Multi Joint Committee Meeting on Flooding and Levees (Sliq ASR Test #5)
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Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
0:00
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 WERDAs, and we will continue to hold hearings throughout the fall. If you have any concerns, suggestions, ideas, or simply want to discuss the WERDA 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 mind, but they play a very vital role to our nation's economy and especially to the economy here in Arkansas. 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 in economic output.
Moving goods on the water is the most efficient transportation mode. A typical inland barge has a capacity 15 times greater than one real 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 percent 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. WERDA is important because most of the infrastructure throughout our systems are around 50 years old and in desperate need of repair. We must keep WERDA on schedule, and I look forward to leading the Republican effort on this important process. as we focus on the 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 and 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 a stake in flood risk reduction regarding regional planning and coordination. In terms of federal dollars, states can pair together a variety of 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 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 uh senator eddie cheatham number 66 thank you mr
Speaker 9
5:27
chairman congressman good to have you with us today you are my congressman 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 seemed like after all this took place
There was some statics, some conversation about did the Corps really do their job in Oklahoma? 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?
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
6:14
Yeah, Senator Cheatham, thank you for that question. And that is a concern that's been voiced, and I've talked to the Corps extensively about it.
And as you can imagine, 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 core 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 And I was on the ground in Dardanelle looking at the lock and dam up there. And it was literally louder 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 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 levy at 550,000 to 600,000 cubic feet per second So it was historic flooding levels, and the Corps did the best job they could 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 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 and getting those levees in better condition, and we've still got work to do. But overall, the system held up remarkably well when
Speaker 17
9:21
you think about the volume of water that was coming down the river. Thank you,
Speaker 9
9:27
Congressman. And mentioning Darden, we were actually, my wife and I were out of state when a lot of this took place on the seeing grandsons of 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 Dardendale, I guess, a little before the 1st 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 there's 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 6
10:18
you, sir. Thank you. I will mention, you know, we've seen devastating
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
10:22
flooding on the MCARN system. But if you go up 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 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 anushri jimda is actually here in his 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 uh senator cheatham's statement there uh this will come up
later when the corps actually testifies but since you're here and you made specific mention of 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 levee district number one put new flood gates 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 core 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 calls for just flushing the toilet
Speaker 17
14:39
on arkansas well and you know oklahoma didn't get off scot-free on this either
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
14:43
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 at some of the reservoirs but when they would have released it it would have been a larger flow coming down so they did more
Speaker 16
15:04
of a gradual release trying to keep the peak flows as low as possible and i'm sure the corps
Speaker 6
15:11
will will 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 to take these questions senator chesterfield you're recognized thank you mr chair and um congressman thank you
for being here good to see you again good and i thank the representative from congressman hill's office um areas of my district suffered huge losses
especially that area in the scott area and there was 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 levy system, but the levy system in the area around Woodson Lateral Road where nobody's had a levy commissioned 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 they as perhaps y'all do how do
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
16:30
we get them up and running so that's a great question and a great issue that needs to 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 strong my understanding is at one point in time it was 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 levies are and the condition of the levies but i think that's one of the
Speaker 17
18:07
should be one of the critical focuses of this group is how to get those levy districts and Levy Ward's functioning at peak
performance. Senator Chesterfield. I want to follow 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 comes, 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 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 uh 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 yes you're you're you're 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 so here
i'm gonna wreck it you hit it again
senator chestville because if i want to make sure you get to speak for yourself hit it hit it again for talk there you go no wait a second now you
should be all right 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's who suffered greatly and the folks in mackalmont'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 got so many others congressman you've said something just real quickly you know
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
21:59
we're talking about the mcarns and the arkansas river but you know looking across the state there's there are other navigable rivers obviously the mississippi river the white river the washita river and other flood control systems in the state and when you're talking about these levy districts we definitely need to focus along the mcarns but we also need to look at the levy 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 levies down there as well as other navigable streams
Speaker 17
22:33
and flood controls infrastructure all across the state agreed senator sturch if you still
have a question or 63 that would be me mr. chairman all
Representative Jon S. Eubanks
Unverified
22:44
right over here representative Eubanks congressman Westerman 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
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 farmer has 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 yeah I may have inadvertently not
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
23:57
said Logan county but logan county was obviously hit hit very
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 it 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 uh 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
Speaker 3
24:54
can do to help on that poultry farm i know there was a thank you a hog farm flooded
Speaker 56
25:03
as well thank you uh representative bentley thank you chairman thank
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
25:08
you congressman over here thank you for being with us today um on the levy task force we heard that the mississippi river
and tributaries they receive like 250 million dollars a year to maintain the
levies along the mississippi i know you're talking about funding in the water is there funding in there to help maintain the levees along the arkansas river to that level
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
25:28
as we have along the mississippi well obviously you've got 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 uh through worda and we will be assessing if we need to to create a larger fund for the mcarns and other rivers in the 2020 word of bill i don't know
the exact levels of funding that are in the existing authorization but you know we 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 in 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 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. And Mark Twain said that 10,000 levy boards, and I can't remember the exact quote,
but he said basically the Mississippi will win out in time, and his quote's becoming more and more accurate. It's hard to control the floodwaters that we're seeing down the river now, and we're going to have to work with the Corps to assess the overall operation of
Speaker 3
27:14
the system and the overall construction of the system. Thank you. One quick follow-up, Chairman, if that's
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
27:21
okay. Real quick, just 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
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
27:39
have seen the devastation in Arkansas 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 And we're going to do a full assessment with the Corps. That's one of the things I've talked to Assistant Secretary James about and others in the Corps is that we want to 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 we we won't let that pass we'll make sure that they explain in detail how the the whole process with the timeline the decisions that were made and was there opportunity that they could have done
better do 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 moving down the river but it's it's not a just a simple decision about opening gates and and they take a lot into account when they're looking at that. Thank you.
