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Speaker 3
5:00
Appreciate everyone for being here, and if we
could, we've got a large agenda here today and some meetings this afternoon, so we want to get started as quickly as possible. And I do want to say just before I recognize the other chairman here that staff tells me this might be a record when we had seven committees that asked to be a part of this joint committee meeting.
So that shows the interest that is there. And I know for my part, I deeply appreciate everyone that's paying attention to the levee situation and the flood situation that we've just gone through. if we would come to order and if you've got conversations that are lingering you can take them out in the hall but otherwise we want to get started before we get into some of the testimony i do want to make mention
and thank all these chairmen for being here representative mark lowry with house insurance and commerce center stubblefield senate city county and local affairs
center stubblefield and i have talked at length about this issue leading up to this and both on the task force appreciate his leadership representative fight senator cooper representative dan douglas and representative dwight tosh and senator cooper stead today is the vice chairman senator ricky hill and um all of these chairmen i just want to make mention of them and then if anybody has an opening remark center stubblefield or any of the others i'd like
to yield to you if you'd like to say a few words sir thank
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
6:42
you mr chairman uh i just have a few words the uh i have
a senate district that has four counties that border the arkansas river that were impacted by the flood that we recently had so i certainly have a vested interest in this and trying to solve this problem and make sure that you know we do something to prevent this from happening again i also want to thank congressman westerman for being here today i know he's very very busy and bruce i want to thank you for taking time out of your schedule to be here with us today i don't want to take up a lot of time because i know we've got a lot of members here this is about the biggest group I've seen in a while so I know we got a lot of questions so
thank you for being here today and I turn it over to Senator
Senator Ricky Hill
Unverified
7:28
Hill thank you sir I just want to say that the effect that the the flood had on agriculture was devastating along the river basin area and there's a lot of things that we need to do to improve this for the life of those people not only the ones who lost their house but the way they make a living and so that affects our agriculture and forestry areas and I just want to keep it short and sweet and that's all
I have to say. Are there any other chairman that here that would like to say a word this time? Seeing none first order of business on here is consideration to approve senate house insurance and commerce committee meetings minutes. I have a motion and I have a second. I have a second. all those favor say aye all those opposed no
so those are approved well now we want to get into our testimony and and i appreciate the remarks of the co-chairman and obviously we've gone through
the worst flooding that we've seen in the state some say since 1927 obviously those of us like center stubblefield whose districts have been directly impacted this first got my attention really deeply in 20 and i guess no pun intended in 2015 and 2016. our legislature made
some efforts at this to try to bring legislation that would allow some of the levy boards to be reconstituted and i just want
to say so i don't forget that i think the arkansas association of
counties and all of the county judges and all those that were involved that helped us pass that legislation in 16 and but now now that we've had an event like this it's time for us to dig in make
sure that we understand the impacts that we experienced and what we can do to try to protect for the future and so with that I think it's very very important the congressman Westerman is here to bring us a
federal perspective and congressman as I yield to you I can just say that given all the experience that I've seen in it it absolutely is going to take a
a working partnership with the federal government with state government and with local governments as well and the levy districts and so we thank you for being here with that you're recognized sir
it's good to have you back here at the legislature too thank you chairman
Speaker 17
9:43
rapert and chairman stubby field and chairman hill and all the other chairmen who um may have missed it's good to be back here
Speaker 19
9:50
with you it's kind of strange being on this side of the uh the room but it's good nonetheless to be here to share with you during this meeting so we can assess some of the
historic flooding we faced this
Speaker 17
10:04
past spring and to discuss how we can better prepare for future events. I'd like to first begin by expressing my deepest condolences to those Arkansas families that lost homes, incomes, and unfortunately loved ones these past few months. I'd also like to commend the many entities who responded to this crisis, these brave men and women demonstrated to the nation that when our neighbors, friends, or strangers alike faced danger, our Kansans
respond. While the damage was widespread, without the Corps, ADEM, Red Cross, FEMA, state and local officials, and thousands of volunteers, things could have been much, much worse. And let us not forget the engineers and construction workers who decades ago designed and built a flow control system that held up remarkably given the age of the infrastructure and the severity of the flooding throughout the month of may more than a foot of rain fell across oklahoma resulting in swollen rivers and reservoirs throughout the upper arkansas river basin
by may 22nd nearly a dozen reservoirs had reached or surpassed their previous high water mark as a result the united states army corps of engineers ordered the release of water into the arkansas river which in turn resulted in the mcarns reaching record flood stages at van buren dardanelle moralton toadsuck and pendleton during the high water event we saw flows in excess of 600 000 cubic feet per second four levy systems were overtopped or breached
at mclean bottom number three dardanelle six mile and perry county number one resulting in nearly 40 million dollars in damage we also also saw significant damage to pump stations at two of these locations furthermore the navigation system has been shut down since may 3rd resulting in lock closures throughout the system as many of you in the nation saw we also had two barges break loose and hit kerr lock and dam in oklahoma resulting in significant damage to the lock
and the loss of two barges both of which remain in the channel their removal is currently top priority of the corps who is working on contracting barge recovery services this unfortunately is not the only damage system-wide we saw damages throughout the system to lock galleries control buildings operations and maintenance buildings site utilities and more the deviation set last week will allow the u.s army corps of engineers to survey boat will allow their survey votes to
get a better read of the channel so we know how much dredging will need to be done the current toes are only moving 50 miles per day from the mississippi river to little rock they are being cautious of running aground along the channel due to shoaling and the system still trying to stabilize flows due to the deviation are currently between 60 000 and 70 000 cubic feet per second The good news is that the Corps has signed a memorandum of understanding with Bruce Oakley, Incorporated, to begin dredging the river.
We must all now work together to get the river back to full service and ensure we have the infrastructure in tip-top shape for navigation, future flood control events, and recreation activities. Shortly after Governor Hutchinson declared a major disaster on June 8th, President Trump declared a state of emergency, releasing federal funding to assist the affected areas. The President's action made federal funding available to Conway, Crawford, Faulkner, Jefferson, Perry, Pulaski, Sebastian, and Yale Counties. Assistance included subsidies for temporary housing and home repairs, low-cost loans to cover uninsured property losses,
and other programs to help individuals and business owners recover from the effects of a disaster. The three main agencies from which individuals may apply for assistance are FEMA, the Small Business Administration, and USDA. FEMA examples of assistance include rental payments for temporary housing for those whose homes are unlivable grants for home repairs and replacement of essential household items not covered by insurance grants to replace personal property and help meet medical dental funeral transportation and other serious disaster related needs not covered by insurance unemployment
payments up to 26 weeks for workers who temporarily lost jobs because the disaster and who do not qualify for state benefits such as self-employed individuals small business administration examples include loans available up to two million dollars for business property losses not fully compensated by insurance loans up to two million dollars for small businesses small agricultural cooperatives and most private non-profit organizations of all sizes that have suffered disaster related cash flow problems the usda examples include loans up to five hundred
thousand dollars for farmers ranchers and aquaculture operators to cover production and property losses as well as from funds from the disaster supplemental nutrition assistance program to assist with food stamps farm service agency natural resources conservation service and risk management agency offer programs that help producers recover losses rehabilitating farms and ranches and managing risk as you can see there is
Speaker 19
15:22
a wide variety of federal assistance available to people who are affected by the flood according to
Speaker 17
15:30
the most recent update in mid-july
there have been a total of 8.3 million dollars of disaster funds approved for individual and household programs if your constituents need further direction or assistance please inform them they can reach out to my office in hutt springs for assistance or if they have any concerns or issues with the federal oversight of the disbursements they can reach out to my dc office at 202-225-3772 and i know our whole congressional delegation every member of the house has part of
Speaker 19
16:03
the arkansas river in their district and all offices are are working together to try to help those who are affected as well as both of
Speaker 17
16:13
the senators offices as we continue to assess the the damage. I have spoken at length with both of the head of the Southwest Division of the Corps, Brigadier General Paul Owen, and the head of the Corps, Assistant Secretary of the Army, R.D. James. He's from southeast Missouri, and he's
Speaker 19
16:30
also a former member of the Mississippi River Commission,
and they've all been very willing to help in any way that they can. Both of these conversations centered around how we can
Speaker 17
16:43
prepare for events like this going forward as well as deploying funds to build the infrastructure back better currently the backlog of critical maintenance on the mcarns is now 235 million dollars for fiscal year 21 that's a 100 million dollar increase over fiscal year 20 after new estimates for replacement parts as well as new deficiencies with locked center post were discovered the u.s army corps of engineers says
that if they do not complete critical maintenance soon the system has a 50 percent probability of failing any time within the next five years a study completed in 2015 revealed that closing the mcarns would decrease the nation's business sales by an estimated 4.1 billion dollars annually the mcarns is not just significant for arkansas and oklahoma but it is vital to our national economy and safety. One of my primary goals as Congress is to use the unique position I hold to
help focus our efforts on the MCARNs and our national waterway systems as a whole. As ranking member on the Water Resources and Environment Subcommittee on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, I will work to ensure that our waterways will continue to serve both our state and our nation for decades to come. Since 2014, we have kept the Water Resources Reform and Development Act, or WERDA, as you sometimes hear it called, we've kept that reauthorization on a biannual schedule, and our aim is to continue that success
this Congress. My Democratic counterpart on the subcommittee, Representative Grace Napolitano from California, along with the Chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Representative Peter DeFazio from Oregon, have made commitments to keep WERDA on schedule. so far we have already held one hearing with assistant secretary james to oversee implementation of past wordas and we will continue to hold hearings throughout the fall if you have any concerns suggestions ideas or simply want to discuss the word of process please let me know
i'm honored to hold this position because many don't realize the importance our waterway systems play not only in the country's transportation and logistics network but the nation's economy as well It is my goal as ranking member to ensure that our nation's waterways receive both recognition and reliable federal funding that they deserve. I've often said that our waterways are out of sight and out of
Speaker 19
19:07
mind, but they play a very vital role to our nation's economy and especially to the economy here in Arkansas.
Speaker 17
19:17
The tugboat, towboat, and barge industry is the largest segment of the U.S. domestic maritime industry, employing more than 33 000 american mariners aboard its vessels the nation's domestic maritime industry is an economic engine and jobs creator which supports 500 000 jobs and provides 100 billion dollars in economic output moving goods on the water is the most efficient transportation mode a typical inland barge has a capacity 15 15 times greater than one rail car and 60 times
greater than one semi-trailer truck, and one 15-barge tow can move the equivalent of 216 rail cars or 1,050 semi-trailer trucks. Barges can move one ton of cargo 647 miles on a single gallon of fuel. This alleviates highway traffic congestion and emits fewer pollutants to move that same cargo. Rail transport generates 30% more carbon dioxide, while highway transport emits 100,000% more emissions than barge transport measured by tons of CO2 per million ton miles. Water transportation
plays a critical role in facilitating the nation's trade, moving 60 percent of U.S. grain for export. According to the most recent numbers, grain makes up 34 percent of the traffic on the MCARN system, with iron and steel a close second at 27 percent. The single largest commodity that moves on U.S. waterways is petroleum with 244 million tons annually while 20 percent of the nation's coal is moved on the water. Word is important because most of the infrastructure throughout our systems
are around 50 years old and in desperate need of repair. We must keep Word on schedule and I look forward to leading the Republican effort on this important process. As we focus on the previous flood and the damages that have occurred we also need to look at how we can make the system better and i can tell you there is no silver bullet but there are plenty of avenues for improvement i would like to commend governor hutchinson for his leadership in recognizing we must update and maintain our levy system and find ways to mitigate and limit damage for future disasters
i believe an important component of this task force must also be financial support to our state systems and cannot simply consist of mandates alone across the country the states need to step up to the plate and work with local entities levy boards and others who have stake in flood risk reduction regarding regional planning and coordination in terms of federal dollars states can pair together a variety of pre-administer pre-disaster mitigation funding sources to build levies back better there are many sources of resiliency funding out there
such as fema pre-hazard mitigation grant program and the cbdg program of which resilience is a large eligibility factor i believe we should be looking at all of these as we move forward with our recovery fema hazard mitigation grant programs provide funding for flood mitigation activities hazard mitigation is extremely important since if we are proactive in our flood fighting capabilities and not reactive we can greatly reduce federal costs by decreasing the level of damage from future disasters in conclusion i would once again like to thank senator stubbyfield
and i believe it was he and representative fight who sent the letter inviting me to participate in this joint session and it is my belief that we have an opportunity to learn from the event this spring and use it as a call to action governor hutchinson has taken the first necessary steps in convening a levy task force it is now our job at both the state and federal levels at public and private institutions and as citizens and business owners to work together to rebuild our infrastructure better and safer than before again thank you and
Speaker 19
23:14
if anybody has questions i'll be glad to try to answer those thank
you congressman we do have some questions and it looks like many more coming so with that we'll get right to it senator eddie cheatham number
Speaker 27
23:29
66. thank you mr chairman congressman good to have you with us today Hey, you are my congressman,
Speaker 29
23:34
but two of the counties in my Senate district actually belong to Mr. Crawford, I believe. But it's always good to see you with us. And I pushed the button a little early probably.
I think you may have answered or got around what I have in mind. But it seemed like after all this took place, there was some static, some conversation about did the Corps really do their job in Oklahoma? but because we all know water runs downhill but I think you mentioned record high levels there also but there was some concern I think about really was that water released prematurely or was it had to be done right then
Speaker 17
24:14
yeah Senator Cheatham thank you for that question and that
Speaker 19
24:18
is a concern that's been voiced and I've talked to the Corps extensively about it and if you can imagine the the MCARNs is a very complicated system with all the tributaries the reservoirs out in Oklahoma holding water back as they fill up and a lot of people in Arkansas gave me feedback that they felt like the Corps was trying to just maintain the levels in the reservoir and releasing
too much water downstream and flooding out folks in arkansas and i know if it's your property that that's happening to that that probably seems like it's the case but if you think of the the complexity of managing the whole system the core's goal is to get the water down the river with the the smallest peak flow possible but all of that water is going to have to come down the river and if they hold it back at the in the reservoirs in oklahoma and wait to release it
then they're going to have to release it in much larger flow volumes so they had a given a period of time and they were trying to meter the water out to minimize the peak flow levels now when uh i was on the ground in dardanelle looking at the uh the lock and dam up there and it was literally louder than than being on the shore of the ocean and i believe they were telling me that day the water was flowing at about 600 000 550 to 600 000 cubic feet per second and to put that in
perspective um you know normal flows around 40 000 cubic feet per second when it gets up to 60 to 80 000 cubic feet per second you really don't want to be on the river in a in a boat and you had water coming through that levee at 550,000 to 600,000 cubic feet per second so it was historic flooding levels and the core did the best job they could to to minimize those peak flows
otherwise had those levels gotten up over 700,000 750,000 you'd have seen even more instantaneous flooding down the river so i understand people's frustration and how they They feel like the Corps might have mismanaged the system, but overall the management of the system from the assessment I've done, I think, was done professionally and to the best of their ability. And also I would say that for the age of the infrastructure,
the damage was as minimal as you could expect. We could have had a lot more levee breaches, and I think that's a testament to the work that's been done to get the levees in better shape. We had some flooding a few years ago, and I know that the legislature and Senator Raypert's been very involved in this in getting those levees in better condition, and we've still got work to do, but overall the system held up remarkably well
Speaker 33
27:22
when you think about the volume of water that was coming down the river.
Speaker 34
27:27
Thank you, Congressman. and mentioning Dardanelle, we were actually, my wife and I were out
Speaker 29
27:33
of state when a lot of this took place, seeing grandsons in Washington State, but we saw a lot going up in Iowa and Missouri of what you're talking about, tributaries coming in, but actually we were in the Corps Park, and if there's somebody from the Corps here today, we were in the Corps Park at Dardanelle, I guess around the first, a little before the first of July probably, coming back home. and there's a lot of damage i know probably their parks rv parks aren't their priority but
a lot of damage and talking about the noise and what river was down some but you could still it sounded like a freight train coming through that dam up there even at that point but i appreciate your service and your comments and your answers to my question thank
Speaker 19
28:19
you sir thank you i will mention you know we've seen devastating flooding on the the mcarn system but if you go up in on the Missouri River they've probably had worse flooding than we've had on the Arkansas River and the way that system was built where the to
keep the navigation channel they actually flow water up against the levees year-round and those levees were built with with dredgings out of the river which means they're predominantly sand and once the water went over the top of the levees it pretty much took the levees totally out so it could have been much worse here in Arkansas, especially when you look at some of the flooding along the Missouri River and the Ohio River as well. Congressman, we've got four more questions for you. I just
want to let members know that Congressman Hill could not personally be here today, but
his district director, Anushree Jumda, is actually here on his part, and after we finish questions, we're going to let her read a statement, but I wanted to make sure that folks knew who she was. Congressman I'm about to take Senator Chesterfield but I want to mention on Senator Cheatham's statement there this will come up later when the Corps actually testifies but since you're here and you made specific mention of the process by which that water was released it was very I was picking up critical
statements during the flooding event which was the protocol in the law called for these things and it was mentioned many times that this is what the protocol is by law and it may have even been stated pretty clearly at one time if there's anybody that needs wants to change this it's going to have to be addressed in the law and so I wanted to say this before you leave is that if the protocol is that when the confluence of all these events occur Arkansas just takes a hit then we need to definitely look at the protocol and the law
because now that we see that this is what's going to happen when we get to this point uh it's just not sustainable you talked about the flows uh in the toadsuck area around the toadsuck lock and dam you know we had just rehabilitated that entire perry county levy district number one put new floodgates in was all brought to height and then now when that flow hit and it overtopped everything rather than what you expect when you see flooding damage and you see some breaches and
you may see some things scattered around there were areas there where there's a pine actually a pine tree farm along that levee the water was so forceful it just put them down like a straight line wind and when it came out and come behind that it blew that levee out back toward the river in the south which is not what you'd expect you expect it all to be flowing over the levee back inland but because of the breach and the way it occurred that water rushed through and that's why i've said that for all intents and purposes we had an inland tsunami effect because of that
rush of water coming out of oklahoma and so i want to make sure before you leave that we need people to think outside of the box you know the whole curb mcclellan navigation system was thinking outside of the box when they decided to build that put in those locks and dams that was that was new. The Panama Canal, when they built the Panama Canal, that was really thinking outside of the box. And so if the protocol and the law says that when all these events come together like we just experienced, that we just open the
gate and let Arkansas have it, that that's not sustainable for us. That means that we know that that's the future if we have the same event. And so I would like for you to help lead in Congress to talk with the Corps did they ever have another emergency reservoir system that they ever conceived that they might use did they ever have another channel system that they could divert water so that it just doesn't overwhelm Arkansas as it makes it down towards the Mississippi so I want to make sure to say that to you because we really need
those ideas and I know it gets down to money you know do you have the money to do those things but I can tell you after seeing the devastation in my area and all up and down through here we don't want to be in a position where the protocol
Speaker 17
32:40
calls for just flushing the toilet on Arkansas well and you know Oklahoma didn't get off scot-free on
Speaker 19
32:45
this either there was terrible flooding there along the river in Oklahoma and again what you what we have to remember is all that water has to come down the river right maybe they could
have held more back in Oklahoma it's some of the reservoirs but when they would have released it it would have been a larger flow coming down so they did more of a gradual
Speaker 21
33:05
release trying to keep the peak flows as well as possible we know I'm sure the Corps will I'll talk about that in more detail when they visit with you today well I want to make sure that
just to get that in that we really do want to think because I'm sure that there might have even been engineering plans that were shelved at one point because the money wasn't there
to possibly do anything more. I would like for us to look at that so I'm going
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
33:34
to take these questions. Senator Chesterfield you're recognized. Thank you Mr. Chair and Congressman thank you for being
here. Good to see you again. Good to see you. And I thank the representative from Congressman Hill's office. Areas of my
district suffered huge losses, especially that area in the Scott area. And there was loss in the Dixie area of North Little Rock.
