm Progress as a field editor, covering Missouri, Kansas and Iowa. Before joining Farm Progress, Tyler got his feet wet covering agriculture and rural issues while attending the University of Iowa, taking any chance he could to get outside the city limits and get on to the farm. This included working for Kalona News, south of Iowa City in the town of Kalona, followed by an internship at Wallaces Farmer in Des Moines after graduation.

Coming from a farm family in southwest Iowa, Tyler is largely interested in how issues impact people at the producer level. True to the reason he started reporting, he loves getting out of town and meeting with producers on the farm, which also gives him a firsthand look at how agriculture and urban interact.

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