Speaker 66
29:37
Thank you. Got Representative Gonzalez.
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
29:43
It's actually me, Mr. Chair, Representative Collins. Thank you, and thank you, Congressman. Would you state your name for the record, Dan? Andrew Collins. Okay, thank you. 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? Again, we have to...
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
30:13
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 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 maximum amounts of flow that we think we'll see coming down the rivers.
We're working to, you know, 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 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 percent 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 emissions 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
Speaker 21
33:53
state of arkansas thank you next i have up here it says Senator Flippo, number 70, wherever
Speaker 70
34:00
you're at. 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 and 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 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. Alveda 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
Speaker 17
34:45
on board so I just want to say that statement publicly thank you and and thank
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
34:50
you 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 So as far as residential damages, probably the worst area along the river that experienced flooding there in Jefferson County. Thank you.
Thank you. Next on this is number 39. It shows Representative Lynch. Yes, and Congressman,
Representative Roger D. Lynch
Unverified
35:16
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 the 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 the county 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 levee district, and when it reforms and has the attention it has, that they have some authority in keeping these levees repaired and some influence over the private landowners so that 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 maintain
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
36:32
the levies yeah i think that's a great indicator of the problems that we have with 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 failed east of dardanelle and the water was coming around behind the levee they they did some really on the fly improvising created you know double coffer dams and backed up culverts it's amazing when um you know people's property and lives are on the line how good a work
arkansans do and how innovative they can be and 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
Speaker 17
38:18
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 it's 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 uh representative richie it's not going to be representative richie it
may be representative ladyman is that that's correct all right thank you mr chairman we've got a very large crowd so i
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
39:57
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, is there or should there be a part of the Corps that's looking at creating large reservoirs like we've done
in the past to prevent this flooding or the effects of this
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
41:24
flooding? and that's 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 and those are the things we need to focus on before the floods happen so that after it happens people aren't looking to 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 on the black that we can get the core to look at i'll be glad to to mention that to them but you know realistically i don't think they would consider a building any more reservoirs at this time even i've tried to get them to look at reservoirs on like the foosh river in western arkansas where we had the the flood where we lost a sheriff and a
game warden and others a few years ago there that's a prime area over in in scott county to possibly do some flood control reservoirs and they just really don't want to talk about it even and 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
Speaker 17
43:47
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 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 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 and well it's uh the the
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
44:55
i've never seen seen the corps get in a hurry about anything i will say that well you know what they just need
the right person cracking a whip is all they need uh all right senator stubblefield thank
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
45:12
you senator raper uh bruce congressman westerman i have a 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 in a levee that's probably 80 to 100 yards wide uh 50 60 foot deep uh we got an estimate that i heard from one of the highway commissioners it was going to cost five and a half million dollars
to fix it and what 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 amount of increase 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 Agency's 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 core takes these these certain 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 Levee 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 in Dardanelle be an exception to that? Wouldn't they qualify for
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
47:33
federal funds under this scenario? The levy breach down by Hollabend, that's the one I was talking about earlier.
it depends on the how that levy was classified before 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
Speaker 16
47:59
levy was not part of the federal levy program at the time the flood occurred and again the i hope you'll ask the
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
48:09
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 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 the 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 to point that out and make sure everybody's aware of those deficiencies. Well
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
48:48
it seems to me that Arkansas
will always be at the mercy of places like Keystone in Oklahoma and when we're 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 we could also look at the breach of that levee in Dardanelle to prevent flooding places like Little Rock does
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
49:25
that does that ever happen I know they do intentional levee breaches along
the mississippi river in places but i don't think any of the levee breaches on the mcarns flood were were designed breaches i think that's just where the 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 core those questions they 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
Speaker 16
50:02
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 uh senator johnson you're recognized
Chair
Unverified
50:15
thank you congressman over here for being here today and and some of these points might be brought up later and and my district is one of those that was spoke about earlier along the black river and it's the same same scenario you're you've got an uphill uh that had had massive flood you know massive rains and and then it runs downhill and uh i mean those all those all
the levees in our area and i'm sure along the little rock and along that system were built at levels in the history you know past the historic levels and you kind of got two uh things that you can do about it you can and i don't know if the corps would address that later is is you can increase those levee the the halves to the current historic level which i hadn't seen done most of the time they in our area they put it back to those previously historic levels but if you're
going to put it back to those previously 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 you know environmental
concerns and and and everything that i mean you can increase your levies which you you have other problems whenever you do that outside the levy system to get the flow back in or or create reliefs and i don't know you know that may be something for the core to do later or talk about whenever they get up here but everything that we've been done is is certified back to the previous historic levels not the current and again i
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
52:18
think the core has to be be flexible and take in
the new data and um 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 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
Speaker 17
53:12
wetlands along the Gulf of Mexico those aren't 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 flood planes 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
Speaker 16
54:40
I recognize Congressman Hill's office? I just again want to say thank you for the opportunity
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
54:46
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 other states across the country, we should really pay more attention to the abundant water that we have and do a better
job of taking care of it, of making sure we have adequate water for irrigation purposes, adequate water for industry, and for potable water 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 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 uh please let us know because uh 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 you for the emphasis the governor's
Speaker 6
56:12
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 is, 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 the statement.