And what is troubling is some of us were not as aware and alert as my
colleague here about the levee system. but the levy system in the area around Woodson Lateral Road where nobody's had a levy commission for years, is there thought to you or to the chairman about how we would get those small communities that don't have a large voice and don't know as much about this as perhaps y'all do, how do we get
Speaker 19
34:29
them up and running? That's a great question and a great issue that needs be addressed and i hope that's what you all collectively and with with our help where we can can can do is to make those levy districts um strong my understanding is at one point in time it was uh the levy districts operated much differently than they operate now it was a prestigious thing to be on the levy board and they they really worked hard to keep the levies
in tip-top shape i know that from talking to the corps of engineers and others in the federal government that getting your levy in the federal levy program where it's being regularly inspected by the the corps of engineers will give you more assurance that that levy is built properly and maintained properly and that if it is destroyed there's going to be more federal funding there to help with it so getting our levy districts and levy boards operational and operating at a
high level of competency is going to be a challenge that i think we all need to to work on and trying to get as many of those levies to pass federal inspection is also important plus getting the you know with the the gis mapping systems that the state now has we can do a better job of tracking and maintaining where the levees are and the condition of the levees. But I think that's one of the, should be one of the critical focuses of this group
is how to get those levee districts and levee boards functioning at peak performance. Senator Chesterville. I want to follow
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
36:20
up with this young lady here. I did call Congressman Hill's office and I'm waiting on a response. So I will get with you, or you can look up my number. I need a return response from his office because there is a difference or I perceive a difference in the way some of the poor people who don't know how to access
the system have been treated in this difficult time. And I don't want to go away with that feeling. I want to make sure that whether it's the rich or the poor, that we give them the same level of service and that when the response come, and I'll deal with that with FEMA as well because I'm very disappointed in FEMA, there are poor people who still need help and have been turned down at every turn as far as helping to rehabilitate their homes. And I think
we can do better. Thank you, Mr. Chair. That's it. Thank you, Senator Chesterfield. I'll follow up on the the issue of the levy districts I think some of these other folks may testify a little bit about the rehab the legislation we passed in 2016 does allow county judges if there are levy districts that are not operational for whatever reason they just are defunct and they're still there but there's just not operating it allows them to reappoint people to those districts to get them going again and that's absolutely essential so that they can apply for the
funding and the grants that Congressman Westerman mentioned in this information that's what happened in perry county and i'll be glad to work with you on that the other thing is that i'd be glad to after this meeting talk with you as well i actually went out personally and worked with fema and i know exactly what you're talking
about and we have been able to get some access in fact representative hawks and i have an area where it's absolutely poor that was affected at the toad suck area and we've seen success there and so we'll try to help you
best we can because you're right we have people that devastated in all economic situations and some of them this is the third time since 15 that they've had the situation so i'll be glad to work with you those are good points and yes you're
you're you still on here so if you want to hit it again let me
can i say this senator chesterfield wants to make sure to thank governor hutchinson Is that what you said?
Well, she said that, actually. Here, I'm going
to wreck it. You hit it again, Senator Chesterfield, because I want to make sure you get to speak for yourself. Hit it again. There you go. Now, wait a second.
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
39:05
Now, you should be. I want to thank the governor for going to each area, whether it was the poor people of Dixie, the folks in Scott, and the folks at Woodson Lateral Road who suffered greatly, and the folks in McAlmond's homes were totally underwater. And I would be remiss if I did not thank the governor
because he didn't have to go to all of those areas. He went to where I asked him to go. And I truly appreciate him and Representative Scott for going in there and the community for coming together. The Mosaic Church brought food, fresh vegetables, into an area that had been devastated. So I would be remiss if I didn't say thank you to all of them. And I appreciate it, and I'm looking forward to having a return call from my congressman. Thank you. Very good. We've got three people in
line for you, congressman, and I'll just tell them, please, let's try to hit it quick because we've got so many others.
Speaker 68
39:58
Congressman, you've said something. Just real quickly, you know, we're talking about the MCARNS and
Speaker 19
40:04
the Arkansas River, but, you know, looking across the state, there are other navigable rivers, obviously the Mississippi River, the Wyatt River, the Ouachita River, and other flood control systems in the state. And when you're talking about these levee districts, we definitely need to focus along the MCARNs, but we also need to look at the levee districts all across the state. I know we had some horrific flooding down on the Red River a couple of years ago,
and there's concerns with levees down there as well as other navigable streams and flood controls infrastructure all across the state. Agreed. Senator Sturge if
you still have a question or 63 that would be me mr. chairman all right
Speaker 69
40:45
over here representative Eubanks congressman Westerman
Representative Jon S. Eubanks
Unverified
40:48
Logan County is the bulk of my district and you know how it was impacted by the flame when you began your statement you listed the
counties that were included in the declaration and I didn't hear Logan County being one of those counties is there did I just miss it or was there a reason it wasn't included and also the the one of the pump stations you mentioned is in the McLean bottoms area which is in Logan County as well and then the my final question is we had a poultry farm that you may have seen the pictures of that was just completely covered with water and from what that
farmers found out he sort of falls through the cracks as to what types of programs may be available to him one thing was a possibly a low interest or zero interest SBA loan I don't know that that really helps him out any so it if you could find out possibly anything that that that particular farmer may qualify for I'd appreciate it and I may
Speaker 22
41:58
have inadvertently not said Logan county but logan county was obviously hit hit very
Speaker 19
42:04
hard and on specific issues like that if
you can have them contact our office we will we will work with them to see if we can find out what are the maximum benefits available i know there's logan county got hit hit really hard especially on some of the farmland inside the levees i've seen pictures of what used to be bean fields with about four feet of new sand and silt on top of them that probably will never be farmed again and i've i've even heard reports that there won't be a a kernel of grain harvested
in between the levees on the arkansas river this year which uh there may be an exception to that but it does speak volumes to the magnitude of the flood that we had but if you'll have them contact our office we'll see if there's there's anything we can do to help on that poultry farm I know there was a thank you hog farm flooded as well thank
Speaker 72
43:04
you representative Bentley thank you chairman thank you congressman Westman
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
43:11
over here thank you for being with us today on
the levy task force we heard that the Mississippi River and tributaries they receive like 250 million dollars a year to maintain the levees along the Mississippi I know you You were talking about funding in the water. Is there funding in there to help maintain the levees along the Arkansas
Speaker 19
43:30
River to that level as we have along the Mississippi? Well, obviously, you've got more levees and a lot more traffic and water volume that goes down the Mississippi River. So I don't think there would ever be funding levels the same as the Mississippi River. But there are funds available through WERDA, and we will be assessing if we need to create a larger fund for the MCARNs and other rivers in the 2020 WERDA bill.
I don't know the exact levels of funding that are in the existing authorization. But, you know, there's record flooding on the Arkansas and record flooding on the Mississippi River as well. we've had several hearings in Congress on different areas of the country that were impacted by the flooding and like Lake Pontchartrain is seeing flow coming right out of the Mississippi River through the lake that's doing a lot of damage in Lake Pontchartrain. The Atchafalaya Basin down in Louisiana
which originally was the floodplain for the Mississippi River and it this brings up another area that i think we're going to have to look at as a country on how much of these rivers we can control and how much we're going to have to start designating areas for natural floodplains mark twain said that you know 10 000 levy boards and he i can't remember the exact quote but he said basically the mississippi will uh will win out in time and his his quotes
becoming more and more accurate it's hard to control uh the flood waters that we're seeing down the river now and we're going to have to work with the core to assess uh the overall operation of the system and the overall construction of the system thank you one quick follow-up chairman if if that's okay, real quick, just
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
45:22
a minute. I know that we talked about Oklahoma and the water coming down.
Do you think it's possible they could have started releasing that water just a little bit sooner? I know hindsight's always 20-20, but it seems to me if we could start a little bit sooner,
we wouldn't have seen the devastation in Arkansas
Speaker 19
45:40
that we did. Yeah, and that's, you know, some people say we should have released it sooner. Some say they should have held more in the reservoirs. But, you know, they've got some really smart people that are looking at all the weather data. they're looking at the flows to the tributaries and the way they explained it to me their goal is to minimize the peak flow coming down the river you know get the water out as quickly and orderly as they can and keeping those peak flows down because that's where you get the the major
flooding is when you have the the huge flows of water the slugs of water coming down the river and we're going to do a a full assessment with the core that's one of the things i've talked to assistant secretary james about and others in the corps is that we want to you know do a follow-up even if it takes six months to a year to get the data to go back and look and make sure we did the best job we could of controlling the release of the water down the
river and also if we need to put new plans in place on managing water flow in the future they still don't have all the data and they've not been able to put the briefing report together to come and see me about that but it's certainly something we're following up on and uh we we won't let that pass we'll make sure that they explain in detail how the uh the whole process with the timeline the decisions that were made and was there opportunity that they could have
done better they need new new systems in place and that even gets down to water flow measurements and and the way they monitor how much water is is moving down the river but it's uh it's not a uh just a simple decision about opening gates and they they take a lot into account when they're looking at that. Thank you. Thank
you. Got Representative Gonzalez. It's actually me,
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
47:45
Mr. Chair, Representative Collins. Thank you, and thank you, Congressman. Would you state your name for the record then? Andrew Collins. Congressman, one of the consequences of the climate change that we've seen is these extreme weather events, and we may expect to see more of that as a result do you see addressing climate change as a part of dealing with floods like this in the long term and again we have to
Speaker 19
48:12
um when you're talking about weather and climate change are two different
things climate change takes place over decades or centuries or even millennia and we are seeing climate changing but what we've seen recently are our weather events that may or may not be the results of a changing climate we do need to make sure that we're designing our infrastructure and we're maintaining our infrastructure to handle the the maximum amounts of flow that we think we'll see coming down the rivers we're working to you know one of the one of the things i work on
the most in congress is forestry and if you want to talk about keeping the the atmosphere clean and doing good things for water. Trees are one of the best tools we have for that. There was recently a report out of Switzerland that said that if we would plant a trillion trees across the earth, we could do more to reduce the effects of carbon in the atmosphere than anything else. Also, this would be good for Arkansas's economy since we are a large forestry state
and where we manage our forest in Arkansas. we have tremendous growth versus drain ratios the state the forest in the state of Arkansas are producing about 16 million more tons of wood per year than what we're using that means that today in Arkansas there's 16 million more tons of biomass above ground than there was this time last year I was pleased to see that Walmart recently announced that their new corporate headquarters would be built out of mass timbers that were constructed from Arkansas timber
this is a new area that when you take timber put it in buildings you're sequestering carbon and when the new trees grow up you're you're taking more carbon out of the atmosphere so this is an area where I think Arkansas can be a leader I think we can also be a leader in resilient and natural infrastructure using forested areas and farmland to clean water and also to hold
and give relief to flooding. So that's something we're definitely looking at in Congress. It's something that the Natural Resources Committee I serve on plus the Water and Environment Subcommittee of TNI, we hold a lot of hearings on it and we're looking at plans that make sense and that will make sure we maintain the cleanest air, the cleanest water, and also keep our economy strong. And if you look at the data, the United States produces about 15% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.
Most fossil fuels in our country are used in transportation, but that still only makes up about 27% of our greenhouse gas emissions. so if you removed all fossil fuels from transportation airplanes boats trains automobiles you would only impact global air emissions by less than four percent and you look at countries like china who are producing 30 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions they're continuing
to increase while the united states has decreased the amount of greenhouse gas commit emissions and And a lot of that's due to our innovation and technology with natural gas where we're able to produce it in great volumes and at low cost like we do here in the state of
Arkansas. Thank you. Next I have up here, it says Senator Flippo, number 70, wherever you're at.
Speaker 81
52:01
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Senator Trent Garner. Congressman Westman, I just wanted to give my appreciation to you to coming up to Jefferson County.
You invited me to a tour where you went out there with the county judge of many people saw what the people went through the record flooding and were there for the people and I just wanted to say for the individual assistance that you've talked about I know it's in the paper I put it on my social media I had many people reach out to me to be assisted in that way I've either directed that to either your office or Senator Cotton's and so far those same people have said they've been taken care of very well that you and your office have done a tremendous job and that you have to follow the law that sometimes there may be circumstances
to prevent it but that you and your office were on board
Speaker 22
52:46
so i just wanted to say that statement publicly thank you and and thank you
Speaker 19
52:51
that boat ride we took that day in jefferson county was something else i believe there were around 500 homes that were flooded there in jefferson county one of the as far as residential damage is probably the worst area along the
Speaker 83
53:04
river that experienced flooding there in Jefferson County.
Thank you. Thank you. Next on this is number 39. That shows Representative Lynch. Yes,
Representative Roger D. Lynch
Unverified
53:17
and Congressman, thank you for coming.
The question I have, it's two years ago when Big Ditch Levy in Humnoe, Arkansas, ruptured. The question there was, who owns the levy and who is responsible for making repairs? And it was a struggle it took about a day for the county judge to finally decide he was going to have to do something he called the governor they got the national guard and they started dropping sandbags into that breach but that brought up the bigger question of maintaining the levy who owns the levy and how much authority if the levy board has that do they have with the private landowners
in clearing the timber and keeping the ditches clear we still have a problem in that part of county was with killing green timber because the drainage system is being blocked by trees and culverts and driveways that people are putting across the drainage so i hope that this levy district and and when it reforms and has the attention that has that they have some authority in keeping these levies repaired and some influence over the private landowners
so that they they do their part and they allow whatever authority is that that we appoint they allow them to do what they need to do to
Speaker 17
54:33
maintain the levies yeah i think that's a great indicator of the problems that we have with
Speaker 19
54:39
levy boards and levy districts across the state if you're trying to figure out who owns the levy then you're pretty sure nobody's taking responsibility for maintaining the levy so that's that's an issue that needs to be worked out so that it's clear
who who owns the levy who has jurisdiction over the levy who can do maintenance on the levy and who's responsible for it and again that should be one of the main goals of the task force is to make sure that our levy districts are clearly defined that the levy boards are operating and functioning properly and that the funds are there to maintain the levies these levies are often out of sight and out of mind until the rivers are rising then they become the focus of everyone's attention you know wanting to make sure they're going to to hold up and you know
i was thinking about the work that mayor witt did in in dardanelle when the levee fell east of dardanelle and the water was coming around behind the levee they They did some really on-the-fly improvising, created double coffer dams and backed-up culverts. It's amazing when people's property and lives are on the line how good a work Arkansans do and how innovative they can be. There was a lot of property damage that was prevented just because of their quick thinking and quick action
and all the people that were ready to volunteer and help. so it's it's better if we can prevent those levies from breaking on the front end but it's also good to know we've got people who are like the National Guard and mayors and just folks all across the state who are willing to step in and work hard and get the
job done thank you we got one more question Representative Lynch I will say to you that's exactly the experience we had in 16 and and that's what prompted me
that we ended up taking some legislation up because you
would talk to the corps and they say it's not our responsibility at the levy and then went to the county judge it was the exact same scenario and the the bottom line is the levy districts whether they're operational or not under the law they had the authority and so that's why it's important to get a board back in place so that somebody can take the reins when it comes that time and i will say that as the congressman i'm basically echoing you what i've seen is that what I and what I enjoy and admire about the officials when it comes down to it no
matter who it was people did what needed to be done to try to protect people and to take care of the job but it would be best if as we approach this in the next session that we make sure that we put an emphasis like we're doing right now so that these boards get functional and can operate the way they were intended to operate and I appreciate that just like right now I appreciate people coming out because in the past over the last 40 50 years you would have a flood event it would dry up and then nobody cared and then we had the same problem that we
were coming back in again so last question on this round is representative Ritchie it's not going to be representative Ritchie it may be representative ladyman is that that's correct all right thank you mr. chairman we've got a very large
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
58:00
crowd so I apologize over here congressman right here uh good to see you again thank you for being here congressman i appreciate your knowledge and experience in this subject and glad you're representing us but with that knowledge uh my
question might be a little bit out of the box out of what the scope of what we're talking about here but uh you know we had major flooding on the black river up in northeast arkansas and have had various times around pocahontas and caused a lot of major damage so my question is you know when that happens as the chairman said once it dries up people forget about it and nothing's really done and then we get another major flood and the same thing happens again but the core is there or should there be a part of the core of engineers that's looking at flood control reservoirs
something like beaver lake up in northwest arkansas that was created years ago to control flooding i mean those are major projects but if we're looking forward all of these streams like the black the upper white the spring the current all flow downstream and go into the mississippi and they create extra flooding if we have an event like this so my question is uh is there or should there be a part of the core that's looking at creating large reservoirs like we've
done in the past to prevent this flooding or the effects of this flooding and that's
Speaker 19
59:26
a complicated question because I have colleagues in Congress who think we should be tearing out dams and returning streams to natural flows that's a very contentious issue when you start talking about building new reservoirs on streams and rivers across the country not to say that wouldn't make sense from a flood control perspective to do that but i don't think
the core is currently engaged in looking at building new reservoirs anywhere nor i'm not sure if they could get get approval from congress to do that they've got enough on their plate trying to keep the infrastructure that they've got maintained and and upgraded you know a lot of what i see is when a when a levy fails no matter whose levy it is people come to the federal government expecting the core to to rebuild that levy and you know
there's a process and a program in place to show who owns the levies who maintains the levies and whose responsibility it is, and those are the things we need to focus on before the floods happen so that after it happens, people aren't looking at each other wondering who's going to come in and fix the levy, whose responsibility it is to pay for it. If there's something specific on the black that we can get the Corps to look at,
I'll be glad to mention that to them. But, you know, realistically, I don't think they would consider a building any more reservoirs at this time. I've tried to get them to look at reservoirs on, like, the Fush River in western Arkansas, where we had the flood, where we lost a sheriff and a game warden and others a few years ago. So that's a prime area over in Scott County to possibly do some flood control reservoirs,
and they just really don't want to talk about it. And that would be a great recreation facility as well, plus provide potable water for a county that's in desperate need of additional water. So I can tell you it's a tough push to get them to even consider talking about building new reservoirs. Thank you. That's good points. I've got Senator
Stubblefield is going to make a comment. As before he does, I want to tell you on that.
I think you absolutely have the wind beneath your sails in terms of political support to get them to think outside of the box. The way I understand government is the Corps works for us, not vice versa. And I will say I've been very happy with the Corps and what they've done in our area. they've absolutely helped us because that levy district that that we've mentioned already it was put back in shape and it's now in their program it was certified and so they get 80 percent rebuild on the the damage that they've had and if it hadn't been for the help of the corps of
engineers and get making that all happen they wouldn't have that today and so as as i say that i appreciate what they do but definitely congressman we're there to support you to try because what's happened is we haven't had the political will to really look at that because it's a money issue, right? Well, I've never seen the
Speaker 19
1:02:57
Corps get in a hurry about anything, I will say that. You know what? They just need the
right person cracking a whip is all they need. All right, Senator Stubblefield. Thank you, Senator Raper.
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
1:03:11
Bruce, Congressman Westerman, we had a levy breach. They call it overtopping, but it was a breach because now we have a hole there south of Dardanelle that took out a state highway and a levee that's probably 80 to 100 yards wide, 50, 60 foot deep. We got an estimate that I heard from one of the highway commissioners that it was going to cost $5.5 million to fix it. And the question I have or the statement I want to make is, during
during that time that that the flood was occurring and the dam was releasing water
on the night on the night that
that levee breached that water was at the top of that levee where it breached and the
core increased the amount of flow coming through that dam at that time are currently the water in those reservoirs back behind that dam back west of the locking dam at Darnell are two foot higher now than they were during the time of the flooding and if we had that much reserve of the reservoirs back behind the dam why would
they increase the amount of flow coming through that dam knowing that the least the least amount of increase in the in the cubic feet of water going through that dam is going to go over the top of it i pulled up the congressional research service and congressional agencies report from april and it said this for most water resource activities the corps of engineers needs a non-federal sponsor to study and to share the construction cost of a levy and it says
but when i read that that term most that really doesn't give you much guidance uh so it appears to me that the Corps takes these cases case by case when they look at them as to whether or not they're going to step in and fund. When you look at the Memphis district, that's mostly federally funded, the Memphis levy district. You look at the Little Rock district, it's all non-federal sponsors. It's all picked up by the local levy boards. We get no federal money. Would this case
and dardanelle be an exception to that wouldn't they qualify for federal funds
Speaker 17
1:05:34
under this scenario the levy breached down by hollow bend exactly the one that's the one i was talking about earlier it depends
Speaker 19
1:05:41
on the how that levy was classified before uh the flood took place and my understanding is that was not a federal levy now in the future may we want to get that into the federal levy program which is under the core that's something we can look at but my
understanding is that that levy was not part of the federal levy program at the time the flood occurred and again the i hope you'll ask the core about those release volumes coming down the river but even though they could have held more water back possibly that might have meant that they they would have had an even larger slug of water coming down the river at a later time. So that's the part where I'm asking them to give me a thorough briefing
when they get all the data together with a timeline showing the stage of events and the decisions that were made on the releases that they made going down the river. And if there's a deficiency there, we will be certain to point that
Speaker 21
1:06:45
out and make sure everybody's aware of those
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
1:06:49
deficiencies. Well, it seems to me that Arkansas will always be at the mercy of
places like Keystone in Oklahoma. And when we're downstream as to how much flow is coming down that river,
and we will always be at the mercy of how much water they decide to release to protect places like Tulsa. And also, we could also look at the breach of that levee in Dardanelle to prevent flooding places like
Speaker 17
1:07:26
Little Rock. Does that ever happen? I know they do intentional levee breaches along the Mississippi River
Speaker 19
1:07:31
in places, but I don't think any of the levee breaches on the MCARNs flood were designed breaches.