Speaker 98
56:43
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 would like to address the concerns raised by Senator Chesterfield and any questions that anybody may have 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 helped 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 or 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 today is there anything else or any questions for I see one question here number 46 I don't know if that's Senator T but it is it's his cousin
Speaker 106
1:00:30
All right. It's Senator Teague's cousin. All right.
Thank you so much. I'm sorry about that, Senator. We've got confusion on the mics. It's
okay. Go ahead. It is I who changed, not you. Go ahead. I am concerned because I know that in the past, the congressman's office
has been very responsive. And so I am disappointed in calling the national office and not getting a response. Okay. 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 112
1:01:34
you. Mr. Chair. Yeah, absolutely I would definitely be I've definitely look into it
Speaker 98
1:01:38
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
Speaker 114
1:02:02
matter and Eddie Armstrong why and he doesn't live in
Speaker 115
1:02:09
the city oh well he was he he approached us regarding those those neighborhoods in
his disorder in the past in the past so y'all reached out to him well
Speaker 98
1:02:22
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 um i would ask them if you if anybody needs shelter if anybody needs to be evacuated if you know the residents need
Speaker 115
1:02:57
sandbags so i do want to assure you that we we definitely our office is working that is so frustrating excuse me mr chair that's just
Speaker 118
1:03:05
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 to talk so well we'll just
let that slew of 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. Yeah, 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. And I
Speaker 115
1:03:37
just wanted to say, like, when he was representative, our office worked with
him. Just wanted to clarify. 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's 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
Speaker 131
1:04:37
have the floor, sir. Thank you, sir. Good morning. Tina Owens, Deputy Director for
Speaker 133
1:04:43
the Department of Emergency Management. Thank you. Good morning, Scott Bass, Responsive 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 you get to
Speaker 137
1:04:54
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 downriver that were able to get on that call and hear what was taking place up
river and that could have helped them to prepare for when the crest reach their area so again I can't express enough my appreciation to all of our state agencies and also our federal partners we had FEMA national 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 assistant assistance for our homeowners and there was 13 counties that were designated for individual assistance arkansas conway crawford dashay faulkner jefferson lincoln logan perry pope pulaski sebastian and yale counties for individual assistance we had 1772 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 percent 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 million 994 thousand for business economy injury 55 loan applications in process five loans have been approved totaling two hundred and thirty nine thousand three hundred dollars total sba loans 12 million two hundred and thirty three thousand three hundred 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 dashay 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 in 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 6, and by June 8, 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 President
Trump's administration for that, because it was very quick. It was, and I appreciate Governor
Speaker 137
1:12:20
Hutchinson. Throughout this event, we stayed in constant contact, and every time I called and passed on a request from our locals, any resource that was needed, 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 it was 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 if 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 estimate maybe on the damage uh can
Speaker 145
1:13:03
it's got what 50 what's the the total estimate that um about 40 million about 40 million and that's still
a little bit unknown until it is and we're in the
Speaker 147
1:13:16
recovery process and the recovery process will go on for for
many months yeah okay i do have um senator chesterfield i believe here again i'll recognize her for
a question thank you mr chair I am 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? Yes, I will try to. You federal or state? We're state. We're state, yes, ma'am. Were you the ones over in North Little Rock assessing damage?
Speaker 137
1:14:05
We assess with our federal partners, 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. that they went into people's homes that were obviously damaged and yet assessed that they didn't need any financial
Speaker 137
1:14:37
assistance at all from FEMA help me with that okay I'm I am not sure Scott can you take us through the through
Speaker 134
1:14:44
the 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 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
give them anything is that what you're saying their
Speaker 134
1:15:22
insurance will be assessed towards their application and the damage assessment that
they have and you only have one person going in there is no second shot at no
Speaker 134
1:15:32
second bite at the apple well there are appeal processes that the applicants
can go through well let me tell you what concerns me is that many people in my area don't have internet access
and yet this process is is based largely on being able to upload stuff and do all of that what is the other process that allows these people
Speaker 134
1:15:52
who don't have that access so 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 will can help them with uploading all that information and making copies for them okay so they need to go
back if they were turned down and try it again they will help with their appeal process
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
1:16:22
okay and what is the last day i believe it's saturday but i'll look i'll look
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 thank you chairman i
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
1:16:36
just want 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
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
1:16:49
thank you for 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 form for clarification he's talking about the flood insurance aspect
Speaker 137
1:17:31
of accreditation right okay yeah we don't we don't handle the national flood insurance program so that may be a better
Speaker 166
1:17:37
question for natural resource commission on on that as far as the insurance program.
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
1:17:45
Okay, you do provide mapping of high-risk flood areas. Are you not responsible for that? No. No, that's
Speaker 166
1:17:56
going to be the Natural Resource Commission that takes care of the National Flood Insurance Program. They're over
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
1:18:03
that. Well, according to the 2009 legislative audit report, it says those responsibilities lie with of FEMA. Unless I'm reading this wrong.
Speaker 134
1:18:16
Yeah, FEMA is responsible for the National Flood Insurance Program, but they coordinate that through the Arkansas Natural Resource Commission for the state
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
1:18:24
office. And the mapping of high-risk flood areas also is included in it? Okay. Yes.
Speaker 180
1:18:30
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.
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 Hollins, 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 to be back here in front of
Speaker 186
1:19:29
thank the governor 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 senator 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 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 previously passed by you, Senator Rapert, 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 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 What the governor has tasked us with is getting better cooperation with the Corps of Engineers, and this process is going to do that. If we don't get the answers we need, 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 hoe then 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 court 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 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. They protect, I think, around 2 million acres of farmland in that area. So that's our challenge, and Senator, 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 there's a
Speaker 189
1:25:05
lot more questions than we have answers to yet well i 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 parry 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 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 flood gates
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 federally certified levy. Had they not had help from your department and been federally certified, they would not qualify for the 80% now funding on the rebuild. So thank you for that. Senator Stubberfield has something. Thank you, Bruce.
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
1:26:17
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 levy
Speaker 186
1:26:29
system we can provide assistance to the levies if levy boards the levy districts if they reach out to us
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
1:26:36
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 that would give you the authority that senator that's something for the legislature
Speaker 186
1:27:03
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 conversations 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 as a model for the white river the
Speaker 189
1:27:37
red river the black river all the other rivers that we've talked about here here today isn't it true we don't have a
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
1:27:45
a number or location of the total number of levies in the state of arkansas that's that's correct we
Speaker 186
1:27:51
don't we don't know what we don't know right now and as you know on the task force we're trying to we're trying to figure that out we're working
with our partners association of counties is going to be critical in helping navigate through that there's some of those reports that they have and and we 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 what they
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
1:28:40
need for proper maintenance of that levy 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 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 in 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 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 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
Senator Ricky Hill
Unverified
1:31:08
and who pays it and how do we collect it off the ones that we do not know that they exist well that it's different in a lot of
Speaker 186
1:31:19
situations in uh 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 1,000 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
1:32:37
who's collecting and this is NRCS collecting it, or is the county collecting it, or who? It's
Speaker 194
1:32:42
county. It's on the county level. The county clerks, I believe, collect those assessments.
Okay, thank you. Thank you, Senator Hill. I have number 81. I'm told it's Representative
Representative Vivian Flowers
Unverified
1:32:54
Flowers. I hope so. Correct. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
So I appreciate the information, and I'm trying to understand, And 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 to
Speaker 186
1:33:40
borrow some money from us, they would have to have a way to pay it back. They would have to have some sort of an assessment 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 what they need to do, then that would be appropriate. I'm not sure if that answers
Representative Vivian Flowers
Unverified
1:34:05
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 don't, 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
Speaker 186
1:35:11
district, et cetera? No, we don't have 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
Speaker 189
1:35:36
now though 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 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 the 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
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
1:36:40
up next thank you mr chairman um and thank you mr chairman for
your foresight two three years ago that may have saved our bacon this time especially in what was done in perry county uh senator thank you for coming the work you're doing i think you're you're bringing forth some things that it might be more uh 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 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 might fall under a category of not being, you know, 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, the court says $281,800, which is 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 he just went in and did it. There was not necessarily a mechanism to allow that. he just kind of stuck his neck out with the folks that had 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 on that? You're
Speaker 186
1:39:35
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 move
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
1:40:12
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 add to
Speaker 186
1:40:47
go along with that if everybody here has a district we represent and everybody here usually has some sort of river or levee or something in their districts if their 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 can give it two or three minutes if anybody has some ideas that maybe we haven't considered will please
bring them forward. Senator Holland, on all the comments Senator Johnson said, you're 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, and 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 long term. So thank you for what you're doing and your service.
I'm going to get to the next presenter and we'll see you at the meeting this afternoon. Thank you, sir All right next on the list and we do have Six in the hoppers, so we'll we're going to have 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
Speaker 222
1:43:05
I'm John Payne, the Deputy Adjutant General for the Arkansas National
Guard. Thank you, sir. Scott Stanger, Chief of Staff,
Department of the 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 you've made. Well, we certainly appreciate that. And, sir, I'm prepared with
Speaker 223
1:43:22
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 to it certainly one of the most valuable relationships
Speaker 223
1:43:39
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 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
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 floodwaters 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 Black Hawk 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 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 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 is that cost being shared or is that a separate cost for the state Scott you want to get that
Speaker 226
1:45:50
it initially comes from the state we spent
a total of 1.21 million dollars 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 and 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 to respond.
Yes, 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 committee it's good to
Speaker 230
1:46:51
be here um i guess i can say good morning still for just a little bit right
um we do have as usual uh some slides that we put together kind of to walk you through our response uh 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 the just
Speaker 230
1:47:30
to begin so right that is correct so during the entire 28-day event that went from may the 23rd 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 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 toads 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 ended up being a community event people coming out and 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 and tell 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 7 between russellville and dardanelle this is one that we had monitored
a lot and were actually able to do some work with russellville with dardanelle with several of our crews and sandbagged 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 and 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 levy 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 7. highway 155 that's probably the most visual visually impacted of all of our highways senator stubblefield mentioned this one earlier
uh you know you can see on the bottom right where the highway abruptly ends because of a big pond of water that formed and that was a result of the breach of the dardanelle levy at holla bin the depth of this pond varies but we know at its deepest point it's 40 feet deep uh 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 it'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 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 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 that one open highway 105 in pope county near lake atkins is a is a pretty interesting scenario the road actually go the highway goes through the levee and the idea is that when the levy 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 the road then highway 60 at toad suck that's been mentioned
several times 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 gone 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 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 so it's it's not the bridge it's the approach to the bridge 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 uh the river crossing here in the little rock area because of the flooding i think everyone worked really well with with adem we had uh 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 at ADEM the whole time to help handle the media help handle social media help graphic design and things of that nature so we were involved with ADEM the whole time
also in addition we started a traveler information call center in our 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 i-40 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 i drive 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're 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 work 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 left to 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 Deshaies counties that will get some more extensive surface repair work in the coming months. so between this event and uh just a couple of weeks ago 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 uh for all these different events but to talk about the issue of 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 uh five significant multi-day events uh 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 flood if it rained about an inch it seemed like uh 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 a few years ago in 2011 we had to close interstate 40 because the 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 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 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 in north central and northwest arkansas that we're trying to address also so with that mr chairman i'll be happy to take any
Speaker 237
2:03:39
questions thank you director bennett do you know if if all of the
financial impact that you just begin to share is in the number that director gary has i don't know if he wants to no sir it's it's an addition see that's yes that's what i
thought yes it's it's additional yeah so you're quickly approaching 100 million dollars just
Speaker 230
2:04:03
in what you've been hearing all this right and 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 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 we'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 doctor's visits there 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 there are
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 morrowton you know and it had not been for the
heroic efforts of judge 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 going to come from how's it going to get them so i know for 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 and 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 that 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 of these impacts so that we really have a good understanding with that representative meeks your first step sir thank you i'm way over
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
2:07:37
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 a long time it would seem on that so i just just curious about your your
Speaker 230
2:08:06
thoughts on that well that's that's one reason we're using rock and not dirt to 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 away and things like that so the most expeditious thing that we can do and especially with the with the very low traffic volumes in that area uh is repair what's there
Speaker 73
2:08:34
now okay all right thank you yes thank you uh senator stubblefield and then representative bentley will be after
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
2:08:41
him thank you mr chairman uh scott on
the uh on the breach of the levee there south of dardanelle uh there's been a suggestion a recommendation and 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
Speaker 230
2:09:19
the benefits of that? From the highway standpoint, not many really.