I think that's just where the levee fell. You know, a lot of the flooding came from water backing up in the tributaries that feed the Arkansas River. So, again, it's a complicated process. Ask the Corps those questions. I'm not sure they'll have the answers for you today, but eventually we will get a full assessment of the decisions they made and how that possibly could have been done differently along the whole McClellan-Kerr system.
Congressman, we've got one more question in the queue for you. Senator Johnson, you're
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
1:08:16
recognized. Thank you, Congressman, over here, for being here today. And some of these points might be brought up later. And my district is one of those that was spoke about earlier along the Black River. And it's the same scenario. You know, you've got an uphill that had massive flood, you know, massive rains, and then it runs downhill. And, I mean, all the levees in our area, and I'm sure along the Little Rock and along that system,
were built at levels in the past, the historic levels. And you kind of got two things that you can do about it. And I don't know if the Corps would address that later, is you can increase those levees, the haths, to the current historic level, which I hadn't seen done. Most of the time in our area, they put it back to those previously historic levels. but if you're going to put it back to those previous historic levels which is not historic
any longer in my opinion is you're going to have to create reliefs along that levee where that where that flooding can be controlled and spread out and and reliefs is is what i would say is like riprap and at at the current levels if if you raise the levees so i mean those are things that we don't do anymore that they did whenever they created these things is because of all the environmental concerns
and everything that I mean you can increase your levees which you have other problems whenever you do that outside the levee system to get the flow back in or create reliefs and I don't know that may be something for the Corps to do later or talk about whenever they get up here but everything that we've been done is certified back to the previous historic levels not the current and again I
Speaker 19
1:10:19
think the core has to be be flexible and take in the new data and
this gets back to a comment I made earlier there's big decisions like that that are going to have to be made all along the navigable waterways in the U.S. I mentioned the Atchafalaya Basin my colleague representative Garrett Graves from Louisiana points out in nearly every hearing that the state of Louisiana is losing about a football field amount of coastline every day because of the lack of sediments that used to go down the Atchafalaya Basin and help rebuild
the coastline. All those are being washed out into the gulf through the Mississippi River now. so there's even you know there's there's talk about do we start putting water back through the atchafalaya basin to help rebuild the the coastline and the wetlands along the gulf of mexico those aren't uh you're talking about major floodplain areas when you're looking at areas like that and those are going to have to be things that are studied and tough decisions made because when you're you know naturally the the historic floods spread out over large areas and they replenish
soil and there's a lot of benefits for having those broader floodplains but it also comes with the loss of of farmland and other property that's that's now being used so yeah those are some of the the big decisions that are going to have to be made in the future as we assess where we're at and what future floods are going to look like
thank you sir thank you congressman we appreciate your emphasis and the investment of time that you put in here definitely
on the issue and appreciate the knowledge that you brought to the table you haven't just spoken from some talking points you
absolutely studied the issue and that's obvious and we appreciate you being there and working with us and and i would ask you as you close your comments please reach out to us and let us be a party to hearing some of the debate that's going on and making sure that that our viewpoints here are included as the states work together on the issue especially as it relates to some future planning and so i just want to thank you for being here we do appreciate that is there anything else
you want to say before i recognize congressman hill's
Speaker 19
1:12:42
office i just again want to say thank you for the opportunity to be here today arkansas is blessed with water sometimes we get more water than we can handle but going forward when you look at states out west and and other states across the country we should really pay more attention to the abundant water that we have and do a better job of of taking care of it of making sure we have adequate water for irrigation
purposes adequate water for industry and for potable water for for folks because we are really blessed here with the quality and quantity of water that we have but we need to do a lot better job of of being good stewards of that and that's part of what we work on on the water and environment subcommittee and there's some exciting things happening here with surface water irrigation to help replenish our aquifers and i'm glad to be part of that and want to work with all of you
regardless if you're in the fourth district or not if you've got a water issue whether it's navigation or recreation or irrigation any of those things please let us know because when we get to dc there's not really any any congressional district lines it's just arkansas and we all work together on those issues so again thank you for the work you're doing thank Thank you for the emphasis the governor's making on these issues, and I wish you all Godspeed and offer to help in any way that I can.
Thank you very much. With that, members, we have Anushree Jumda here, and she has, I think, got a statement from Congressman Hill, and I want to say thank you because all the way back to 2016, Congressman French Hill's office has been active in coming out, doing on-site surveys and helping us locally there in our district. and I appreciate the continued work that you've done on that. With that, you're recognized for
Speaker 111
1:14:44
the statement. Absolutely. I wanted to start out by saying good morning and thank you so much for inviting our office.
And Congressman Hill sends his regrets for not attending, but I do have a letter from him that I would like to read. And afterwards, I would definitely like to address the concerns raised by Senator Chesterfield and any questions that anybody may have. So I'll be able to answer those to the best of my ability. Thank you. Arkansas General Assembly, Senate and House Insurance and Commerce Committees, Senate and House City, County, and Local Affairs Committees,
Senate Agriculture Committee, thank you for your invitation to your joint meeting on the recent flooding that occurred in Arkansas. First, I want to express my gratitude to our county judges, city mayors, elected officials, and their staff for their assistance with the 2019 flood event. Their timely updates and continuous work help to keep the residents of Central Arkansas out of harm's way. Their perseverance has made it easier for Federal Disaster Relief Team members to adequately assess damage.
I want to thank Senator Raypert for his foresight on reinstating levy districts in Perry County and proposing legislation to work to reinstate levies on the state level. I joined Arkansas Senator Mark Johnson to visit the affected areas in Perry County to see firsthand the devastation caused by the flooding. I visited the American Red Cross shelters in Faulkner County and Pulaski County and appreciate the work of the Red Cross staff and volunteers. My staff was welcomed to help Central Arkansans at FEMA's disaster relief centers
in Faulkner County, Perry County, and Pulaski County. In addition, I would like to praise the hard work of Director A.J. Gary and the staff at the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management, as well as local emergency management offices, first responders, and sheriff's offices. I want to thank the Arkansas National Guard and General Mark Berry for their role in emergency mitigation and emergency assistance during the flooding event. And of course, I want to thank Governor Asa Hutchinson and his staff for their hard work in providing residents assistance.
I commend Governor Hutchinson for creating the levy task force and allocating funding to be utilized for levy reconstruction efforts throughout the state. If there are residents or constituents that are in need of federal assistance or who have not received disaster relief, I invite them to contact my offices in Little Rock and Conway. This level of flooding will occur again in the future, and our federal congressional delegation and state officials need to collaborate on follow-ups such as assessing maintenance improvements for the McClellan-Kerr-Arkansas River Navigation System, assessing the work on levy improvements and certifications,
assessing the legal status of the MCARNs as a federal inland waterway to ensure that the MCARNs is getting federal dollars and projects can meet federally mandated cost-benefit ratio requirements. I believe that work on these three important areas can ensure that all of Arkansas is better prepared the next time a major flooding event occurs. Thank you for meeting on this important issue, and please do not hesitate to reach out to my office if I can be of assistance during the recovery phase of the 2019 flooding event sincerely french hill
thank you very much appreciate the
comments and thank the congressman for having you come and represent him today is there anything else or any
questions for i see one question here uh number
46 i don't know if that's senator t but it is it's his cousin all right it's senator teague's cousin all right have you switched i'm sorry about that senator we've got confusion on the mics go ahead it is i who changed
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
1:18:44
not you go ahead i i am uh concerned because i know that
in the past uh the congressman's office has been very responsive and so i am disappointed in calling uh the national office and not getting a response and I wish you would share that with him because that's not reflective of the person that I know or reflexive of the person that I know. And so I would appreciate if you would do that because I had called concerning the rudeness with which my constituents had been dealt at the FEMA stations
and I knew that it was a federal matter. So I called his office and the individual assured me that I'd get a return call and it's the first time that I've ever called his office and that did not happen so I wanted to just share that with you yeah thank
Speaker 111
1:19:37
you mr. chair absolutely I would definitely be I'll definitely look into it and I'm happy to provide you with my personal and work cell phone numbers that way you can reach out to me directly and I would say for the Dark Hollow and Dixie
addition neighborhoods and I know representative Scott is here as well we have worked with our office has worked with former representative Eddie Armstrong on that matter and you work with who um Eddie Armstrong why and he doesn't live in the city oh well he was he he approached us regarding those those neighborhoods in his in the past in the past right so y'all reached out to
him well we have worked with him in the past and have came up with a lot of solutions and we're happy to work with Representative Scott to to provide you know those solutions we've talked to City of North Little Rock as well and during the flooding I would say that I was personally in touch with the Dixie Edition Dark Hollow neighborhood presidents I was chatting with them you know communicating with them every day on my work cell phone where I would
ask them if you if anybody needs shelter if anybody needs to be evacuated if you know the residents need sandbags so i do
Speaker 125
1:21:00
want to assure you that we we definitely our office is working with that is so frustrating excuse me
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
1:21:06
mr chair that's just frustrating well we do i
think you made your point we do need to move on we've got a whole slew of people waiting
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
1:21:14
to talk so well folks talk but i i suggest that this slew of folks in this room would resent the hell out of not being called as a sitting senator and a sitting representative.
Thank you. And I understand that point, Senator, and as you said, that's not reflective of Congressman Hill himself, and
I would say that's staff, but that's points taken. Thank you for being here, A.J. We do appreciate that.
Speaker 125
1:21:38
And I just wanted to say, like, when he was representative, our office
worked with him. Thank you very much. With that, we need to move on quickly to other folks that have been waiting to speak. I've got first up, Division of Emergency Management, A.J. Gary, the director.
And obviously we have several people here, and I know this is a big issue
and a lot to be said. You're dismissed now, A.J. Thank you. Thank you. I'm sorry, A.J. Gary is coming behind you. All
right. director gary thank you for coming and if you've got some of your team if you'd like to have them
just click on the button there and just state your name and who you are for the record and Then you have the
Speaker 137
1:22:38
floor, sir. Thank you, sir. Good morning. Tina Owens, Deputy Director for the Department of
Speaker 138
1:22:46
Emergency Management. Thank you. Good morning, Scott Bass,
Responsible Recovery Division Director for the Department of Emergency Management. Thank you, Director Gary. We definitely thank you for all that you've done, and we're going to let
Speaker 143
1:22:55
you get to your presentation. All right. Thank you, Senator and committee members. I appreciate the opportunity to come and visit with you this morning.
Mr. Chairman, I'm going to be very brief on the opening. I do have some data that I would like to share on our individual assistance programs and our public assistance programs, kind of give you up to date to where we're at on that. Before I get there, I want to take this opportunity to express my appreciation with everyone that assisted, worked with the Division of Emergency Management throughout this event. Tina and Scott are here with me. both of them have many years of experience in emergency management and at
our department and they have told me that this is the first time in a disaster that we had all of our state agencies represented in the emergency operations center. We were activated for a full two weeks and we had everyone there. I think that says a lot about our state agencies and the leadership that we have we had great coordination with our county and city partners throughout this event we started coordination calls very early on actually before the EOC was activated and we were having morning
calls with all of those jurisdictions discussing about what was headed our way and making sure that everyone had all of the resources that they needed for that event it was very beneficial because as it started coming into the state as the crest was in sebastian county we had county officials and city officials on down river that were able to get on that call and hear what was taking place up river and that could help them to prepare for when the crest reached their area so
So, again, I can't express enough my appreciation to all of our state agencies and also our federal partners. We had FEMA, our National Guard, and the Corps of Engineers that were in our emergency operations center from day one, and they stayed with us, and it was very helpful. Now I'd like to just update on some information. First of all, our individual assistance program, And this is the assistance for our homeowners.
And there was 13 counties that were designated for individual assistance. Arkansas, Conway, Crawford, DeShay, Faulkner, Jefferson, Lincoln, Logan, Perry, Pope, Pulaski, Sebastian, and Yale counties. For individual assistance, we had 1,772 registrations. and there was $8,597,851 that was approved and dispersed in the FEMA Disaster Assistance Program.
We had 1,367 applicants that visited the state and FEMA Disaster Recovery Centers, and these centers were set up all the way down the river. At these centers was not only FEMA and the Division of Emergency Management, but we had other state agencies that were there to assist our citizens. We had some federal agencies there, and, of course, we had the volunteer organizations that were present.
So if a citizen comes into that DRC, they have a line of people that are there to assist them throughout their needs. Under the National Flood Insurance Program, which is is not administered through Adam but we have some numbers here there were 424 claims a hundred and twenty-four of those remain open it was eighteen million six hundred and eighty three thousand nine hundred and sixty nine total amount paid this was for building contents etc there was
approximately eighteen point seven percent of the applicants that had flood insurance, which means that there was approximately 81.3% that did not have flood insurance that were impacted by this event. For the Small Business Administration, for home loans, 398 loans applications in process. 155 of those loans have been approved, totaling $11,994,000. For business economy injury, 55 loan applications in process.
Five loans have been approved, totaling $239,300. Total SBA loans, $12,233,300. For our public assistance grant programs, this is for infrastructure, so this is the program for our roads, bridges, and things of that nature. there were 12 counties that were designated conway crawford de shay faulkner jefferson logan perry pope pulaski searcy sebastian and yale counties total infrastructure damage estimates
15.36 million these are only estimates at this time actual costs will go through more detailed grant projects coordinated jointly with local state and federal agencies a breakdown of those is 1.48 million for debris removal 6.85 million for emergency protective measures 2.7 million for roads bridges 252 000 for buildings 2.64 million for utilities and 2.9 million for parks recreation
facilities the application period for these will end on august 8. one last comment sir if i may the Because of all of the coordination and all of the partners that we had throughout this event, we received the federal emergency declaration really quick on during this disaster, which opened up federal resources to be brought in. This is for the emergency response.
There were no federal resources requested. I think that is very important because it shows how well our cities, our counties, and our states were prepared for this event and and we start preparing for things like this long before they occur we do regular exercises in the state of Arkansas all of our counties through our emergency management performance grant we help fund emergency managers and all of our 75 counties and those emergency managers conduct exercises and training throughout the year to prepare us for
that. We were able to get the major presidential disaster declaration Governor Hutchinson requested on June 6th and by the by June 8th we had it approved. That is a very quick turnaround for federal declarations. I know some of my counterparts in other states have been waiting numerous days and weeks and we were able to get this turnaround very quickly. Well I'd say thanks to the president trump's
administration for that because it was very quick it was and and appreciate
Speaker 143
1:30:22
governor hutchinson um throughout this event we stayed in in constant contact and every time i called and and passed on a request from our locals um any resource that was needed it was it was a very quick yes and we moved forward with it so very much appreciate his leadership throughout this thank you director gary
i was trying to keep track of all those totals there's a lot yeah and i know that some of it is not quite ready i mean there's we're still getting in
numbers so have you got some estimate of the overall impact when you total up all those different provisions and what's happening are we at a point where there's some
Speaker 153
1:31:04
estimate maybe on the damage about 40 million about 40 million and that's still a
little bit unknown until it is and we're
Speaker 156
1:31:16
in the recovery process and the recovery process will go on for for many
months yeah okay I do have senator Chesterfield
I believe here again I'll recognize her for a
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
1:31:29
question thank you mr. chair I am I'm concerned because the people of Dixie who suffered during this emergency complained to me that while they were given some food stamps, not a single one of their homes was assessed to need emergency help. Could you help me understand that process?
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
1:31:58
state? We're state. We're state, yes, ma'am. Were you the ones over in North Little Rock assessing damage? We assess with our federal partners,
Speaker 143
1:32:06
with FEMA. So there will be, usually there, and Scott, correct me if I'm wrong, but there will be a state person, there will be a federal person, and a local county person sometimes that's doing those assessments. So it's a combination of those. So help me understand the process.
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
1:32:28
For the preliminary disaster assessment. That they went into people's homes. that were obviously damaged and yet assessed that they didn't need any financial assistance at all
Speaker 153
1:32:38
from FEMA help me with that okay I'm I'm not sure Scott can you take us through the through the
Speaker 139
1:32:45
program steps and I'll address the other part so the individuals will apply through FEMA directly through their 800 number or online at that point their applications are processed through the FEMA headquarters office or their national processing centers at that point a FEMA contractor is requested to go out and do
that inspection as soon as that inspection is completed all their documentation is uploaded so the applicants are required to show proof of residency with documentation any insurance proceeds that they have or may not have received at that time any insurance policies and that's through that process so if they've got insurance you don't
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
1:33:20
give them anything is that what you're saying their
Speaker 139
1:33:23
insurance will be assessed towards their application and the damage assessment that they have.
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
1:33:28
And you only have one person going in, there is no second bite at the apple.
Speaker 139
1:33:33
Well, there are appeal processes that the applicants can go through. Well, let
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
1:33:37
me tell you what concerns me, is that many people in my area don't have internet access. And yet this process is based largely on being able to
upload stuff and do all of that. What is the other process that allows these people who don't have that access? So
Speaker 139
1:33:53
we have disaster recovery centers established throughout the entire system. We have one, I believe, in North Little Rock that's going to be closing this weekend. Is that the one up on Pershing?
I believe so, and they can take documentation to that facility and the FEMA staff there will, and the SBA staff there can help them with uploading all that information and making copies for them. Okay, so they need to go back
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
1:34:15
if they were turned down and try it again. They will help with their appeal process.
Speaker 170
1:34:23
Okay, and what is the last day? I believe it's Saturday, but I'll look
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
1:34:26
it up here in a minute. All right. Thank you. I'll be
able to pass that information along. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Chair. All right. Representative Bentley, you're recognized.
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
1:34:35
Thank you, Chairman. I just wanted to say, Director Gary, thank you so much for what you did in Yale County. You guys were outstanding with your group throughout the whole process of the flooding. I just want to take a minute to say thank you for
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
1:34:51
all that you've done. Thank you. Mr. Gary, thank you. I also want to thank you, but I also have a question.
FEMA provides accreditation for the levy systems as long as there's proper documentation that's been provided, correct? FEMA or the Corps of Engineers? FEMA.
FEMA does provide accreditation for the levy system as long as the proper documentation has been given by the local levy boards. Does that include levies that are not part or enrolled in the federal levy system?
I want to add this for him for clarification. He's talking about the flood insurance aspect of accreditation.
Speaker 143
1:35:32
Right, right. Okay. Yeah, we don't handle the National Flood Insurance Program, so that may be a better
Speaker 156
1:35:38
question for Natural Resource Commission on that
as far as the insurance program. Okay,
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
1:35:47
you do provide a mapping of high-risk flood
areas. Are you not responsible for that? No. No,
Speaker 143
1:35:57
that's going to be the Natural Resource Commission. It takes care of the National Flood Insurance Program.
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
1:36:04
They're over that. Well, according to the 2009 legislative audit report, it says those responsibilities lie with FEMA.
Speaker 170
1:36:15
Unless I'm reading this wrong. Yeah, FEMA is responsible for the National Flood Insurance Program, but
Speaker 139
1:36:22
they coordinate that through the Arkansas Natural Resource Commission
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
1:36:25
for the state office. And the mapping of high-risk flood areas also is included in
Speaker 185
1:36:31
that? Okay. Yes. All right. Very good. Thank you. I
appreciate it, Mr. King. Members, any other questions for the director? I don't see any. Director Gary, thank you very
much. I don't know if people really understand the level of work that you all put in.