can you explain that well the biggest benefit is is and the and the most expeditious and the least costly is going to be to to repair the highway where it is uh the the levee 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 that is that is a simple way to look at it but also when you have a highway on top of a levee uh 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 so and that's what the issue is has there been a cost 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 Bennett first on the we
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
2:10:39
saw a number of times it was 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 though Jason called me, your supervisor, that we were going to close it, they worked to make sure that it stayed open because it was vital to the folks there in Yale County.
Have you considered purchasing Tiger Dams to keep those highways open instead of just using sandbags? I saw those for the first time at Walmart this time to keep that Walmart store open. But have you considered to purchase those since they can be reused along the
Speaker 230
2:11:14
highways? We haven't. We actually experimented with something similar to that on Highway 300 near Pinnacle Mountain, and they really didn't work the way that we thought they were going to work. So, no, 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
2:11:34
quick question. Follow this, okay, Chairman, on Highway 105 there and Atkins also in my district, where the highway actually cuts out the levy there. I know that we worked to make sure that that was stayed, a little controversy there to make sure that 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 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 that.
Speaker 238
2:12:09
well we can and that would be something that would be a levy district's responsibility i mean the way it was built it
Speaker 230
2:12:15
was built you're really just to be 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 floodgates that you could close uh then yeah i mean we could work
Speaker 263
2:12:28
with them but it would be something that that they would be responsible for funding well the levy district didn't take
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
2:12:35
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 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 core 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 Valines, I'll let you start, and
if you'll just go ahead and introduce all
Speaker 271
2:13:53
of yourselves, then we'll let you begin. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Chris Valines, the director at the Association of Arkansas Counties. To my immediate right is Judge Jimmy Hart from 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 Rapert, as you well know 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 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 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
Speaker 275
2:17:11
thank you chairs appreciate you very much for the 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 lines 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 get
them 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 uh but my you know my biggest
concern is what we just actually witnessed i had an engineer's magazine the other day and a gentleman highly recognized engineer and he said there's a 0.02 percent chance this happened again but that 0.02 percent chance could happen again next year this fall it's winter you know it's there and i mean we know what we're dealing with uh you know and we're downstream you know we got to face the fact of that and i would encourage i would say this i've had the pleasure of working with intermodal authority dr bradley 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 Privy to that information when this whole event went on and can't say enough for director Gary AJ's got if 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
Speaker 274
2:19:12
there. I know 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 a 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. I'll show it to you Created in 19 and 29 County Court I think we've got eight levy districts in our county but the things that we're going to work on going back
Speaker 275
2:19:52
to the task force and what you're talking
Speaker 274
2:19:55
about is your system's just as good as your weakest link. 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. It's like, you know, 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 and 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 this thing these things were created in 29 levy systems conway county were built in 1951 a lot of it was japanese and german prisoners that helped built it pretty pretty good builders
i'll have to admit it's a really good foundation of a system but it's like 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 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 the cereal commercial give it to Mikey he'll eat anything but we've given it to people that
But 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 levee. There's not one way they're going to fix that. It's going to take somebody, some state and federal help. When you have a levee top, one thing you can do, raise the levee. Build it up, fortify it. 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've seen on the we were lucky to be able to save after we spent three hundred and $175,000 building a cofferdam and thank God for Lentz construction with a 40-yard off-road haul truck and City of Marlton with a 30-yard off-road haul truck and a road department and Lentz sand and gravel and mobley contractors and 145 pieces of the 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 gonna 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 the AEDC done Probably four or five years ago. There's about 1500 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 If we don't, I'm not sure Mobley contractors are going to have enough sheet piling to do what we've done.
Judge, your comments are true. 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. I watched your heroic measures because you were the only outlet I could get to get back around the
north side And you all did yeoman's work, and I know Representative Beck was involved in a lot of that. It was
Speaker 275
2:24:51
him and Senator Johnson were right there checking us out,
Speaker 274
2:24:54
and the lieutenant governor was there and the attorney general, and we really appreciate everybody's concern. And like I
Speaker 275
2:25:00
said, it was just a good Lord shined on us because we were very blessed to have a lot of some significant resources that we could mobilize in a very big hurry. It was a – we had a good
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
2:25:16
save. Senator. Senator. 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 a no-brainer
Speaker 274
2:25:36
do that why would you not right i mean i'm gonna say it again your system's just as good your weakest link you've got to identify when those levy districts, multiple levy districts, and a contiguous levy, that's just foolish. And I'm going to say, 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 you know you don't until something like this happens now is a 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 who you are
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
2:26:31
you need to be paying well this is something that tennessee recognized some time ago and they they consolidated a lot
Speaker 286
2:26:36
their levy boards years ago also did you say that you would raise the heights
Speaker 274
2:26:43
of the levees well i'm going to say something here we go and i it's kind of i go back this this this started a long
Speaker 275
2:26:49
time ago and i'll never forget this and i apologize but i got to tell this story uh i never will
Speaker 274
2:26:56
forget went to meeting army corps of engineers uh dardanelle down over your way and it was a gentleman there it was a city engineer for the city of van buren now this is a true story and he's 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, 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 national flood insurance program. That's right. The gentleman, Van Buren, said they spent $275,000 to take and certify their levy.
And when they hired an engineering firm, he was an own staff engineer, went that gun, and guess what they found out? Their
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
2:27:53
levy 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 levies due to putting more pressure on other spots down or down behind the levee? It comes. It's
Speaker 274
2:28:09
real simple, I'm going to say, and that's what we're working on. We've got some levees that were in good standing.
It's like the pipe situation, 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. 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 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 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 late may when this happened late may june and thank god for all that weeds and grass that that natural filter fabric was on the levee itself because it provided a massive amount of cover natural cover for you know that that levee levee we had the problem with was an intrusion after the levee the water went down
about 12 or 13 feet and what happened we got to i'm trying to think of the word for it eddie 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 our road department is 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 to really innovative and I'm gonna be ugly cheap ways of fixing things and honestly when you get on probably gonna have a better where you make that repair at you know I'm a big believer in you know unclassified feel good old black shell it's got a lot of clay contents 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 a half two foot of shell six inches of class 7 SB 2 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 problem i don't believe i heard
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
2:30:45
you uh when you said how many culverts are along the river did you ever give a number let me give you
Speaker 275
2:30:51
an example in levy district number i think it's uh oh one
Speaker 274
2:30:56
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 a quite a bit but i asked him said i asked army of course how many more of those pipes are in that section of levy it's roughly four four and a half mile long 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 are setting on us a ticking time bomb and it's not just in Conway County judge it's there the Perry
County District as I recall it was 60 or 70 years ago when they put in those floodgates 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 sandra i'm gonna be ugly if i can take a just personal hey i love your candor man we get things done when you talk this way uh
Speaker 274
2:31:56
the army corps done a good job and they built them they built a great structure and handed off some 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 going to 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 i've got my old 15 year old f 7.3 liter f 250 truck that i love but you still got to take and change the oil and you got to put a set of tires on it every now and then you know and 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 gonna 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 look at people that also have a very major vested interest you know and i'm going to give you an
example it's like i've told and 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 my paper mill is 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 they 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 i the direct jobs are important but all them log trucks from 10 counties that haul logs into that paper mill over there for everybody's livelihood and creates commerce and income for this for the county state of arkansas for the for everybody i'm going to say this this likely 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 it's we're going to announce the prevention's
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 looks like judge situation here hey i'm gonna be ugly i know what you're talking about i understand what director bennett's saying but it still doesn't change the fact water levels don't lie he didn't wind up situation like i did which scares you know scares me to death because i know i was a bunch more like me but he wound up with the topping hey if you top a levy there's not one way to fix that right and that's raising
well thank you for your comments i want to move on and uh judge if you uh take it up from here Judge Thone,
Speaker 300
2:34:50
I believe. I'm Mark Thone from Yale County. Jimmy's kind of hit on a lot of this, but one of the things I hope I am, I do appreciate the governor for putting me on the task force. One of the things I hope that does come out of this is that we have some rule and law changes, and they'll probably have to come through you folks,
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, any time we do something like that, that's an illegal exaction. Is that the proper word? It could be. It could be an illegal exaction because that's road money. And they say, well, you can appropriate some money through the Quorum Corps 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 these folks, there could be a serious problem with us in legalities dealing with working on a levy unless it's under the direct emergency situation. And I don't, you know, I mean, I probably did things that was illegal, but I don't care, I'd do them again. But, and I appreciate Christopher Lyons' comments about saying we're heroes and all this stuff. You know, it's hard to feel like a hero when everybody you grew up with has lost everything they got. Everything's gone.
There's a young man sitting back here. I say young because you're younger than me. He lost his entire farming operation. It's, you know, 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. 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. So we're just like Jimmy. We've got pipes.
There's no telling how many pipes are on Dardanelle Cardin Bottom Levee District. There's a 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 instead of 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 followed 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 there's uh two places there on that levy it's the same way where the levy the highway cuts through the levy in the same situation but the water didn't get to that point but uh when that they come the highway department come to the levy board and wanted to put the road on top of the levy to save money because they were going to have to build up the inside of the levy so much
for the highway to be down there or go out across the bean fields and the farmer's fields and buy access and you know right away and all that so we signed to allow the uh highway department to put the highway on top of the levee for 3 500 feet there but yet now we don't seem to be remember that but uh you know that seems to be a way instead of having two separate projects we need to have one and i'll quit rambling because i'm gonna get
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
2:40:31
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
Speaker 300
2:40:41
well you know they say they can't really build the highway back to the levees 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 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 of having two separate projects i agree
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
2:41:15
i looked at the hole i agree all right any uh judge stone are you
Speaker 300
2:41:21
finished yes let's see questions i'll ask any questions i'll answer any questions the worst night of my life so uh that uh about one o'clock in the morning when it's finally the it finally
eat the levy 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 Rayford. 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 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
Speaker 271
2:43:20
be in place to let money flow. That needs 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 Raypert'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 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 still not getting reports filed from those levy districts, 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.