And I know it was 24-7, and we do appreciate it. And literally, I don't know what else we could have asked for in terms of the response that was there. And so we appreciate your leadership and the governor's leadership on the task force, which is working on this as well. So thank you for appearing here today. Thank you. Thank you. Up next is Mr. Bruce Holland, Director of Arkansas Natural Resources Commission, which is just right on cue for Senator Stubblefield's question that he had. senator holland it's good to have you back here as always and appreciate you for coming today
and you're recognized sir thank you it's a pleasure
Speaker 187
1:37:27
to be back here in front of you today first of all i want to i want to thank the governor
Speaker 188
1:37:34
for putting the task force together which is what i'm going to give you an overview of what we've been doing as far as the task force is concerned and thank you senators for calling this meeting it's very appropriate and it's you look at the crowd that's here today and you understand everybody has a piece of this
and everybody has a part to play and we appreciate your participation in the task force under stubblefield representative bentley and representative hillman they're very good representatives to have on our task force. So the governor put us all together and want just for the sake of the levies to figure out what we need to do to bring the levies up to a higher standard than they are. The good news is we had a substantial pressure check on the levy system
and for the most part our levies held. They did a great job of holding back the floods and they protected a lot of communities and where they failed we're going to address that and that's part of what the money you talked about they talked about in the last speaker up here about those things what we're trying to do goes more to senator chesterfield's statement earlier about finding those levy districts out there that have not kept up with the times that have not been collecting assessments that are not even organized well the legislation that was that was previously
passed by you Senator Raper it had encouraged all those people to get get together to find out what was going on in their counties and get that information to the state so we could have a better understanding of what's going on and some of that and I'll borrow a phrase somebody said earlier you know is that raise your hand if you're not here a lot of those that haven't been organized and haven't been reporting or not reporting and when we talk about well they could be fined well they don't have any money there's no way to get a
fine from them if we knew where they were and then we don't know where they are and so this process some of what the task force is doing right now is trying to understand what information we need to make proper recommendations to the governor and to the legislature to try to fortify our levy system and to help them get enrolled in the core programs where there if there is a disaster there's funds available from the federal government and it's not as huge an impact to this state
with all there's the committee has met one time we had an organizational meeting last month and since that time there was four subcommittees appointed all four of those subcommittees have met and later this afternoon they're going to report to the main body of the task force and we'll go from there we'll analyze what we've got so far and continue to push forward my task force is tasked with finding the appropriate funds once we
figure out where they're needed and how they be most appropriately used core we we deal with cores in Memphis cores in Vicksburg core in Little Rock they all work a little bit differently but they all administer the same programs part of the governor has tasked us with is getting better cooperation with corps of engineers and this process is going to do that we're going to if if we don't get the answers we need we're we'll we'll get together we'll form a way that in the future those questions don't have to go
through 14 channels we can answer them immediately try to build those relationships up that's what the task force is tasked with right now what is appropriate how do we when these little levy systems i can tell you a quick story about a little levy system that's over here just west of little rock they've got about four miles of levy they protect about 4 000 acres of land there was one commissioner on that board and now there are three board members they haven't they
reported to me that they haven't collected an assessment in 30 or 35 years it pretty much just fell by the wayside there wasn't any floods there wasn't any concern it just kind of went away they had a floodgate in this last flood that luckily one of those three men had a track hole and they were able to force that gate into place it wasn't operable but they forced it into place their levy held and his question to me was how do i get reorganized how can i get the attention that my levy needs we're not up to core standards so if we wash away we're just washed
away there's more houses here behind this levy than there were you know 50 years ago when it was built so how do we build us ourselves back up for the next flood and so that's the questions that that we need to answer what is appropriate how should those levy districts all be combined in certain ways so they have enough uh assessments coming in that they can maintain the proper maintenance and those are the questions that we're trying to come up with whether it's appropriate that we have levy systems such as the one over on the st francis river which is a model
for the nation it they protect i think around two million acres of farmland in that area so that's our challenge and uh senator if if there are any questions that i can attempt to answer i certainly will but that's probably what we've come up with so far on the task force is a lot more questions than we have answers to yet well
i do want to say i don't see a question in the queue for you uh but i will say thank you because your department absolutely was
critical in that in the rehabilitation of prairie county levy district one
which is absolutely a model for just what you said there they've got to be operational that's the number one key and all that means is that the county judge if there's an area where there's not people appointed they've got to take action on that legislation reappoint them it gives them the authority and uh but i do want to say thank you because everything that your your department did the people of that district and community was bragging on the fact that that levy board was operational
had new had new floodgates in it was keeping them dry up until this major event and so i appreciate the work that you've done because that allowed them to become a a federally certified levy had they not had help from your department and been federally certified they would not qualify for the 80 percent now funding on the rebuild so thank you for that thank you senator stubberfield has something thank
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
1:44:17
you uh bruce i have i do have a question i think we talked about
this briefly yesterday the anrc is the final link you're the final component between the federal and the local
Speaker 188
1:44:28
levy system we can provide assistance to the levies if levy boards the levy districts if they reach out
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
1:44:37
to us for it okay however under arkansas code that disallows you from exercising any control of authority over levy districts or reports resulting from them you have no control over that that's correct so you have no authority no so would you be in favor of the recommendation of the legislative audit report that changes that 15-24-102
Speaker 188
1:45:01
that would give you the authority? Senator, that's something for the legislature to decide. Whether that local control needs to go to the state is a big question, and there's a lot of levy districts out there that would argue that they're doing a great job, and they don't need to be combined with anyone else. And so that's part of what our task is, is to figure out the proper way for those boards to come in and be organized in some way. And some of the conversation so far is what if we start with the Arkansas River system
and that levee system and see what we can do to organize it and then maybe use that
Speaker 187
1:45:38
as a model for the White River, the Red River, the Black River, all the other rivers that we've talked about here earlier today. But
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
1:45:46
isn't it true we don't have a number or a location of the total number of levies in the state
Speaker 188
1:45:52
of Arkansas? That's correct. We don't know what we don't know right now. And as you know on the task force, we're trying to figure that out. We're working with our partners. The Association of Counties is going to be critical in helping navigate through that.
There's some of those reports that they have, and we've got to find those that they don't have reports on. and we've got to work through the county judges through the county clerks and figure all those things out figure out what assessments are being assessed in this area as opposed to another area if we get to a situation where there's a levy organized and they want to make improvements and they come to us for a loan if their assessments are so low that they can't afford a loan and everybody else's assessments may be up here we need to have a way that we can help them to get
Speaker 187
1:46:38
what they need for proper maintenance of that levy
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
1:46:41
but one of the reasons we don't have a location and total number of levies is 15 102-124 that is preventing us from knowing the location and number of levies that are located in the state
of arkansas yes sir chairman stubblefield i'm going to interject because i'm glad you're getting it aired all
this actually was critical to the discussion in 2016 that led to the legislation that required all of those districts report
now obviously if they're not functioning they're not reporting that was part of the process and the formula by which the county judge could then take action and appoint
people to those boards so they could be reporting they could be involved and you hit on it and i want to say for the purposes of our members that we hit that wall as senator holland knows we hit that wall because there are some districts that absolutely said we don't want the
authority to go to natural resources but you've hit on it and so what i i'm i'm going to interject that history because senator we need
help from those large fully operational districts to understand they do not need to be an impediment to us trying to get these small districts back in order and so we need to
work through that and the task force but you've hit on exactly the issue that we ran into because there was an effort there was people that wanted to have that direct authority for natural resources and you now hit in a real critical stumbling block which was those large districts that said we don't want
them over us we don't need them over us etc and so what we need to understand is that we can have the large districts operating and functional as they are but we do need that opportunity
to take control of the situation when they're not doing what they should so we can get
them in order so i appreciate you bringing it up and and the former director uh for you know before senator holland got there was really involved in that session before center holland got there but you've hit you've hit it and i hope everybody's really listening because that's where we hit that
stumbling block and we've got to figure out a way to just work through that so that we can not be left in a situation where people still aren't operating that's correct yeah i do have a couple questions here uh and and i oh senator hill why don't you go ahead then
Senator Ricky Hill
Unverified
1:49:04
i've got number 81 up next okay one i have is pretty simple for you
bruce uh you you've mentioned the levy assessment how much is it and who pays it and how do we collect it off the ones that we do not know
Speaker 188
1:49:19
that that they exist well that it's different in a lot of situations in it may be a quarter an acre
over in some areas farmland it i'd have no idea what they are across the state that's what we need to find out with this so we can assess it we work our organization works with water districts so a good example is if they come to us for a loan and they've got a thousand customers and their water bill's $20 a month and they need to borrow a couple million dollars to improve their wastewater treatment, for example. They can't support a loan of over, you know,
a few hundred thousand. So he wants to grant them the rest of the money and we say, well, wait a minute, you need to raise your rates. You know, $20 is, well, that would double our rates. Well, is that too expensive for the citizens of your community to have what they need? and so that same scenario plays with the levy system too if a quarter an acre is sufficient there's enough acres protected that that maintains keeps that levy up to standard then great but if it's a dollar or if it's different for farmland or for residential land or for commercial land or
for forest land or pasture land all those things need to need to be flushed out
Senator Ricky Hill
Unverified
1:50:38
who's collecting and this is NRCS collecting it, or is the county collecting it? It's
Speaker 204
1:50:43
county. It's on the county level. The county clerks, I believe, collect those
assessments. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Senator Hill. I
Representative Vivian Flowers
Unverified
1:50:55
have number 81. I'm told it's Representative Flowers. I hope so. Correct. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I appreciate the information,
And I'm trying to understand, based upon the current regulation, and we're talking about authority, does that necessarily encroach into the area of assistance or collaboration or resources? You see what I'm saying? Do we have to necessarily consider changing authority in order for the state to collect information
or to provide assistance to the levy districts and the counties? If a levy district was wanting
Speaker 188
1:51:41
to borrow some money from us, they would have to have a way to pay it back. They would have to have some sort of assessments put in place to satisfy that loan. And if that means that they need to join up with some other levy districts so that they get a larger tax base to do
Speaker 190
1:51:58
what they need to do, then that would be appropriate. I'm not sure if that
Speaker 209
1:52:03
answers. No. I'm going to be more clear.
Representative Vivian Flowers
Unverified
1:52:06
Follow up, Mr. Sherry. Okay. So in response or I guess in tandem with what Senator Stubblefield was suggesting in terms of where we are now with not knowing what we don't know, But then there not being any sort of centralized body to collect information to determine what we have, what we know, and what the needs are as it relates to all the levy districts versus those that may be better funded or that may be more active depending on the size and the financial scope of the county that might be serving or counties that might be serving it.
So my question is, do we have to go so far as changing any kind of regulatory authority to provide assistance to work with the levy districts to gather the data so that we do know which ones are out there, which ones aren't active, what the resources are with each levy
district, et cetera? No, we don't have
Speaker 188
1:53:12
to do that as far as the task force is concerned to assess the situation. I'm prohibited by law from asking for a report from any levy district
but the task force itself is not the Association of Counties is not the legislature is not no one else is so I think there's ways that we can get that legislation together and there are processes where whereby those districts could combine right now that's not illegal for them to do at all but if that's better information yes thank
you representative flowers I mean you hit on the exact issue that we ran into again and so the 20 and i can't see you so i apologize i can't
address you and see you over there but the legislation that we passed was meant to be an avenue
by which we really tried our best to solicit that information and then legislation actually says they are supposed to report that to the county clerks the county clerks pass that on natural resources what we're identifying is that even with all of that
process and trying to get them to do what should be done they're not doing it now
what that's identifying is they're not operational and that was meant for the county judges to then take that the reins and say
reappoint to those districts to get them operational and that's where we find ourselves now that some of them are not at that point and so uh it's very good conversation to have thank you representative flowers on that i have senator johnson up next thank
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
1:54:44
you mr chairman And thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your foresight two or three years ago that may have saved our bacon this time, especially in what was done in Perry County. Senator, thank you for coming and the work you're doing.
I think you're bringing forth some things that might be more appropriate to be hashed out by the task force. And, Mr. Chairman, since you and Representative Bentley, I know, are on that task force and Senator Stubblefield as well. but this seems to be maybe analogous to our school situation if you've got a great school district and it's performing well and the kids are graduating and they got decent test scores and all that then you have local control and then if you're not by some measurable
things such as uh well you don't even have a functioning levy board I think that would might fall under a category of not being in good shape as far as that, not to mention the assessment of the physical levies itself. But could you see, Senator Holland, some kind of a standard, a quantification that we could create by legislation that if there's a determination that that levy district is either just not there or it's not getting the job done,
much as we've done with school districts, that there could be some kind of a takeover which would allow the ones doing a good job to maintain their situation. Thank you, Senator Holland. We don't need you all right now. But would those that truly do, there be something in place to step in and kind of take another case to, as I call it, a stitch in time saves nine. I see Judge Jimmy Hart back in the back of the room. he did that on the south side of the river in conway county and not only uh at the course says
two hundred eighty one thousand eight hundred dollars which was a bargain to save the flooding there and to keep the green bay packaging paper mill open which that job he did was able to do but but that just he just went in and did it there was not necessarily a a mechanism to allow that he just kind of stuck his neck out with the folks that with ronnie mobley's people up there but I'm looking at a can can we do this in a is there could you see such a standard that and whether it's Mr. Chairman the actual members of the board I mean if they don't show up if they've missed so
many meetings they rotate off and you really don't have the board exists but there's no members that could be a criteria the other could simply be lack of assessing yourself locally at a minimum amount or the amount needed for I hate to use this term adequacy of the levies but could you comment
Speaker 188
1:57:36
on that? You're making a lot of terms relevant to education and that's exactly what we're talking about here when you have a school that falls below 350 students well then they need to combine with another and so if a levy system and they're not able to maintain themselves at
a certain standard that is exactly what this task force is looking at and this is I think we're going to find some solutions to those problems that's what we're that's what our task is for me to sit here today I think it would be very premature to say yes this is the way we need to move forward I think that this process is going to
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
1:58:13
move us forward well I'm thrilled to hear you say that senator and I again we shouldn't we the General Assembly shouldn't get involved under our oversight responsibility until there truly is a local problem we should let
these local entities do things to the extent that they can and are doing a good job but but i just want us to have some standards and so i i appreciate your service on that and and senator rapert senator stubblefield representative bentley and everyone else on the task force uh bring us back something that that answers that quantification question thank you thank you thank you and i will
Speaker 188
1:58:48
add to go along with that if everybody here has a district who we represent and everybody here usually has some sort of river or levee or something in their districts if
there are ideas out there all our meetings are open to the public they've got an idea we'll have public comments they can come in we can't you know a thousand people showed up obviously we couldn't hear every one of them but we give it two or three minutes if
Speaker 187
1:59:13
anybody has some ideas that maybe we haven't considered we'll
please bring them forward senator Holland to all the comments Senator Johnson said is exactly right. Really where it came down in the past and where we're at now is that when there's a disaster, they do come to the state. They do come to the
federal government and ask for money to put it back together. And so if we can't get the local entities to actually maintain those levies and maintain that infrastructure for protection, that's where it becomes an absolute interest of the state and the federal government to make sure that that infrastructure is there to minimize the damage. I think what's going to be interesting, we don't have all the numbers yet, but when we tally up the entirety of the cost of this disaster, and I think really we would be not seeing the full picture
if we didn't think about what it cost in 16, what it cost in 15. If you tally up those disasters and then look at what would have been the cost if we had built those levees back and repaired those levees and kept them maintained, what would have been the difference i think that you're going to find that it would have been cheaper in the long haul if we had rebuilt the levees and allowed them to maintain them with assessments and we wouldn't be looking here at literally maybe hundreds of millions of dollars over the the long term so thank you for what you're doing in your service i'm going to get
to the next presenter and we'll see you at the meeting this afternoon thank you all right next on the list and we do have uh six in the hoppers so we'll we're going to have uh some very direct presentations coming up here Arkansas National Guard Brigadier General John Payne and Scott Stanger chief of staff and thank you for being here and your patience as everybody is getting their points made and if you would just please state your name and and who you represent for the record I'm John Payne
Speaker 67
2:01:07
the deputy agent general for the Arkansas National Guard
thank you sir Scott Stanger chief of staff department of military thank you you're recognized sir and I want to say I appreciate I personally met your guys out there on the front lines of this disaster and we thank you for the efforts that
Speaker 222
2:01:24
you've made well we certainly appreciate that and sir I'm prepared with a brief statement of our response but if you want me to just go straight to questions I'm open to that also I think you
ought to give your statements where it gives us the points of what you've got sir and then if members have questions we'll get
Speaker 223
2:01:37
to it certainly one of the most valuable relationships that we maintain on behalf of the arkansas national guard is with director gary and his staff at the arkansas department emergency management sometime in late may we were notified by the department emergency management that the flood was coming and at that point we notified units to let them alert personnel prepare equipment to respond to the high water the first personnel were mobilized on 25th of may we responded with high water teams which is unique equipment that we have in the the national guard trucks that can regularly ford deep water up to four feet deep in emergency
situations up to seven feet deep and those two high water teams that we mobilized on 25th of may were 22 personnel eventually we responded with 244 personnel 35 trucks including aircraft the mission continued through 11 june our missions included the high water teams have already mentioned we had liaison personnel out with the regional emergency management personnel with the department of emergency management we had sandbag preparation delivery teams traffic control points
to assist the arkansas state troopers as the flood waters were making areas of arkansas dangerous to access and of course the rotary wing support that i just previously mentioned the rotary wing support included life-saving missions sandbag deliveries and relief missions for livestock which included hay delivery we flew over 108 hours of Blackhawk and Lakota time through the Arkansas National Guard we delivered 383 four-ton sandbags with that which was mostly primarily with levies that we're talking about our liaison officers that
I mentioned previously worked directly with the regional emergency managers through the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management that was very valuable resource for us because it helped us get more closely to the counties and make sure that our response was appropriate for the need that was identified and with that if you
have any questions we're here to respond all All right. Members, do you have any questions for General Payne? I don't see any questions at this time, obviously. I wonder, is your costs that are involved with this, is that cost being shared, or is that a separate cost for the state?
Speaker 229
2:03:49
Scott, you want to get that? It initially comes from the state. We spent a total of $1.21 million, but as soon as the president declared it federally, those reimbursements come through fema like everybody else and then those come back to the state coffers you know those accounts that we can draw for for any other future disasters that could happen during the
fy okay thank you very much members with no questions for general pain
we appreciate you for your time and coming here and not only this disaster but for what you do on a daily basis for the state and the country thank you sir we appreciate you we stand ready
respond sir next in line for presentation is the arkansas department of transportation director scott bennett director bennett we appreciate you and we know that in addition to these other agencies i personally witnessed your personnel out at all hours of the night taking care of business regarding our roadways we thank you for being here and you're recognized sir for your presentation well thank you
mr chair and members of the
Speaker 233
2:04:53
committee it's good to be here i guess i can say good morning still for just a little bit right we do have as usual some slides that we put together kind of to walk you through our response what we did during the flooding what we are still working on and after that based on some questions we had gotten before the meeting a brief look at river flooding overall in arkansas over the last 10 years so first of all members while he's getting that
going i'll just tell you that this will be available out on the web later
we just kind of got this at
Speaker 235
2:05:33
the just to begin so right that is correct so during the entire 28-day event that went from may the 23rd to june the 19th we saw a total of 51 highway segments that were closed so not 51 highways there are some highways that had more than one segment closed so 51 segments of highways closed a total of 86 miles when you take those segments of highways that were
Speaker 233
2:05:56
closed and multiply them by the number of days that were closed or a total of almost 2 million vehicles that were impacted by closed highways during the flooding on one of the biggest ones really in fort smith we ended up for a relatively short period of time closing three out of the four river crossings in that area so the river crossings in the fort smith area went from 14 lanes crossing the river down to two but this actually had a pretty big direct economic impact from a lot of
the indirection from some of the flooding there were five river crossings that were impacted during this event i mentioned three of them were in the fort smith area the other two were highway 23 at ozark and highway 60 at toad suck on this slide is highway 64 the garrison avenue bridge and fort smith the governor actually held a press conference up here it was closed for a a few days and they ended up being a community event people coming out and looking at the
flooding the bridge itself didn't flood the approaches to the bridge uh were what the were the concern highway 255 is known as riverfront also known as riverfront drive in fort smith it was closed for 11 days at that time and you can see the bottom left picture when the water started to recede there was a lot of debris left in the highway so there are a lot of reasons that we'll put up barricades until people do not go around the barricades one of them is just the power of the water the other one is you really have no idea what's underneath the water so as
soon as the water receives we get out there and and clean up and do the assessment and get the highway back open as as quickly as possible the bridge on highway 23 at ozart you can see the bridge in the background of the bottom left picture this is another case where the bridge did not flood but the approach to the bridge flooded there was really not a good detour available the closest detour was the highway 59 bridge at barling or the highway 109 bridge
at clarksville and this section was closed for about eight days highway seven between russell and dardanelle this is one that we had monitored a lot and were actually able to to do some work with Russellville, with Dardanelle, with several of our crews, and sandbag the road on the Russellville side to keep two of the four lanes open. This had about 25,000 vehicles a day that are crossing the bridge between Russellville and Dardanelle, and our crews worked quite a bit.