Speaker 273
2:44:50
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 without it being in proper order so anything else further here or anything more you'd like to say we've got
a couple folks And I appreciate everybody's state on this, but we're going to finish, and I wanted you to have a little time to eat before your next meeting.
Speaker 306
2:45:52
If I can, 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
Speaker 307
2:46:07
road funding being used on public roads and bridges. Another 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 levees. And if you ever go down to where Robert Moore's from, and the reason the Mississippi River levees 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've got is boils. So if you ever go up and down the Mississippi River down at Deshaies County, highway commissioner former speaker robert moore it's got a nice road on it and that's for tourism
and levy uh solidarity and all that so anyway uh the consolidation issue judge hart touched on it what i think is going to happen certain counties will pursue this they'll have multiple uh 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 some 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,
Speaker 306
2:48:13
but yet they can't even require a report. So that's how ridiculous that law is. I
Speaker 307
2:48:23
would make a final point. I would beg y'all, consider either a consultant or an ANRC employee. 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 Raper, you and Mr. Beck's Act 7 during the special third extraordinary session of 2016 made it explicit that we send those reports to ANRC. ANRC can't do anything with them. They have to just file them. and
Speaker 306
2:49:14
it's a shame it's uh we've got an infrastructure that no can i mean we're
counties don't know what the status is i want to interject 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 So, I mean, they are gathering the information. It's just that they can't demand anything of them. They do have,
Speaker 307
2:49:46
they're gathering info, but they can't, there's not much they can do with it in the sense they literally, well, they just have to file them.
There's something y'all need to embed in this critical infrastructure. Only God knows how many levee districts are out there in Arkansas. Okay? Only God. Because there's humps of dirt. People died. There's something filed in the courthouse. What Adam deals with and what these guys deal with aren't the 1,500 levy district that's on an obscure eddy of Newton County or something, to use Newton County.
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
Speaker 306
2:50:51
my levy up or don't. What y'all are really dealing with, the scope of what you're dealing with is 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 levies, the St. Francis Levy 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 levy districts out there that you could care less if they file a report because they're on a very small river that if they're breaches, if they're levy breaches, it floods their property, and that's their problem.
Speaker 307
2:51:28
You should be concerned, like Adam is and 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 just worried about the critical infrastructure. So
I just want to make that point. And I agree with everything you've 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 1 o'clock for sure. I was hoping for 1230, but it's been great testimony and is being recorded, and so will definitely be looked at. We 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 um and booth if you don't mind i'm gonna go ahead and have you come up mr hayes 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 and appreciate all of you because it has gone into the lunch hour here mr hayes if you would state
your name for for the record, and you know where we're at in time. I do, and I'm going to be abundantly quick.
Speaker 312
2:52:33
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, we're already at 23 million dollars in damages to buildings and structures and that does not include roads bridges culverts or any other 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 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 100 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 it 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 what you've seen today this
dialogue between these many agencies it's pretty clear that the levy boards not unlike improvement districts and i don't know if representative fight 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 of them 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 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 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. Well, 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 road.
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 levy 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. So thank you for being here. They did
Speaker 312
2:55:44
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 with the Insurance Department. And I know you've got comments that have
Speaker 316
2:56:06
been submitted in writing as well. Thank you, Senator Apert. Booth Rand 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
Speaker 316
2:59:08
about it. And I asked the 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
Speaker 316
3:00:40
have a conversation 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 and with that you've
Speaker 321
3:02:03
got the floor thank you mr. chairman I'm just for introductions. I'm Chris Roark. I'm the executive officer for the Little Rock District Corps of Engineers. All
Speaker 325
3:02:14
right. And I'm Craig Pierce. I'm the deputy district engineer for the district. All
Speaker 326
3:02:20
right. I'm Nathaniel Keene. I'm the chief of water management for
the district. Elmo Webb, the levee 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 chairman
Speaker 321
3:02:38
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 craig's going to do that for us okay are the slides available
Speaker 331
3:02:46
i think we've got them okay got them
Speaker 336
3:02:58
there okay now i 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. Right, I just feel like a couple of them are going to take a few minutes. So we'll go
Speaker 339
3:03:16
ahead and do that. And if you want to just jump in and start asking questions, let's just do it. I think you hit the important information and
Speaker 336
3:03:26
then we'll go from there. Okay. First of all, I'd like to say that we really appreciate being invited. The statewide effort at every level right now, you know, 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 during the flood watching the response and just the leaders, 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 you know 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 you know where the water release decisions were made so we tulsa little rock vicksburg memphis You know our role in this we have a variety of roles so during the response We were we did a lot to try to communicate what was going to happen We put the inundation map out there that ended up being a really useful tool I think many of you might have might have seen that and your citizens and and
Government entities use that try to figure out where where flooding might have occurred um obviously we're out there with sandbag machines we were getting equipment we had uh people in in the uh with adam liaison uh folks with with adam stationed with them we had we had folks from the national guard in our emergency operations center um so you know a lot of effort with the response itself with the recovery our major roles are you know we're 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 then 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're we feel honored to be asked to participate in the levy task 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. We've
Speaker 336
3:06:20
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. Again, 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 are, you're alive. Okay. So we're tracking back up.