We actually had some help from the local Tyson plant in helping us hauling in some of the sandbags. and our crews worked a long time to be able to try to keep at least two lanes open and we were successful but unfortunately one of the reasons we were successful long term was because not too long after this is when you had the breach at the hollow bend levee that dropped the level of the river and it never raised it again so we were able to keep that river crossing open on highway seven
Speaker 235
2:09:03
uh highway 155 that's probably the most visual visually impacted of all of our highways senator stubblefield mentioned this one earlier uh you
Speaker 233
2:09:12
know you can see on the bottom right where the highway abruptly ends because of the big pond of water that formed and that was a result of the breach of the dardanelle levy at hollow bend uh the
Speaker 235
2:09:26
depth of this pond varies but we know at its deepest point it's 40 feet
Speaker 233
2:09:32
deep this since this photo was taken the water started to recede we
actually have another pond that's a few hundred feet south of this one that's about 10 feet deep and there's actually still water in this area so most of our surveys and estimates have had to be conducted from a boat so we're putting the plans together to be able to fix this this is really beyond the capability of our maintenance crews it's going to take about 35,000 cubic yards of rock to fill those holes before we can pave on top of them and reopen reopen this section and
and to give you a picture of the magnitude of what 35,000 cubic yards of rock would would mean it would fill a football field go line to go line sideline to sideline about 20 feet deep that's how much rock it's going to take to be able to fill these holes in this uh in this highway so that's one of the big reasons for the cost it's the cost of material and a lot of cost of hauling we're actually hoping uh that this one when when we get to it will be closer to the three million dollar range but it is still a a multi-million dollar issue there's about 700 vehicles a day
on this and uh there's about an eight mile section that's closed so we're getting the plans ready to advertise them let them to contract so we can try to get
Speaker 235
2:10:54
that one open highway 105 in pope county near lake atkins is a is a pretty interesting scenario the road
Speaker 233
2:11:01
actually go the highway goes through the levee and the idea is that when the levee was needed the gap portion will be constructed ahead of time to complete the system so we were working with the corps of engineers
in the pope county drainage and levy district and and the recommendation was that we fill that gap in the levy which effectively cut off the highway at that time not by water but that did protect everything and the county took responsibility for making repairs of the roadway once the levy section was removed that was completed on june the 11th so that section was closed for a total of 18 days and and the road opened back up so this is an area where the road wasn't impacted
by the water but we did close the gap in the in the levee by building the levee on top of
Speaker 235
2:11:54
the road then highway 60 at toad suck it's been mentioned several times
Speaker 233
2:11:58
before there's about 6 000 vehicles a day on this section we were monitoring this for a long time and and it was and you can tell by the pictures it was such a level that i mean there were there's no amount of sandbagging that was going to protect that uh that highway at that time so we ended up closing it you know about 10
o'clock one night it was closed for 13 days at this time and this is another one that we have looked at i think the closest river crossing is highway 9 at moralton some people had come in and going around the little rock and come and come in the back way but this was a big big issue and we've actually evaluated this one we did it a couple of years ago um you can't just raise the grade it's a it's a regulated flood plain and and you're limited on how much you can raise the grade
and and you'll notice that the bridge is out of the water there uh so it's it's not the bridge it's the approach to the bridge uh on the opposite side from conway it's in the perry county side so in effect to prevent this from flooding you have to build about a 3 000 foot bridge which is about a 20 million dollar project to keep this area from flooding because if you raise the grade you can only raise the grade so high because of of it being a regulated flood plain it's still going to overtop in in most instances like this so you end up getting in and if you do that you're
going to create more backwater for people that may not be affected by some of these flooding issues at this time then you move downstream to little rock and this is a shot of the relatively relatively new broadway bridge and you see that the water is extremely high on the columns but we never had to close the river crossings here in this area now some of the approaches on each side of the river were closed for the trail system that had been built but we didn't have to close the river
crossing here in the little rock area because of the flooding i think everyone worked really well with with adem we had we had staff that were there with them we had staff that were holding several press conferences throughout our district engineer over in western arkansas our chief operating officer as part of a press conference at adem that the governor held to tell everybody how things were going we tried to fill as many requests as possible by hauling sandbags to some places and
things of that nature our public information office was involved had someone
Speaker 235
2:14:34
at adem the whole time to help handle the media help handle social media help graphic design and things of of that nature so we were involved with adem the whole time also in addition we started a traveler information call center in our
Speaker 233
2:14:52
central office auditorium we ran it from 7 a.m in the morning or from 7 a.m to 7 p.m we had about 100 employees that volunteered for
about 15 positions every day so motorists could call in or they could text in and get information about the latest events and detours and things of that nature we we fielded over 3 000 calls and over 300 texts in that period of time and at the peak time we averaged about 100 calls an hour so we kept that open for several days and we were actually preparing to keep it open seven days a week 24 hours a day because we were monitoring i40 west thinking that there was a
possibility at one time that water was going to cover i-40 so we ended up working with our adjacent states too and we had a we had a potential long-term detour set up we had signs ready to go in especially in in oklahoma and tennessee to route people around i-40 if that became the case luckily we didn't have to do that but we had cameras out we put extra cameras out on our iDrive arkansas website we had several cameras that were monitoring that section of i-40 to see if it needed
to be closed because if it closed we were going to have to notify travelers a pretty long way in advance i drive arkansas had around a million views during this time so people were using it quite a bit and and we most of our issue was doing the best we could to get the word out about where the closures were and and possible detours so the aftermath of the flooding has been pretty busy also in assessing the damage the fort smith area on riverfront drive the city has to replace
a culvert and once they do that we've got some other more permanent repairs that are going to need to be made we have some cross strains we have to repair in areas like highway 96 near lavaka in yale county that worked to repair highway 155 is is beyond what we can do with our crews we've got it plans that are in the works to get it let's contract in september highway 300 near pinnacle mountain was damaged that's the photograph on the right we had gone in and done some patching
but we have to come back and do some more leveling and sealing and overlaying southeast arkansas we had several highways in arkansas jefferson and dashay counties that will get some
Speaker 235
2:17:21
more extensive surface repair work in the in the coming months so between this event and just a couple of weeks ago
Speaker 233
2:17:29
we had a flash flood that closed i-30 for a period of time blew out some culverts on some highways still in the in the north central and northwest part of the state we're dealing with some rock slides that we're trying to repair so i mean you know over the next few months we're
looking at about 30 million dollars worth of repairs that have to be made for for all these different events but to talk about the issue of river flooding and the maps that we put together here are just about river flooding they're not about you know extensive rain and and lakes filling up or some of the other tributaries filling up and things like that this is just about river flooding over the last 10 years there have been five significant multi-day events over those five events in the last 10 years we've had 330 closed segments of highway 330 segments
that closed at least one time when you look at the segments that have closed two or more times there are 103 segments that were closed two or more times from these river flooding events three or more times you're lower down to 41 segments that were closed four or more times 14 segments and then there was one segment of highway that was closed during all five river events and that's highway 166 just north of pocahontas has about 180 vehicles a day on it
so one of the things you know that we hear whenever a roadway floods as well you need to raise the grade there's always a balance in those things because when you do raise the grade it doesn't reduce the amount of water water still has to go somewhere and what happens is you create more impacts back behind where the road is and and we are charged with not causing any more impacts we try to look at either improving the drainage or at least not making it any worse
having any other impact and raising the grade has a lot more impact on driveways and and things like that but there are several things that we've looked at one of the questions that we were asked is you know where have you raised road levels in the past 10 years to address flooding and there are really two answers to that you know one there are very very few locations where we've gone in and raised the grade just to address flooding issue but two we've awarded 125 contracts for projects totaling about 850 million dollars that were done because of other improvements that were
needed but the grade was also raised or or you know additional culverts were put into place or longer bridges were put into place that did improve drainage along those routes and you know one of the ones that comes to my mind first is highway 226 from highway 67 over to jonesboro before we widened that to a four-lane route it would
Speaker 235
2:20:23
flood if it rained about an inch it seemed like and and in those improvements where we widen that section of highway to five lanes we actually lengthened a few of the bridges and and since then you've had no other issues
Speaker 233
2:20:38
A few years ago, in 2011, we had to close Interstate 40 because the approach to the White River Bridge had flooded. That was closed for several days. We have a new White River Bridge that's under construction. Well, we needed a new bridge. It's not just because of the flooding, but as part of that issue, you look at more current data, more current design standards, and you build those to address those issues that you have at hand. so every project we undertake is either going to have no impact on drainage or it's going to improve
it we don't want to create additional problems because we built more of a dam and you have more water problems and more property owners that are impacted one way or another so that's where we stand today we still have some more improvements to be made because of this event because of
Speaker 235
2:21:25
the flash flood that came just not too long ago and because of the some of the rock slides and things like that that we have
Speaker 233
2:21:34
in north central and northwest arkansas that we're trying to address also so that mr chairman i'll be happy
Speaker 240
2:21:40
to uh take any questions thank you director bennett do you
know if if all of the financial impact that you just began to share is in the number that director gary has i don't know if he wants to no sir it's
it's in addition see that's that's that's what i thought yes it's it's additional yeah so
Speaker 235
2:22:04
you're quickly approaching 100 million dollars just in what you've been hearing all this right
Speaker 233
2:22:09
and in our issues we are are not dealing with fema we're dealing with the federal highway administration uh they do have an emergency relief fund uh it is typically 100 federal but it is a cost reimbursable program so we have to use state money uh to to
repair the damage and then we have to apply to get it back now we have no we have given them a notice of intent to seek emergency relief money a lot of what happens is on the federal side they only allocate so much emergency relief money every year they're not just you know the damages that we have in arkansas there's been flooding throughout several parts of the nation there have been some other issues that have happened and they can approve us for reimbursement and it
may take several years to get that money back so we we have done everything we can from their standpoint we believe we will get reimbursement at least for the majority of it but it may take us several years but we do have to go ahead and complete those repairs using state funds on the front end i've got a
couple questions here for you i do want to say and i pre you've been very thorough and uh absolutely i hope
that we maybe can even get we'll get staff to get if you want a hard copy of this to look at we can do it but i just want to just because it's my district and
everybody else can talk about their situation you know what's happening is that one it's what i think is that sometimes we think about the flood is only the people affected that live right there well in a situation like perry county they have really become a part of the conway community and many people have jobs there they work there they have their doctors visits their emergency services are dependent coming out of those areas and the bridge that you talk excuse me the half a
mile or so there that we've talked about their people's 12 days without that and so I began to get a lot of calls about that and then you had a situation where we nearly lost access to Moralton you know and it had not been for the heroic efforts of just Jimmy Hart up there and mr. Beckman and all those concerned we would have probably lost that and so what I want to make sure is members think about this going forward is that you're talking about emergency services access you're talking about
some major services being available to people if people somebody had a heart attack for instance there is no hospital in Perry County so where's the ambulance gonna come from how's it gonna get them so I know for instance my own situation i had a front row ticket unfortunately to the entire disaster because my farm is there and we were just up our house was just high enough it was 298 it got up to nearly 286 and i had some barns damaged and whatnot but i've got people there that were on dialysis down the street from me and we were trying to work out making sure that these people get to where they
need to go so to go five miles typically it was 71 miles for them to get there and there were some families just have become unsustainable for them and and they were heavily impacted so we'll dig into this a lot more in the future and i would say director gary i know you're listening we need to make sure that as we get the count that we're making sure all these folks that aren't normally a direct report through that emergency that make we just need to make sure our task force
is fully accounting for for all these impacts so that we really have a good understanding with that representative meeks your first step sir thank you i'm way
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
2:25:38
over here to your far far right uh the question i had is on uh the highway 155 there in hollow bend you talked about several million dollars to uh repair that have y'all considered instead of replacing the damaged highway maybe rerouting it a little bit further away from the levee um because my concern is even if you do throw all that rock and gravel i mean you're gonna have settling issues for
for a long time, it would seem, on that. So I'm just curious about your
Speaker 233
2:26:07
thoughts on that. Well, that's one reason we're using rock and not dirt to fill the hole is to prevent the settling issues. But if you're going to build a new highway, you're talking about years instead of months because of the process that you have to go through for environmental studies and surveys and acquiring right-of-way and things like that. So the most expeditious thing that we can do, and especially with the very low traffic volumes in that area, is repair what's there now.
Okay. All right. Thank you. Yes. Thank you. Senator Stubblefield and then Representative Bentley will be
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
2:26:45
after him. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Scott, on the breach of the levee there south of Dardanelle, there's been a suggestion, a recommendation, and I know you're well aware of the configuration of that levee as it winds around and the road's on one side and then it comes up on
top of the levee and then goes on the other side of the levee. There was a suggestion that we put that road back on top of that levee.
I know that is certainly going to be much more costly, but what would be the benefits of that?
Speaker 235
2:27:20
From the highway standpoint, not many really. Can you explain that? Well, the biggest benefit is, and the most expeditious and the least costly, is going to be to repair the highway where it is. The levee
Speaker 233
2:27:33
is going to need to be repaired, and what your hope is, when the levee is repaired, that it's going to be repaired and this is not going to happen again,
and it's protecting the highway also the way the levee really should. But that's a simple way to look at it, like it won't happen again. That is a simple way to look at it, but also when you have a highway on top of a levee, You're talking about a lot further maintenance issues because you have just the issue Representative Meeks was talking about. A lot of times you're going to have a levee that's built out of earthen material. It's going to have steeper slopes, so slopes are going to degrade over time. Every time we have to go do maintenance on it, then we've got to work with the Corps of Engineers to be able to just do maintenance on it.
Speaker 235
2:28:15
So that's what the issue is. Has there been a cost analysis done on that? Not at this time. not at this time but our focus has been trying to get the road open where the road is now
okay all right representative Bentley your last question for director Bennett Thank You chairman director
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
2:28:40
Bennett first on the we saw a number of times it was the approaches to the bridges not the
bridges themselves that flooded over and I want to give a shout out to my folks in Yale County that really made sure that Highway 7 stayed open and even know jason called me you're supervised that we were going to close it they worked to make sure that it stayed open because it was vital toward the folks there in yale county have you considered purchasing tiger dams um to keep those highways open instead of just using sandbags i know
i saw those for the first time at walmart this time to keep that walmart store open but have you considered purchase those since
Speaker 233
2:29:14
they can be reused well we haven't we we actually experimented with
something similar to that on highway 300 near uh pinnacle mountain and and they really didn't work the way that that we thought they were going to work uh so no we have we have been looking at that and talking about experimenting with something like that and we did something close to that on highway 300 okay another
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
2:29:35
quick question follow this okay chairman on um highway 105 there and atkins also in my district where the highway actually cuts out the levy there um i know that we worked to make sure that that was stayed a little controversy there to make sure that was
fulfilled that that was supposed to be filled back up going forward you know that levy was supposed to be there so can we not work together uh with the county there to make sure that there's something in the future to fill that levy back up whether it be steel wall or something that can be slid forward through there i'd like us to look at that and get your response on
Speaker 235
2:30:10
that and well we can and that would be something that would be a levy district's responsibility i mean the way it was built it was built you're really just to be
Speaker 233
2:30:19
filled in somehow uh and and this one worked pretty well
at this point but if i mean if they want to put in gates or something like that you know flood gates that you could close uh then yeah i mean we could work
Speaker 256
2:30:29
with them but it would be something that that they would be responsible for funding well the levy district
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
2:30:34
didn't take out the highway i mean you guys put the highway in there and and made the levy where it wasn't so i think that we it's not just completely up to the levy board to repair that highway every time that you put through there my comments but work on
that with the with the task force thank you all right thank you
representative bentley director anything further uh no sir thank you well i appreciate you
for appearing here and very informative i'm sure we'll be following up with you uh next on the agenda is association of arkansas counties mr christopher lions and then we actually have three more presentations that are coming up we're going to do our best to get us out of here before so we can still have some lunch at some point and so appreciate the membership that's been able to stay here with this because it's important issue and we do have the Corps coming up the very last of the meeting so if you
will please take your seats state your name for the record and who you represent and we'll get right to the presentation. Director Velines, I'll
let you start. If you'll just go ahead and introduce all of yourselves, then we'll
Speaker 274
2:31:54
let you begin. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Chris Velines, the director at the Association of Arkansas Counties.
To my immediate right is Judge Jimmy Hart. Conway County and to his right Judge Mark Thone of Yale County and to his right is our chief counsel at the Association of Counties Mark Whitmore we want to thank you for giving us opportunity to talk I wanted to start at a high level with the counties and our interaction with levies across the state we generally have three different nexuses with levy districts first of all
and the judges are going to talk about this first a public safety response when something goes wrong with them second of all we collect improvement district fees for some of them not all of them through the collector's office in that respective county across the state and then finally and Senator Raper as you well know the the projects that we've worked on the county clerks are reporting repository for formation documents and for annual reports.
Jimmy Hart serves on our AAC board. Mark Thone and Jeff Phillips, who is the county judge in Jackson County and in the room with us today, both of those are members of the task force. And we're very, very appreciative of the governor, including some county voices on that task force, in addition to Pam Ennis, who is the Pope County Clerk. So we feel like that that task force, much like the meetings that we have today, will result in some good things. We look forward to continuing dialogue there.
I have seen several natural disasters, but I have to say in this most recent one in Arkansas, the response all around was the best that I've seen. I think these gentlemen would agree with me up here. very much have to compliment Adam and Director Gary at Adam did an outstanding job working with with us across the state the National Guard was wonderful the state itself the Corps of Engineers was helpful RDOT and cities amazing how many situations we ran into across the state where
you needed cooperation between the cities and the counties and so we're going to talk a little bit about that and how that how that played out I told the judges at a recent meeting that they were heroes in my mind a lot of sleepless nights a lot of hard work these guys probably went days on end without getting more than an hour or two asleep at night and I think it is a miracle in the state of Arkansas that we lost only one life during that flooding and it's a credit to our
public safety to our judges to our mayors across the state that it played out that way so we're still working through the recovery the rebuilding roads bridges infrastructure across the state and what I'd like to do is invite the judges that are up here with me today to talk a little bit specifically about what happened in their counties and what the process is like as they go through the recovery efforts yes sir thank you chairs appreciate you very much for the
Speaker 277
2:35:18
opportunity to visit with you a little bit uh it was a i guess you could say a significant challenge but uh you know we uh thank god for like director of line says for uh everybody involved you know a lot of uh it was truly as i tell everybody every once you don't get to say that many times in life it was a unique situation our particular county where a lot of the resources were there and we just had to organize them getting together and it was a tremendous uh
public private uh endeavor that uh you don't get to say this very much but as they say we got to beat old man river for a change and unlike my heart bleeds this guy right here and i'll tell you the reason why there's a lot of difference in what happened in conway county and with our levy system and i think what we've seen out of this is some exposure to where what we've got some of the issues we've got federal agency state agency local agencies where we've got to come together structure organization but my you know my biggest concern is what we just actually witnessed i got
had an engineer's magazine the other day and a gentleman highly recognized engineer and he said there's a 0.02% chance that this happened again. But that 0.02% chance could happen again next year, this fall, this winter. You know, it's there. And, I mean, we know what we're dealing with, you know, and we're downstream. You know, we've got to face the fact of that. And I would encourage you, I would say this. I've had the pleasure of working with the Intermodal Authority, Dr. Bradley, and, you know, we got to take that trip to Tulsa, Port of Catoosa,
and understand there's six reservoirs, man-made reservoirs up there. I will tell you this we were privileged to that information when this whole event went on and can't say enough for director Gary AJ's got it. He's he involves everybody does a great job of reaching out and bringing everybody into the fold You know part of the problem that they had up there. I know
Speaker 278
2:37:13
at times up That Some of those man-made lakes were at 118 percent of capacity Correct. You know, I mean here you go. Could they have done a better job? Maybe I mean
it's called lessons learned or releasing our turning some water loose earlier maybe so but what we've got to be cognizant of is we're dealing with the system and i've got it right here matter of fact i'd love to show it to you i can't let you have it but i'll show it to you created in 19 and 29 county court i think we've got eight levy
Speaker 277
2:37:50
districts in our county but the things that we're going to work on going back to the task force and what you're talking about is your
Speaker 278
2:37:58
system's just as good as your weakest link sure there's no sense in having three levy districts in a contiguous levy or having two levy districts in a contiguous levy what we're going to do is probably try to have some public comment just like you know no put the notice in the paper let's have a community forum let's talk about this and actually the action of this is county court and i think i'm going to say this what you know going back to what i said before this is what we deal with as county administrators you know i'm a chief executive officer i'm elected by the people
of conway county but what i i get to deal with nine out of ten people that walk into my door don't pat me on the back tell me how good a job i'm doing they tell me nine out of ten people's got a problem and their problem is my problem and we're a complaint driven entity this county government, and when folks have got problems, we deal with it. These things were created in 29. Levy systems in Conway County were built in 1951. A lot of it was Japanese and German prisoners that helped built it. Pretty good
builders, I'll have to admit. It's a really good foundation of a system, but it's just like anything else. It's a great foundation of a system. Probably couldn't afford it today, and I'm gonna be ugly. It was built, we built it on a champagne diet and hand it to a beer budget if that's a decent i'm sorry i hate to say that but you know we've handed people the people that mainly are the recipients of it our agricultural interest and folks the real problem we've got they're like mikey on a cereal commercial give
it to mikey he'll eat anything but we've given it to people that bless their heart they're doing the best they can do system built in 1951 huge concern that i've got i feel bad for this guy because he got a situation where he had no control over what happened it topped it it topped the levy there's not one way they're going to fix that and it's going to take somebody some state and federal help when you have a river levy top one thing you can do raise the levy build it up fortify it in
In our case, though, what really concerns me, digging into the grass, in our situation, a 36-inch corrugated metal pipe galvanized installed in 1960. Follow me? 1960, a road pipe, a pipe that we put under a county road. Not aluminized, not coated, galvanized. 60 years old. now can you think this go go back with me just a little how many of those do you suspect are
in the levy system under an earthen levy that's probably 30 foot in height 150 200 foot in width bone how many of those you think there are between fort smith and pendleton and i don't mind tell you i mean i'm gonna say this today and everybody says you're dramatic jimmy it's not dramatic just reality what you seen on we were lucky to be able to save after we spent three hundred and seventy five thousand dollars building a cofferdam and thank god for lintz construction with a 40 yard off-road haul truck and city of malton with a 30 yard off-road haul truck and a road department and
lintz sand and gravel and mobley contractors and 145 pieces of three foot 47 foot sheet piling because i promise you folks if it had not been for that you'd have seen a you would have seen a real really bad situation because what it protected and this is what we get into and this is what i want to see as a county judge if you want me to do it give me the authority to do it and i'm going to be kind of ugly i work the landowners are very important they've got a stead in this thing people with a vested interest have got a stead in this thing too and what that means state highways
Industry over there, you know, I got a really nice letter from the senior vice president of Green Bay Pags and Arkansas Craft. He said, thank you for what you've done. Because, you know, we happen to employ 563 people, and I promise you, direct employees, not to mention the labor shed study that AEDC done probably four or five years ago. There's about 1,500 more people to depend on that for a living. So, you know, I mean, when you look at the mass of this thing, but my big concern, there's some cost effective ways to fix these things and we better get with it because one of
these days we don't i'm not sure mobbly contractors are going to have
enough sheet piling to do what we've done judge your comments are true and the reality of the situation in many areas right now is that if we have another flood they are more exposed sitting here today than they were when this thing started before you are correct so the time is absolutely critical that we begin to do that and
i watched your heroic measures because you were the only outlet i could get to get back around the north side and yes and you you all did yeoman's work and i know representative beck was
Speaker 278
2:42:51
involved he was him and senator johnson were right there checking us out and lieutenant governor
Speaker 277
2:42:57
was there and attorney general we really appreciate you know everybody's concern and and like i said it was just a good lord shined on us because we were very blessed to have a lot of some significant resources and uh that we could mobilize in a in a very big hurry yeah it was a we had a good save senator
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
2:43:17
thank you judge hart being here today i appreciate your expertise in this and judge stone
you too and chris did you just say
that uh you would recommend a consolidation of local levy boards we're going to do that that's just
Speaker 287
2:43:33
a no-brainer do that why would you not
Speaker 278
2:43:37
Right, I'm going to say it again Your system is just as good as your weakest link You've got to identify it When those multiple levy districts And a contiguous levy That's just foolish You broaden it out I want to go one step further And this is where I'm going to really be
Depending on the Army Corps They've got to put out a flood inundation map And I want to take that flood inundation map 100 year flood inundation map Overlay it over the ownership map of these districts that were created with meets and bounds calls and see how they match up. And if they don't match up, I'm a big believer in this. And I hear this in our county, it's a little bit of a problem because it's been one of those what I call kind of a sore, but you don't pay until something like this happens. Now is the perfect time to do something. But what needs to happen, anybody that benefits from the protection of that levy,
I'm sorry, I don't care what you are or who you are,
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
2:44:32
you need to be paying. Well, this is something that Tennessee recognized some time ago, and they consolidated a lot of their levy boards years ago. Also, did you say
Speaker 287
2:44:41
that you would raise the heights of the levees? Well, I'm going to say something. Here we go. And it's
Speaker 277
2:44:47
kind of, I go back. This started a long time ago, and I'll never forget this, and I apologize, but I've got to tell this story. I never will
Speaker 278
2:44:55
forget, went to meeting Army Corps of Engineers, Dardanelle, over your way.
And it was a gentleman there. was the city engineer for the city of Van Buren. Now, this is a true story, and this is where this thing kind of gets really kind of twisted around. You got FEMA, and FEMA, the contractor's name was John Bordeaux, the contractor for FEMA, and does the assessment of what they basically said. If you don't get your levy certified, there's a big difference in good standing and certified. You follow me? if you don't get them certified we're going to treat the levy system like it does not even exist
when it comes to flood national flood insurance program that's right gentleman van buren said they spent 275 000 to take and certify their levy and when they hired an engineering firm he was on staff engineer when they gun and guess what they found out their levy
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
2:45:52
was a foot and a half too short well correct me
if i'm wrong did i not just hear director bennett say that it's a bad idea to raise
the height of these levees due to putting more pressure on other spots down or
Speaker 278
2:46:07
down behind the levee it comes it's real simple i'm going to say and that's what we're working on we've got some levees that were in good
Speaker 277
2:46:17
standing there's like the pipe situation and and army corps is going to take care of that that's fine that's great we had some that because of a glitch here or something there we're not in good standing you
Speaker 278
2:46:26
know and what we're going to be working on with that what we've worked with army corps said we'll provide technical assistance no money but you know what we're going to do where we had those intrusions on those levees we had about a 25 intrusion in a little community called what's portland bottoms right there but plumberville
and and the thing you look at when you get to look in these situations you're dealing with some some material and i i'm going to say this as nice as i
Speaker 277
2:46:48
can it's sure not the best damn building material i've ever seen because a lot of it's got a high sand content you know thank god the time of the year
Speaker 278
2:46:55
this happened you know and the big thing and you're going to laugh when i say this a lot of folks are but i said the best thing happened to us is in
Speaker 277
2:47:04
late may when this happened late may june and thank god for all that weeds and grass that natural filter fabric was on the
levee itself because it provided a massive amount of
Speaker 278
2:47:12
cover natural cover for you know that that levee Levy we had the problem with was an intrusion after the levy, the water went down about 12 or 13 feet. And what happened, we got, I'm trying to think of the word for it, eddy. You ever heard of an eddy? An eddy can do a whole lot of damage than the right kind of material in a big hurry. But we work, you know, we are going to take, we said we're going to take it on us as county judge.
I don't feel good laying down at night when I know I've got a levy that's got a 25% intrusion. so you know what we're our road department's going to do we're going to put some material in there because we've got access and that's the thing we've got to really understand we've got access some really innovative and i'm going to be ugly cheap ways of fixing things and honestly when you get in probably going to have a better where you make that repair at you know i'm a big believer in you know unclassified field good old black shell it's got a lot of clay content it's got a shell
material in it you can put it in road beds i've been doing it for 19 years i put down a foot and and a half two foot of shell six inches of class 7 sb2 over it and when you do that you've got a road same way the levee system if you've got a pressure point or a intrusion problem fix it back fix it right and beef it up i mean the name of the game that's what i love famous approach seems to be is they're big on mitigation i'm big on mitigation because i do not believe doing the same fixing it back just like it was before you started that is not the answer to solving the
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
2:48:45
problem. I don't believe I heard you when you said how many culverts are there along the river did you ever give a number? Let
Speaker 278
2:48:52
me give you an example in levee district number I think it's one in three I believe it is and that particular one we had a problem in I don't know what it's going to take to fix that it's going to be quite a bit but I asked him I said I asked army of course how many more of those pipes are in that section of levee it's roughly four four and a half mile along three more three more 36 inch corrugated metal pipes it's been in the ground 60 years
galvanized so what i'm gonna say it again senator rayford you said it we're setting on us a ticking time bomb and it's not just in conway
county yeah that's all right judge it's there in the perry county district um as i recall it
was 60 or 70 years ago when they put in those flood gates and they hadn't been touched since then and that's really why that highway 60 had been flooding and overtopping for so many years it wasn't an actual breach in the levee it was the gates weren't
operating properly and it was just back flowing covering senator i'm gonna be ugly if i can take just a personal privilege i love your candor man we
Speaker 278
2:49:57
get things done when you talk this way the army corps done a good job and they built them they built a great structure handed off folks that maybe really didn't know what they were getting okay but the second thing is this that system is a good system and i'm gonna say it i agree with mr holland he said it exactly right really handled work remarkably well still doesn't change the fact you know when you get you got a
nice issue when i've got my old 15 year old f7.3 liter f250 truck that i love but you still got to take and change the
Speaker 277
2:50:28
oil and you got to put a set of tires on it every now and then you know and
Speaker 278
2:50:32
that's that's what we're dealing with uh you know we've got to figure out what our most vulnerabilities are but it doesn't change the fact i'm going to try to get my thoughts straight and keep on going because i need to shut up i know but the system is good it's a good system we've got to figure out what those major weaknesses are and i can assure you i mean and this is what i'm
looking at even on levy districts once y'all have given me the authority i'm not going to take and probably look at putting people on that levy board that actually are landowners on that levy I'm going to look at people that also have a very major vested interest. You know, and I'm going to give you examples like I've told the levy district that. You can have three members, five members, seven members, whatever you want to have. That paper mill over that's 563 direct jobs tied to, they're going to have two people from that paper mill that's going to be on that levy board because hopefully they're professional folks that understand the value
and understand the vulnerability and what they've – And I mean, I think even with them, they didn't really realize to even think about the logistics. That paper mill turns out a hundred loads of finished material every day. Now, can you imagine how much material comes in there every day? And everybody says, well, direct jobs. The direct jobs are important. But all them log trucks from 10 counties that haul logs in to that paper mill over there for everybody's livelihood and creates commerce and income, this is for the county, state of Arkansas, for everybody.
I'm going to say this. It's like with the river system we've got right now. The problem we've got, we've got to armor our system up because here's the reason why. Look what it's cost. You mentioned that. We're going to announce that prevention is worth a pound of cure. Yes, sir. So why in the world? I mean, we need to get with the program. We've got to figure out how to stand this thing up, how to armor it. It looks like a judge's situation here. Hey, I'm going to be ugly. I know what you're talking about, and I understand what Director Bennett is saying, but it still doesn't change the fact. Water levels don't lie.
He didn't wind up in a situation like I did, which scares me to death because I know I was a bunch more like me, but he wound up with a topping. Hey, if you top a levy, there's
Speaker 299
2:52:37
not one way to fix that, and that's raise it. Well, thank
you for your comments. I want to move on, and Judge, if you would take it up from here. Judge Thone, I believe.
Speaker 303
2:52:51
I'm Mark Thone from Yale County. jimmy's kind of hit on a lot of this but uh one of the things i hope i am i do appreciate the
governor for putting me on the task force uh one of the things i hope that does come out of this is that we we have some rule and law changes uh and they'll probably have to come through you you folks uh where a county judge can work on a levy when it's needed i'm not saying go build a 20 mile levy you know i'm talking about going and fixing a gate or going and fixing you know anytime we do something like that that's an illegal exaction is that the proper word could be an illegal exaction because uh that's road money and they say well you can appropriate some
money through the quorum court to do this yeah but that road grader and that backhoe and that dozer was all bought with road money all those employees are paid with road money so uh these these folks there could be a serious problem with us and legalities uh dealing with working on on a levy uh unless it's under a direct emergency situation and i don't you know i mean i probably did things it was illegal but i don't care i'd do them again but uh and i appreciate uh chris
valine's comments about saying we're heroes and all this stuff we you know it's hard to feel like a hero when everybody you grew up with has lost everything they got everything's gone they're on There's a young man sitting back here. I say young because you're younger than me. He lost his entire farming operation. These folks need help, and we've got to have some help dealing with this levy. We need some guidance on what powers the levy district does have. Can the levy district go in on U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service land and fix the levy
when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife tells them to get off? So, you know, what kind of power? We're going to have to – that's going to have to be worded so we know what the levy districts can do. Our levy district, we do have one. They're inactive. They haven't got any money. They're going to have to – that's got to change, and I accept responsibility for that. We're going to fix that, and I'm going to be the bad guy. I guess, like Jimmy says, I'm going to be ugly, but they're going to have to start taxing themselves and come up with some maintenance money,
and this is going to have to be done 70 years, and neglect is way too long. and we're just like Jimmy we got pipes there's no telling how many pipes on Dardanelle Cardin Bottom Levee District there's 28 mile levee system runs along with the Arkansas River and the Pettyjean River it's got to have some work but you know if you remember looking at Director Bennett's pictures there of where the big hole is I don't like to use the word breach because I understand the Corps of Engineers
the word breach and overtopping is two different things, and they're molecular there. That all means totally different things. So it did overtop in several different places before it finally found its weakest spot during the night, and it's a scary sight to see when it goes on. But we definitely need to do things with that. But as I say, with Director Bennett's pictures there,
If you had noticed where the hole was, that levee was in pretty good shape. As a matter of fact, it was probably the best-maintained section of the whole levee. It was just too short. And, you know, what do you do about that? You go in and try to raise it up and everything. But, you know, Director Bennett talked about not wanting to put a – I guess he's gone. I don't know. But anyway, he talks about not wanting to put the highway on top of the levee. You know, having one project, two different projects there in that one stretch for 3,500 feet.
Back through there, the road is already on the levee because back in the 80s, when I was actually on the levee board for a while there, Highway 155 was a gravel highway, a gravel state road. It was one of the last dirt roads that the state had in their system, and they come in wanting to pave it. Well, they come to us, and they follow the same roadbed as the old gravel roadbed, which they already had, you know, already owned.
But it went up over the levee and down on the inside, the bad side of the levee, on the Hollabend Wildlife Refuge side, I guess you could say, and it flooded all the time. So it would go down and go back up over the levee again, and then there's, you're talking about on Highway 105, Representative Bentley, there's two places there on that levee. it's the same way where the highway cuts through the levee in the same situation. But the water didn't get to that point. But when the highway department come to the levee board
and wanted to put the road on top of the levee to save money because they were going to have to build up the inside of the levee so much for the highway to be down there or go out across the bean fields and the farmer's fields and buy access right away and all that. So we signed to allow the Highway Department to put the highway on top of the levee for 3,500 feet there, but yet now we don't seem to remember that.
But that seems to be a way, instead of having two separate projects, we need to have one. And I quit rambling, because I'm going to get mad. can you explain judge stone
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
2:58:31
can you explain why you think that's a better remedy by putting that highway back up on top of the levee then putting it back like it is now well you know they say they
Speaker 303
2:58:40
can't really build a highway back to the levee's built because they're afraid it'll flood again if the levee's not there and the highway's put back it's going to flood again
wash it out again so we're putting it the projects together lumping them together half of the raising of the levee is already there because the old levee is there. You can use that dirt and you know the cost would go down greatly by using that and I think it would save a tremendous amount of money instead
Speaker 309
2:59:10
of having two separate projects. I agree.
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
2:59:16
I looked at the whole I agree.
Alright. Judge Zoney you finished? Yes. Let's see
Speaker 303
2:59:22
questions. I'll answer. Any questions? I'll answer any questions the worst night of my life. So that about 1 o'clock in the morning when it finally eat the levee out to where it was really roaring through there, and we were down there that night. But I also want to say thanks to Adam and Arkansas Game Fish, Arkansas State Police, Arkansas Highway Department, Highway Police. They were there with me the whole time from the beginning of the flood to the end.
All night long, we were down there, and I really appreciate those agencies. And, of course, the local Sheriff Gilkey and the Yale County Management Patrol and our volunteer fire departments and the city employees. Just tremendous, tremendous effort, Senator Rappert. It was amazing what the community did to come together. And the only thing that was heard out of all of this was some sore backs for sandbagging. I mean, we had no loss of life, human life, and a lot of wildlife, a lot of stock, livestock had lost life.
But we can say that as tragic as this is, no one died. Well, that's a
lot to be said for that. And it was very heroic efforts, and we appreciate all you did. I want to say one thing that I would ask, really, of the county association. it's obvious we've had it reported the task force some of these counties are not reporting and some of them obviously you know are not getting the reports number one but then some
are not reporting I would like for you and I would be happy for us to even convene an opportunity for a discussion I'd like to know why that some of the county judges have not reappointed members to defunct levy districts when the law gives them the authority and we know they have to be in place to let money flow. That needs
Speaker 274
3:01:19
to be discussed. If I might, Senator, I would like to address that because we've been checking into it.
The first act that I'd like to discuss is Act 386 of 2009, and it predated Senator Raper's act, which came in 2016. both times these acts were created as a result of some flooding the first one was up on the black river in pocahontas that act required all levee watershed irrigation yada yada yada districts to file a report every year with the county clerk's office not being done well over time and of course
many of them are defunct then we came along in 2016 and created what i think still think is a really really good act what I'm finding is it's not a lack of reporting from the counties there are counties I've gotten information from today that are not getting that are still not getting reports filed from those levy district senator and some of those counties are on the Arkansas River and we know they had levies and we know they flooded and so all I can tell you is the
mechanism that we created creates a reporting mechanism that goes upstream for lack of a better word to anrc and that report that is supposed to be filed in the office showing the vacancies is what precipitates these guys filling vacancies we're not getting reports and and i believe that if
you read that i think if i'm not mistaken that's sort of a that that is a prompting if you're not getting reports something's not happening and so that's that's where i'm saying
and again you i'm glad you clarified you're right it's not the county's fault for the levy district's not reporting but the idea is if the levy district's not reporting that is a signal to the county officials we got a problem why are
you not reporting if you can't find those people and they're just you know absconded so to speak or dead which in many cases they've died that's true then they just have to be reappointed
because without the operating levy district we can't make anything flow to that group uh without it being in proper order so uh anything else further
here or anything more you'd like to say we've got a couple folks and i appreciate everybody stayed on this but we're going to we're going to finish and i wanted you to have a
Speaker 311
3:03:53
little time to eat before your next meeting so i can uh senator i could talk about a couple quick solutions okay Mr. Thone talked about the authority, and I think Mr. Johnson, Senator Johnson did. We need to clarify that. We've got two constitutional provisions. One of them has to do with road funding being used on public roads and bridges. The other one has to do with counties and cities under Article 12, Section 5,
appropriating money or lending their credit to individuals, associations, partnerships. And so point being, we are going to have to address that so that our county judges can work on these levies and these emergency scenarios and avoid those scenarios. I want to dovetail what Mr. Thone said. Robert Moore, Highway Commissioner, former Speaker of the House, was very proud of the Mississippi River levies. And if you ever go down to where Robert Moore's from, and the reason the Mississippi River levies don't fail is they've got roads on top of them.
they have boils what they have in the Mississippi River the only problem they got is boils so if you ever go up and down the Mississippi River down to Shea County Highway Commissioner former Speaker Robert Moore it's got a nice road on it and that's for tourism and levy solidarity and all that so anyway the consolidation issue Judge Hart touched on it what I think is going to happen certain counties will pursue this they'll have multiple levy districts
multiple drainage district consolidate instead of having 11 of them you'll have three depending on their continuity we're probably going to discover in that process some problems in the law legal description processes and notice and things so we're I think there's room for improvement next thing I'd say the law If you want something that's ridiculous before you have lunch, the law that ANRC is constrained by actually says they cannot even require reports from levy districts.
And I don't know if you noticed that, but they hand out money. So you've got levy districts that have the capacity, and some do, get money from the federal government, from the state, through the ANRC, but yet they can't even require a report. So that's how ridiculous that law is. I would make a final point. I would beg y'all, consider either a consultant or an ANRC employee
or somehow county government can deal with local situations. We can help. These guys are very willing to address their local situations. They're eager to do it. They need a few help in the law, but we've been sending reports to ANRC. Well, we've been getting to the extent we get them from folks since 2009. We're supposed to get annual reports starting in 2009, and Senator Ray Perry and Mr. Beck's Act 7 during the special third extraordinary session of 2016
made it explicit that we send those reports to ANRC. an rc can't do anything with them they have to just file them and it's a shame it's a we've got an infrastructure that no can't i mean we're counties don't know
what the status is there because i understand what you're saying your point we need to address that yeah because that was
a stumbling block the last time but now what we were trying to do is at least at a minimum get
an idea of how many were operational and they have solidified that data because the governor gave that at the task force meeting so i mean they are gathering the information it's just that they can't
Speaker 310
3:07:47
demand anything true they do have they do they're gathering info but they can't there's not much they
Speaker 311
3:07:52
can do with it in the sense they literally uh well they just have to follow them there's something y'all need to uh embed in this critical infrastructure only god knows how many uh levy districts are out there in arkansas okay only god because there's
humps of dirt people died there's something filed in a courthouse what adam deals with what these guys deals with aren't the 1500 levy district that's on an obscure eddy of the newton county or something uh to use newton county uh there's a lot of them out there that don't have any impact other than the betterment of those individuals on their own property. And in a post-Katrina world, they're either in the floodplain or they're not, whether or not they're levy certified. So those folks in those small segments have dealt with this
in the terms of their homeowner's insurance or their flood insurance is out through the roof. Or they've decided to fix their levy. Agri levies, that's a business decision, whether or not I'll fix my levy up or don't. What y'all are really dealing with, the scope of what you're dealing with, as critical infrastructure. And I think Director Holland mentioned, let's focus on the Arkansas River and get it right first. And then after that, some of these levees, the St. Francis levee district, leave them alone. They're the gold standard.
They're not broken. So my point would be we'll never, I mean, there's levee districts out there that you could care less if they follow the report because they're on a very small river that if their breaches, if their levee breaches that floods their property and that's their problem yours should be concerned like adam is like these judges are judge hart doesn't go off major rivers you don't go up and down a little and look for people they're worried about the critical infrastructure so i just want to make that point
and i agree with everything you said on that for sure thank you for being here i'm
going to go ahead and quickly get to these folks so we can end we are going to end this thing up by one o'clock for sure i was
hoping for 12 30 but it's been great testimony and is being recorded and so we'll definitely be looked at. Have Municipal League up next with Mr. Mark Hayes and then we'll have State Insurance Department Booth ran quickly after that and then
the Corps of Engineers will be batting last and clean up here for us today. And Booth, if you don't mind, I'm going to go
ahead and have you come up. Mr. Hayes is by himself and that way you'll be loaded and ready as soon as he finishes
and then we can get right into your testimony. I appreciate all of you because it has gone into the lunch hour here. Mr. Hayes, if you would state your name for
the record, and you know where we're
Speaker 320
3:10:31
at in time. I do, and I'm going to be abundantly
Speaker 321
3:10:34
quick. Mark Hayes with the Arkansas Municipal League. Cities are still in a reactive mode like much of the state, so I'm going to give you some bare-bone figures that are at the low end of the scale, and they will begin to climb, I think, rather dramatically.
Just three of the largest cities that were affected, Van Buren, Fort Smith, and Pine Bluff, were already at $23 million in damages to buildings and structures, and that does not include roads, bridges, culverts, or any other sort of transportation washout that may have occurred. So you can see that that's going to be a much larger figure over time. I do have the North Rock City engineer with me I promised him he wouldn't have
to speak so I'm just going to give you a couple of quick anecdotal pieces of information most cities do not engage in levy boards at all North Little Rock is one of the exceptions and maybe the only exception they are in charge of the levy in downtown North Little Rock the they had between 75 and a hundred employees for three weeks working between three to four hours of overtime each day trying to keep the water out of neighborhoods out of businesses etc i can tell you that those kinds of figures
will pop up in these other cities as well those are budget breakers those are killers in the for services in the long run police protection fire protection will all suffer as a result of this So, Senator, you also wanted to know about some potential solutions. I think what you've seen today, this dialogue between these many agencies, it's pretty clear that the levy board's not unlike improvement districts, and I don't know if Representative Feit is still here. We did some legislation last time in conjunction with the counties on improvement districts.
I don't know that any of us know how many there are improvement districts, and I don't know how many levy districts there are. But I can assure you that if you start really applying some pressure and getting the kind of reporting that you need to get, I think Mr. Whitmore's idea of concentrating on the larger aspects of things first is probably a great way to go. The task force should yield some very good information. I'll end by saying we are still very reactive right now. Appraisers, engineers, et cetera, are spending an immense amount of time in the field
trying to figure out just exactly how much damage was done in the cities that are on the
Arkansas River. We thank you for being here and definitely
wanted your input and hope that there will be some robust discussion going forward because the major impacts were, of course, the cities along the river. Yes, sir. Because there's just more infrastructure there. There's more people there, more property that's there. And I would love at some time to go in a little deeper into the North Little Rock situation with that levee that they're in charge of because it is the critical infrastructure that is really the essence of the reaction.
And so we need to work together more on this. And so thank you for being here. They
Speaker 321
3:13:46
did incredible work. They really did. It was amazing what they saved in North Little Rock,
frankly. Well, it's too bad we don't have everybody lined up for some citations for everything that they did. But we do appreciate everyone. Thank you for being here and contributing. Thank you. Mr.
Rand, I'm going to go ahead and recognize you and the insurance department. and I know you've got comments that have been submitted in writing as well.
Speaker 326
3:14:08
Thank you, Senator Raper. Booth ran with the Arkansas Insurance Department. The commissioner has had a previously scheduled conference,
and I believe the committee asked the commissioner to address the availability of flood coverage in the state. As the letter indicates, the predominant number of coverages that we have in the state is through the NFIP program. We do not have a very significant market of private flood insurance. We do have several that issue it, but it's not even remotely close to the NFIP coverages. The commissioner is trying to encourage the development and increase more private availability of private flood coverage to compete with NFIP rates.
We just don't have that many companies selling private flood in Arkansas. Now, we do have quite a few companies that offer excess coverage or surplus coverage. to cover losses above the NFIP limits. As you know, the NFIP limits for personal or homeowner are not very significant. They're $250,000. Tops for structure, $100,000 for contents. On the commercial side, the NFIP limits, I believe, are $500,000.
So for a lot of homeowners who have expensive housing in high-risk flood areas or commercial industries, I believe that the practice is to get an NFIP coverage policy but get an excess or surplus coverage either in the normal market or non-admitted market. So we need to do a better job of recruiting carriers to offer private flood in this state. The other thing is, I think the commissioner and I were talking about this yesterday, consumers rely upon the agent to advise them about the need for flood coverage.
What a lot of consumers don't understand is their homeowner's policy is not going to cover flood. And so insurance agents need to do a better job for customers or consumers who are in a flood area, and it's not just river, it could be flash flood, wherever they're geographically located, they might be in a situation where they do have flood damage but not being near a river. So the agents need to do a good job of explaining to consumers the availability of flood coverage and the fact that the homeowners is not going to cover that.
And the department needs to do a better job of hopefully educating the public about the fact that HO does not cover flood. So we need to do a better job. I don't want to take everybody's time up of trying to recruit and improve private flood coverage and to educate agents better about advising consumers where there is a need for flood coverage.
One actionable item I'd like for us to look
up on in the future on that note is that I would like for the department to help with some feedback
on whether or not there's a mandatory declination of coverage that would be required in some of the
states. That would cure the situation where somebody's just not talking about it. And I asked the
Speaker 326
3:17:09
commissioner yesterday if I could offer that to the committee that we would be in favor, depending on how we worded the requirement of the law, that the flood coverage would have to be expressly rejected or declined. I would like for
you to follow up with me. That's something that we, there's no reason we shouldn't take action on that.
I will tell you just an example. Along the area there in my district, again, I'm going door to door with folks, and a lady told me, she said, thank God, because she had never flooded before, and we were there helping sandbag, and she did get water because she didn't fortify enough. and she said i actually had flood insurance she said i hated paying that premium she said but he asked me at the end of the meeting by the way why don't you consider some flood coverage so she just decided to take the flood coverage it was just purely in her case maybe divine but she took
look over she was the only person in that complete area that had any coverage whatsoever to help her the rest of them depended totally upon fema and other things were happening and you know i know hey i've carried a insurance license as well i know you're saying hey you're mandating us to do something but look uh when people aren't carrying the coverage you know and the deal is they don't have to take it they've just got to have an affirmation that they were offered it and they either said i'm going to take it or i'm not and so i think that's an easy thing and you know what that's an easy part of a you could have it on every system so everybody that's taking out that
property they're at least going to have a conversation
Speaker 326
3:18:41
about yeah i think one of the problems is consumers think their homeowners is going to cover flood and it just doesn't so
yeah be glad to work with you on that thank you for being here we appreciate your response last but not least definitely and actually one of the most important voices in the room uh the corps of engineers and i'd like to recognize chris roark and his team i don't know if chris i'm just trying i don't see your face that often so i was looking for you
so if you would please state your names and of course we know you represent the Corps but if you just recognize yourself so that we have a record of that and I think definitely I'm glad that you were positioned this way because you've got to hear a lot of feedback from these different entities I hope what you found and I know there are points at which we'll say hey wish it could have been done better here or there but I want I hope that you know that I want you to feel that there's support from this legislature in this state we want to
support ideas that are outside of the box we want to support ideas that could give us a different outcome and so we understand you can't control what mother nature did but we know that we have an opportunity to choose how we're going to respond to it in the future and so we thank you for being here with that you've got
Speaker 330
3:20:05
the floor thank you mr. chairman I'm just for introductions I'm Chris i'm the executive officer for the little rock district corps of engineers all right
Speaker 333
3:20:15
and i'm craig pierce i'm the deputy district engineer for the district all
Speaker 335
3:20:19
right i'm nathaniel keen i'm the chief of water management for the district
Speaker 337
3:20:26
elmo webb the levy safety program manager thank you i appreciate all that you do every one of
you i want to yield for your presentation and uh we appreciate your time and being here and staying through this so thank you mr
Speaker 338
3:20:39
chairman we uh we've got a few slides that we'd like to go through and maybe that'll help frame the discussion a little bit so
Speaker 339
3:20:46
craig's going to do that for us okay are the slides available i think we've got them okay okay now
Speaker 342
3:20:59
i actually hesitate to go through all of these because of time i feel like this is going to take a minute to get through i only have four that are sitting in front of me so right i just
Speaker 341
3:21:11
feel like a couple of them are going to take
Speaker 342
3:21:13
a few minutes so we'll go ahead and do that um and if we if you want to just jump in and start asking questions let's just let's just do it
Speaker 345
3:21:19
i think you hit hit the important information and then we'll go from there okay um first
Speaker 342
3:21:27
of all i'd like to say that we really appreciate being invited um the the statewide effort um at every level right now um you know to to try to respond and recover and then figure out the path forward is just very impressive and i can tell you from our standpoint you know we're citizens of the state we're arkansans ourselves you know we were out there uh during the flood watching the response
and and and just the the uh the leaders of the county judges i'd like to echo i mean there were a lot of heroic efforts at that level, mayor level, and then just people out there filling sandbags. It's quite impressive what the state did in responding. As far as our role, we have a role in the response. And when I say we, I'm talking about all the districts that are involved in the state to include Tulsa District,
where the water release decisions were made. So we, Tulsa, Little Rock, Vicksburg, Memphis, our role in this, we have a variety of roles. So during the response, we did a lot to try to communicate what was gonna happen. We put the inundation map out there, that ended up being a really useful tool. I think many of you might have seen that and your citizens and government entities use that, try to figure out where flooding might have occurred.
Obviously, we're out there with sandbag machines. We were getting equipment. We had people in the, with ADAM liaison, folks with ADAM stationed with them. We had folks from the National Guard in our Emergency Operations Center. So, you know, a lot of effort with the response itself. With the recovery, our major roles are, you know, we're basically trying to get everything back to where it was.
So we're trying to get the navigation system back operating. There's a lot of economics involved in terms of the state, a lot of economic benefits to getting that navigation system open. So that's a big issue for us. We're obviously out there. Elmo is our levy safety officer. Some of you may know Elmo personally a little bit. He's out there with his team trying to help levy boards figure out what they're going to do. And obviously we're out there inspecting the ones that are going to be eligible for federal assistance
for Corps of Engineers repairs. We are, you know, obviously we feel honored to be asked to participate in the levy task force and Elmo and some other folks are doing that as well. Don't
mind her, she's just trying to get your slides to show. We have the slides
here, so you can just keep trucking.
Speaker 342
3:24:23
We've got them in front of us and printing. Okay, so the first slide is actually kind of a map of the system,
and I was just going to use that to try to maybe educate. It might generate some questions. Yeah,
Speaker 341
3:24:39
and we see it, so you can refer. Go right on. And so, you know, on this graphic, hopefully folks have it, on the bottom right hand corner that's the mississippi river there you
Speaker 342
3:24:50
are in your life okay so we're tracking back up yeah so the the bottom right hand corner is the mississippi river we're tracking up upstream so you can see the arkansas boundary and then you can see over into
oklahoma and that's where all the flood control reservoirs they're very obvious in that in that picture a lot of flood storage a lot of capability to to minimize flood impacts within the within this system and those those lakes they all work together to to try to to do a few things one is to make sure there's enough water in the system to support navigation but another is to certainly minimize flooding impact when we have these massive rains like we had and and the truth is
the system, although there was so much water, there was so much damage, and we were out there seeing all the damage, it's very unfortunate. But the system did what it could do, and it actually significantly reduced the impact. What we're looking at is the flows all along the river would have been close to double what they were if those reservoirs weren't in place. And the truth is that the rain event just really exceeded the capacity of the reservoirs to hold all that back.
We had to release it at one point, and we can talk about, or as time went along, we can talk about some of those decisions as we go forward here. But the way the system is designed, so there may be a perception that the decisions, or that the operating plan that we have, which is based on our congressional authorization, that that plan at each reservoir, maybe Keystone focuses on Tulsa or maybe that Oklahoma is concerned about Oklahoma.
But the way the releases are structured within the system is that what we're attempting to do is minimize the flow at Van Buren. That is the gauge. That's the decision point. So as long as they can control it, as long as we, the Corps of Engineers, can control it, we're trying to minimize the flow at Van Buren to certain levels to keep the water in the banks. And that's basically the way the system works.
Okay. The next slide is really a depiction of the rain event. so on the on the on the left side this is inches of rain and you can see the big pink circle right there in the in the northeast Oklahoma area and if you look back at the map that we were just looking at that's right on top of all the northern reservoirs so they sustained significant amounts of
water you know anywhere from 10 to 15 even some areas localized up to 20 inches during May and That's a big number, and on the right side gives us an indication of how big that is. You know, that purple and some pink kind of color there, that indicates that the precipitation was anywhere from 400 to 500, 600 percent more than normal. So it was just an enormous rainfall over a very widespread area.
you know what we would prefer to see if we had control over over the weather would be that the rainfall in one over one or two of those reservoirs so that we're only doing flood releases from a few of them at a time in this case we were having to do flood releases on all you
know all of them essentially so just basically a confluence of the worst possible scenario for exactly yeah exactly okay so
Speaker 342
3:28:52
the next slide um i hesitated to put this in here but the purpose of
this is to give you an idea of of how quickly those reservoirs filled up in a brief period of time so what this the chart on the left both of these charts what they do is show you all the different reservoirs that are that that we saw in that map and it kind of indicates how much of the flood storage has been consumed at that point and and just to point out beginning of May we were making flood releases and for us that's that's 150,000 cubic feet per second at Van Buren that's
that's the level that that that Tulsa is allowed to release in while considering other rain that might be coming in in between to maintain 150,000 at Van Buren okay so we're releasing that much out of the system and then so on the 20th of May which is the the left side 55 percent of the of the volume was was full by the 23rd three days later 83 percent was full and you can see some
of those reservoirs were up 98 97 a couple of hundred and seven percent which means that we're in surcharge meaning we're mechanically raising the level of the of the lake and passing water underneath the gates and that's it's that point where we're really passing a lot of water that's where Keystone was passing the 275,000 when it got to that when it got to that level so a lot of water we're passing we're we're we're trying to eliminate with our flood
releases and it's just growing in the lakes while we're doing that a lot of rain the next slide and Senator Stubblefield this we know you had a question about the flow at Dardanelle at the you know at peak flow and when the the breach happened at the Dardanelle levee there and so part of this the purpose of this slide is to give you an indication of what that flow was so so this is Dardanelle so you can see this is what this is this hydrograph basically
just shows the flows at different days okay and so the first of May we're releasing that basically we are releasing the flow at Van Buren is is around 60 000 that equates to 60 70 000 at at dardanelle and then you know then we bump it up to our 150 000 we're trying to maintain that um and then by the 23rd of may like we just saw in that last slide we were up at 85 percent of storage and then we got to the maximum of our
of our the reservoirs can hold and that's when the that's when the the flows bumped up so high the peak flow for you know when the let the Dardanelle levee broke was in the 550 range do you do you have the exact number we'll look at that we'll look that up real quick and then and so we had to release basically for dam safety purposes you know we cannot let the water over top the dam we had to release
because you could have a catastrophic failure and really the peak just would be uncontrollable and we would hurt a lot of people so that's our number one priority is is public safety and preventing a catastrophic failure next slide I was going to get jump into levees real quick I don't want to go through this too much I think you you all have probably had access to some of the state's statistics but you know based on our database there's 98 98 levies in the system 60 of
them are in a acceptable to minimally acceptable category which a lot would be eligible for federal funding and then you know 38 a lot of them are in unacceptable conditions so this is just data as as you and the task force think about the situation of levies in the state so on the on the river itself um 38 levies 25 of them acceptable minimally acceptable and 13 unacceptable and actually you know the number of acceptable levies which would be levies that are in good condition is
how many just a couple of them two yeah
so sorry does that include yesterday i believe it was yesterday
or the day before. I'm telling you, it's running together. I actually went out with landowners south of the, what's called the Lolly Levy. That's kind of the television star from Conway, the Lolly Levy. There are two levees that one connects there and there's other south. Does this, when you say minimally acceptable or unacceptable, are you including those kind of
levees that are south of that Conway levee, which really, I'm told they're not being observed? so Elmo those are some of
Speaker 353
3:34:14
the levies that we are not aware of and that's so what we'll be talking about in the task force meeting today about the inventory review that okay now I just want to stop
just a minute and and I know what you're we're getting into authority and parameters here okay but we know that
they're there because they connect to the other levy so yeah are they but
you're saying there's just been no inventory of those exactly right now that the
Speaker 353
3:34:47
that Faulkner County Levy which would you you are referring to as lighting levy that's that's part of our system and there is a little levy that ties into that Faulkner County Levy that particular levy is one of those non-federal levies and we are aware of that particular levy but it had not been maintained but it's not in this number it is it is in that
number okay that's what i was getting at because it has been again they have had some maintenance on it because
frankly the little levy was there before the other big levy that you're talking about that's historically the way it happened and and so that levy was in place and i just
want to specify that and because uh you're talking about people down through there i know that 50 of their acreage is unplanted because they still got problems they still got issues and so i just wanted to get that specified so
that that's helpful that you're saying that actually is part of the ones that you're including in that yes okay all right thank you okay the
Speaker 342
3:35:46
next slide and this just gives you an idea of so the the levees along the river that were active in the program that had been maintained there were at least minimally acceptable condition there were we had 19 total levy boards along the river that were in that status what we did as soon as the as soon as the event was over we hand delivered some letters out to say hey here's your notice that we're we can help you
if you if you send us something back in writing so what we did was we handed them a fill in the blank letter at the same time that and we carried most of those away with them asking us to go ahead and inspect and do an assessment of damage to determine if if we could do repairs the result was we got 17 letters back to two really weren't impacted by the by the event at all let's see Clarksville was one of those just the
water didn't get there so 17 we did the inspection on all 17 six of them had what are considered we did the inspections with the levy boards themselves six of them had significant damages that that could be eligible for federal repair we're almost finished with the reports you can see we've got some costs already in their total of seven point six million dollars plus at this point one stipulation for us to actually go in and do the repair is that
the benefit cost ratio has to be greater than one so more benefit than cost we think that's going to happen for all six we're just waiting on to the the economics to be completed for for the two there in yellow that you see on the far right column very close we will be submitting submitting that forward once we get get them completed we're way ahead of the curve on this and and we'll be trying to compete for funding for the to move into design and perhaps
Speaker 358
3:37:54
construction later to do the repairs okay and
and so to that point many of these areas are completely unprotected
now because the damage is there so how much time are you talking about before there would
be funding there to help them get restored and repaired I wish I could give you a
Speaker 342
3:38:14
perfect answer on that but we are competing with you know there's been a lot of flood damages across the nation and so there's a lot in competition for those for that funding right now when you say competition is
that a decision within the core about what happens first or is that a decision
of the funding from congress to
Speaker 342
3:38:36
you so i what i believe the funding pots that the corps of engineers is working on our supplemental funding bills that have been passed recently and so one has been passed already for the for the Missouri River flooding some of the flooding that happened a little earlier we're eligible to compete for that but all those levies are kind of ahead of us in the process
because they their damages occurred earlier when would we be
able to know so that Arkansas understands are we sitting here knowing it's going to be 18 months or 24 months or I mean So I think as
Speaker 342
3:39:11
part of the task force, we're going to try to keep everybody up to date as much as we know. I don't think I can predict right now. There's a supplemental – I believe there's a supplemental bill that Congress
Speaker 358
3:39:24
is working on based on our flood, so more money will probably be available.
And I know we can't force you to give us an answer you don't have. Right. But we're looking for, I think the public
needs to understand what we're looking at because you've got people that are putting money back into facilities along the river. So I would ask that you try to backtrack through your own channels and say we need to be able to present to give some idea of what you're looking at. I think Senator Stubbford has. Thank you,
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
3:39:54
Senator Riper. I just want to ask you, is this funding based on priority or is it based on first come, first serve?
Speaker 341
3:40:00
you know i'm i'm not sure i can actually answer that question i really i really don't know the answer um my take would
Speaker 342
3:40:08
be that it's going to be on priority but those but some of the decisions have already been made before our flooding
Speaker 344
3:40:13
even happened so if you if you understand what i'm saying but there was a
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
3:40:18
supplemental bill passed i had read uh recently yeah yes or funds
that pertains to these and i just wondered i mean are those funds going to be given out based on
the priority the seriousness of the breach and how many people it affects are they going to be handed out based on who applies first i
Speaker 330
3:40:43
i can tell you sir that if that is the case and again craig mentioned we don't know
Speaker 338
3:40:48
that that's the case if that is the case and it's based on priorities based on what's protected, then the system along the Arkansas River is going to be last. Can you tell
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
3:41:01
me what the budget of the Corps is in Arkansas?
So our regular... I'm going to hold up just a minute. I want you to repeat that so everybody gets that real clear. You said
Speaker 330
3:41:20
that if it's based on priorities, then Arkansas River would be last? It could be,
Speaker 338
3:41:24
sir. And I'm just talking about the damage that has occurred on the Missouri River. Right. It's much greater damage in terms of probably dollar amounts. Right. So if that is the way
Speaker 330
3:41:37
that it's racked and stacked, then the priorities might be a little bit lower.
I tell you, I don't believe I'm saying this, but I
sure wish Senator Chesterfield was here. Yeah. Right. I'm going to tell her what
Speaker 342
3:41:55
you said. We'll be back. But typically, sir, I think one thing to consider is that from a priority standpoint, one
Speaker 374
3:42:01
way to classify priority of levies is the population
at risk. And I totally get that, and I totally understand. But, you know, this is important information. Senator Stubbill, continue.
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
3:42:13
No, that's basically all I had to say. I was just curious about the
funding and how it was going to be distributed But I understand, and I understand the Missouri River situation. Also, the Mississippi River from Mississippi all the way through Louisiana has been major, major. But I was wondering how that
Speaker 197
3:42:34
distribution process went about, whether it
Speaker 342
3:42:37
was priority or first come first. I can't tell you your federal congressional reps are all over this. and we had a repair we had to do in Randolph County
around Pocahontas that we finished up last year, and they were instrumental in making sure that wasn't overlooked. Well, and I'm glad to
hear they're all over it, and we hope they continue to be, and
I want to let you finish up. We've got a couple, actually three questions in the pipe here for you. Is there
anything more on the actual report on this page? You just think it's your last one. This is my last one. I'm ready for questions. So I want to say here on this level of protection in Perry County, you're telling me that levy is just a 25-year, okay, you know, all that money and all that work, and, of course, this
is where, again, I know you only repair it to the level that it was, correct, and so the community has to make a decision, do you want it to go to 50 or 100, right? If the community makes a decision that they wanted to raise their level of protection there is there any impediment from your part to allow them to do
Speaker 353
3:43:50
that no yeah the the plans to go forward with that we would have to review the plans
but we will not stop them from uh raising that level of protection what we will do is review it make sure it's to our standards to make sure that it will remain in that rehabilitation inspection program so from the
current level of their levy the top that says it's 25 to get them to say 100 how many more feet is that approximately i am not sure but i
Speaker 353
3:44:19
did that for um for mr buns when when they did the the initial work but i i have that information but it's only just a few feet it's
only a few feet but i have that information to uh to share
with you if you would like well it's it's definitely something that i think they should discuss and look at obviously
because you're looking at really a dot projection of if you're going to keep access for the community you're looking at a possible 20 million dollar bridge project that's what he said comparable to what would you what would it be if you raised up your levy some more and you had the proper protection in place to keep that from
happening so that's where we need to really be considered
as a state on that uh with that do you have
something else before we get to these center hill you recognize then we've got four questions waiting on you uh you made a comment just a
Senator Ricky Hill
Unverified
3:45:10
while ago about y'all just finished a levy up around the pocahontas area is this from the flood what four six years ago it was
Speaker 379
3:45:19
2017 right 2017 april may late april early may flood okay so it does not go back to the great big flood they had when the four rivers
Senator Ricky Hill
Unverified
3:45:25
all ran together i'm sorry the flood that uh flood the whole town was that one two years ago so this this is a
Speaker 341
3:45:33
great story um the pocahontas levy is a great story because that was a defunct levy that did not qualify
Speaker 342
3:45:39
and after the big the bigger flood that you're talking about um that that damaged the levy um at that point well actually i think that was the one where they they had actually started working on it and that damaged it and they had to go back and and kind of build it back up again then it then it came into our program and uh and we were able to do the repairs for them this
last time so elmo if you have anything
Speaker 353
3:46:09
to add on that uh yes in 2008 just a brief here's 2008 uh the levee was um was breached and it had been it was because there was a lot of below grade road crossing in fact they had degraded the levy in some areas and that was a record for a 2008 event was a lack of flood 2011 was another record event and during that particular time they was in the process of making repairs from the 2008 event and then trying to get the levy upgraded so it could
be active but before they could get it active the 2011 event occurred and it breached the levy again in several locations we were not able to go in and make those repairs in 2013 they repaired that levee we went in and inspected it and made it active in the program uh 2017 another record event uh we within 10 years there were three record events on the black river in this area and it overtopped in several locations and it breached and because they were active in the program we
Senator Ricky Hill
Unverified
3:47:10
were able to go in and make those repairs okay thank you and the reason i asked that question i was just trying to get a time frame uh to build off of what we're looking at see if we're two years away three years four years or six years to kind of what we're looking at because there's damage uh on the levees that we're not even aware of yet
right that if another one comes it'll breach a lot easier on these on this report you've you've identified the federal
and non-federal for the purposes of everybody knowing the federal qualifies for 100 repair correct the non-federal
Speaker 342
3:47:43
80 yeah that that's that's exactly right um with the stipulation that there's some other cost that the local sponsor has to has to incur real estate actually fill material as part of so it's actually maybe not
really 80 it's a little bit more right it's only 80 percent of what of
does not include the cost of the material right so which actually could that's That's significant to be seen. Yeah, that's significant.
All right, Representative Kavanaugh, number 13, if that is Kavanaugh. I don't know where you're at. 13, you're on.
Representative Johnny Rye
Unverified
3:48:23
Thank you, Senator Jason. Question for our fellows. At Alma, where all that problem occurred, was the big problem there, the water coming off the Ozark Mountains maybe and working its way down into that scene? And what caused that to flood so bad right there?
Speaker 384
3:48:45
Go ahead. Most of the flooding in this event was from the river, from the heavy rains that happened in Oklahoma and
Kansas. Thank you, Jason. All right. Sorry, we were having a little sidebar. Representative Beck, you're
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
3:49:09
recognized, sir. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Chair, my question is, I was going back, I was looking at some of your numbers.
The question I have is, based upon the rainfalls and what you were holding back, and I understand it was a big event up there, we had about three days, which just created a havoc for us downstream. If that had been four days trying to project some of your data, that number would have been much wider, much longer. So my question is this. Are there any plans from the Corps' perspective
to somehow address this issue? Are we saying that as a baseline we're still going to use the old numbers? You're saying $550,000. No 550 yeah, 550 thousand feet a minute was it was your number that you use but But are there any plans to say okay? We have to prepare this for higher numbers now than what it was originally designed for
And then just one other quick follow-up with this we had I'm curious as to you guys are inspecting the levees and you're sending reports to the levy boards and I've it's my understanding I might have been toning correctly that sometime these reports come back no one gets them you know bad addresses whatever reasons I just want to make sure that if you guys are really part of this task force that that would be a great indication that we have a dysfunctional levy board also so make
sure that that information gets in there but my original question was are there any changes to change the the baseline as far as what we should be able to hold
Speaker 341
3:51:02
downstream okay and thank you and that's that's a complex question actually um so what what we are
Speaker 342
3:51:07
doing is that we're we're going to so between little rock and tulsa as a team we're going to do an after action review to kind of study operations of this what was there you know was there anything we could have done different to reduce the peak essentially is what the better
outcome would be so we're going to go through and evaluate that what we do know and i think congressman westerman said it correctly there's no silver bullet to to create more capacity and we really don't have any any authority to to to kind of increase capacity based on you know maybe a new pattern of of rainfall and we don't even know if there is a new pattern we might just be in a cycle right now so that but to do that it would take a a
cost-shared study to reevaluate the the purposes and the function of of the whole system to try to figure out if something structurally or operationally needed to change um in order to um protect to a higher level so if that answers your question yep you i'm sorry you want
Speaker 361
3:52:21
to go again there representative beck push your
mic again yeah there you go you know your life
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
3:52:36
sorry just a so had your levels been lower have you had you
been maintaining a lower level earlier on I guess that was one of the things I guess you're talking about working out with Little Rock and Tulsa saying is there something we could done could we had lower levels maybe a little bit more at risk of lowering the river levels because you wouldn't have had the capacity to release when you needed it something of that nature but I guess my question then would be that that you know there's there's two things that you could do one would be the operational side of it and then the other would be
the possibility of some type of
a change or something that would allow you to relieve some water earlier so the way
Speaker 341
3:53:24
the plan works right now the way it's defined and I described this prior is that they
Speaker 342
3:53:30
do flood releases in on those Tulsa lakes to try to achieve these certain
Speaker 342
3:53:39
sure I'm sorry about that at Van Buren so you know something to consider because there's a huge
economic impact to many communities if navigation cannot happen right so there's the flooding aspect of it which is obviously very important there's also the economic damages that we do to the to the navigation industry when the flows are too high for for them to to be able to to move commerce right so if we would have started releasing earlier then we would have we would have created too high flows for the navigation industry but what we couldn't do is predict when
the rain would stop yeah right so if we would have started earlier then we would have even put them out of navigation even longer than we did and we it's always
good when you hindsight's 20 20 i know that but these are all good points that have to be brought out i'm going
to get these next couple representative hawks you're next sir you should be able to just punch it you're
Speaker 393
3:54:44
ready thank you mr chair and i have uh two things one question that was asked but i don't believe was addressed
and just kind of a follow-up here uh first of all what is the uh budget for the corps here in arkansas i didn't hear the answer
Speaker 344
3:55:01
i did hear the question asked so for our our operations and maintenance of the of the navigation system in arkansas it of course it varies every year but but about 110 million would be the number and that's that's that's for did i
Speaker 342
3:55:17
say that right that's for our whole program which includes the white river lakes and you know all of all every
Speaker 338
3:55:25
system that we have operations and maintenance budget for specifically for the river system for the mcarns in arkansas is about half of that a little less than half of that so anywhere from 40 to 50 million dollars a year for the operation and maintenance of the the mcclellan car arkansas river
Speaker 342
3:55:44
navigation and that includes hydropower and parks and recreation and you know all of different missions that we have is navigation thank you mr
Speaker 393
3:55:55
follow-up here um then it was said uh in the first statement that uh the reservoir system that we have basically um kept us from further damage that we saw and we talked about how great the reservoir system was my understanding is is with the levees that we build if we continue to invest in the levees which are good for individual communities but i have part of my community that was flooded because of a levee that was downstream if that levee would not have been there
that other community would not have flooded and i'm pretty sure that conway benefited from the detriment of our friends in dardanelle when that top happened that relieved pressure down river so with the levees being built and i believe they're important we have to look at them we're only creating a problem somewhere else or we're just waiting for the next levy to give and it's going to give at some point so should we not focus on what Senator Raypert and others have said before
on maybe another reservoir in this chain because if not we're only asking for greater problems in the future and I know that there's money and there's issues but this issue isn't going
Speaker 342
3:57:18
that we need to look at So we do have authorities to study things like many different flood risk reduction, flood risk management solutions to include new reservoirs.
I think Congressman Westerman stated it pretty well that there's a variety of interests there, And there's a lot of people that really don't support new reservoirs at all, but there's obviously a lot of need, water supply and flood control and for different purposes. So we do have authorities to do those studies in a cost-share scenario with a public entity.
We've got one more question, and we're going to get out here in four minutes, so let's all be about it.
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
3:58:08
Representative Bentley. thank you chairman i just have one quick question uh mary bentley covered dardanelles so right there at the at the night when the levee over top there the water level in lake dardanelle was uh 300 let me get my numbers here 337 feet and right today the water level in lake dardanelle is 339 feet so why did we not use that two foot of reservoir that you had in lake dardanelle so we didn't have
that the top over there because i know immediately after that the level of the river dropped i'm in the next morning i was there every day watching and monitoring things the next one the real the level of the river was way down so obviously the gates were closed so why why could we not have used that reservoir and like dardanelle just a little bit more that two feet that's in use today that day to make sure
Speaker 384
3:58:57
we didn't have that top over of that river when i heard senator stubblefield's question earlier i texted one of my colleagues and asked for some numbers we ran some real quick rough estimates that represents about three minutes
worth of flow that we could have prevented that two feet um it wouldn't have made any difference we would have gotten to the same peak release okay thank you all right any
final comments no sir all right uh i do appreciate you being here i think obviously this will prompt some follow up at some point we have to get to the task force i want to make a request of you i have to be in washington in september with the national council of insurance legislators one of the topics
is nfip i would appreciate you to give me the name and contact information for the people in washington at your headquarters office that we actually could interface with uh if you don't have that try to find that so that we could get that uh and uh i appreciate you being here uh you know I should have probably said this the first it's very interesting I talked with Senator Stubblefield one of the interesting aspects of this that has not really been fully vetted out I spoke with I will just say someone Oklahoma
government official and they were in Muskogee at the wastewater plant and touring the wastewater plant and asked them what happened here at the wastewater plant and they said well it all went down the river two weeks later He said he's there, and he's talking to them again, and they said it was continuing to pour all of their effluent into the river. I think the legislature needs to understand what we just saw happen up there with the hog farm and the Buffalo River was nothing compared to what we just experienced in the Arkansas River.
So that's another aspect that we ought to look at down the road, because it's a big issue. It's been in our state, but frankly, the worst environmental impact that we've seen actually just happened in the Arkansas. river and i don't see anybody writing about that they just wrote about the level of flood but we absolutely had tremendous amount of human waste and everything come down that river and so i thank you everybody especially those of you who rode this thing out to the end been very good meeting apologize for the timing there's a cut make sure take the pieces that's on your table arkansas
state university is collaborating with the core on some studies for some water basin areas over there. And also I want to thank the ABA and their collaboration for legal services for people that need that. With that, thank you so much. We're adjourned.
Agenda
A. Call to Order/Opening Remarks
B. Consideration to Approve Senate and House Insurance and Commerce June 4, 2019, Meeting Minutes [Exhibit-B]
C. Congressman Bruce Westerman and Congressman French Hill (represented by Ms. Anushree Jumde (AJ), District Director)
D. Division of Emergency Management --Mr. A.J. Gary, Director
E. Arkansas Natural Resources Commission --Mr. Bruce Holland, Director
F. Arkansas National Guard
G. Arkansas Department of Transportation --Mr. Scott Bennett, P.E., Director
H. Association of Arkansas Counties [Exhibit-H] --Mr. Chris Villines, Executive Director
I. Arkansas Municipal League --Mr. Mark Hayes, Executive Director
J. State Insurance Department [Exhibit-J] --Mr. Booth Rand, Managing Attorney
K. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Little Rock District [Exhibit-K] --Mr. Chris Roark, Deputy Chief Operations/Executive Officer
L. Additional Information [Exhibit-L]
M. Other Business
N. Adjournment
Documents
| Title | Type | Pages | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agenda — INSURANCE & COMMERCE - SENATE, Aug 1, 2019 | Agenda | 2 | Official source ↗ |
| ARDOT re flood and roads Bennett | Exhibit | 21 needs OCR | Official source ↗ |
| Exhibit-B Draft Minutes 6-4-19 | Exhibit | 6 | Official source ↗ |
| Exhibit-H 8-1-19 Article-County Lines 2017 | Exhibit | 4 | Official source ↗ |
| Exhibit-J 8-1-19 Rand I and C Joint Committees | Exhibit | 11 | Official source ↗ |
| Exhibit-K 8-1-19 Roark-US Army Corps of Engineers | Exhibit | 7 | Official source ↗ |
| Exhibit-L 8-1-19 Additional Info | Exhibit | 4 needs OCR | Official source ↗ |
| Handout 1 Broadway ASU USACE White River Basin | Exhibit | 1 needs OCR | Official source ↗ |
| Minutes 8-1-19 Approved | Exhibit | 6 | Official source ↗ |
Speakers
Speaker 3
Senator Jason Rapert Chair
Unverified
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
Senator Ricky Hill
Unverified
Speaker 17
Speaker 19
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Speaker 21
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
Speaker 68
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Representative Jon S. Eubanks
Unverified
Speaker 22
Speaker 72
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
Speaker 81
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Representative Roger D. Lynch
Unverified
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
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Representative Vivian Flowers
Unverified
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Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
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Representative Johnny Rye
Unverified
Speaker 384
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
Speaker 361
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