Yeah, so 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 picture. A lot of flood storage, a lot of capability to minimize flood impacts within this system. And those lakes, they all work together to try 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 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 a congressional, it's based on our congressional authorization, that that plan at each reservoir maybe Keystone focuses on Tulsa or maybe, you know, 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. The next slide is really a depiction of the rain event. So on the left side, this is inches of rain and you can see the big pink circle right there 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 that purple and in some pink kind of color there that indicates that that the the precipitation was
anywhere from 400 to 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
Speaker 345
3:10:39
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 you exactly exactly okay so the next
Speaker 336
3:10:50
slide I hesitated to put this in here but the purpose of this is to give you an idea 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 we saw on 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 level.
So a lot of water. We're passing, 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, we know you had a question about the flow at Dardanelle, at peak flow and when 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 this is Dardanelle. So you can see, what this is, this hydrograph, basically just shows the flows at different days, okay? And so the 1st of May, we're releasing, Basically, we are releasing, the flow at Van Buren is around 60,000. That equates to 60,000, 70,000 at Dardanelle. And then, you know, then we bump it up to our 150,000.
We're trying to maintain that. And then by the 23rd of May, like we just saw in that last slide, we were up at 85% of storage. And then we got to the maximum of our, the reservoirs can hold. and that's when the that's when the the flows bumped up so high um the peak flow for um you know when the the dardanelle levy broke was um in the 550 range do you do you have the exact number we'll look at that we'll look that up real quick um and then and so we 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 public safety and preventing a catastrophic failure.
Speaker 346
3:14:29
Next slide. I was going to jump into levees real quick.
Speaker 336
3:14:40
I don't want to go through this too much. I think you all have probably had access to some of the state's statistics. But, you know, based on our database, there's 98 levies in the system. 60 of them are in an acceptable to minimally acceptable category, which would be eligible for federal funding. And then, you know, 38, a lot of them are in unacceptable conditions. condition so this is just data as you and the task force think about the situation of levies
in the state so on the river itself 38 levies 25 of them acceptable minimally acceptable and 13 unacceptable and actually you know the number of acceptable levies which
Speaker 346
3:15:23
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 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 other south does this when you say minimally acceptable or unacceptable are you including those kind of levies that are south of that conway levy which really i'm told they're not being observed so elmo those are some of the
Speaker 348
3:16:13
levies that we are not aware of and that's what we
will be talking about in the task force meeting today about the inventory review that okay 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 are but you're saying there's just been no inventory of those exactly right now that the uh
Speaker 348
3:16:44
that fountain accounting which 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 where
i was getting at because it has been again they have had some maintenance on it because frankly that 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 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 it's okay all all
Speaker 335
3:17:44
right thank you okay um the next slide uh
Speaker 336
3:17:47
and this just gives you an idea of so the the levies
along the river that were active in the program that had been maintained they 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 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 Two really weren't impacted 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 levee boards themselves. Six of them had significant damages that could be eligible for federal repair. We're almost finished with the reports. You can see we've got some costs already in there, total of $7.6 million 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 gonna happen for all six. We're just waiting on two, the economics to be completed for the two there in yellow that you see on the far right column. Very close, we will be submitting that forward once we get them completed. We're way ahead of the curve on this and we'll be trying to compete for funding to move into design and
Speaker 346
3:19:52
perhaps construction later to do the repairs.
Okay, and so to that point, many of these areas are completely unprotected now because of the damage that's 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 336
3:20:13
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 that funding right now. When you say competition,
Is that a decision within the Corps about what happens first, or is that a decision of the funding
Speaker 336
3:20:35
from Congress to you? So I believe the funding pots that the Corps of Engineers is working on are supplemental funding bills that have been passed recently. And so one has been passed already 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 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? So I think as
Speaker 336
3:21:10
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. I believe there's a supplemental bill that Congress is working on based
Speaker 346
3:21:24
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, 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
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
3:21:53
stubble does thank you i just want to ask you is this funding based on priority or is it based on first come first serve
Speaker 335
3:21:59
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
Speaker 336
3:22:06
take would be that it's going to be on priority but those but some of the decisions have already been made before our flooding even happened so if you if you understand what i'm saying but there was
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
3:22:17
a supplemental bill passed i had read uh recently yes yes or funds that 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 321
3:22:41
can tell you sir that if that is the case and again craig mentioned we don't know 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
3:23:00
me what the budget of the core is in arkansas
so our regular i'm going to hold up just a minute did you i want you to repeat that so everybody gets that real
Speaker 321
3:23:19
clear you said that if it's based on priorities then arkansas river would be last it could be sir i mean i'm just talking about what you know what's what the damage that that has occurred on the missouri river right um you know it's it's much greater damage in terms of probably dollar amounts right um so if that is the way that it's racked and stacked
then the priorities might be a little bit lower i you know
i tell you i don't believe i'm saying this but i sure wish senator
chesterfield was here yeah right i'm gonna tell her what you said we'll be back but uh but uh
Speaker 336
3:23:56
but typically sir i think one thing to consider is that that um from a priority standpoint one way to classify priority of levies is the population at risk and i
totally get that and i totally understand but but uh you know this is this is important information
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
3:24:09
oh that's that's basically all i had to say i was just curious about the funding and how it was going to be distributed based on but i understand and i understand the missouri river situation also the mississippi river
uh from mississippi all the way through louisiana been major major but i was wondering how they the that distribution process went about whether it
Speaker 336
3:24:36
was priority or first i can't tell you your your um federal congressional
reps are all over this and and they you know we had it we had a repair we had to do um in randolph county around pocahontas that we that we finished up last year and they were instrumental in making sure that wasn't overlooked well and i'm
Speaker 73
3:24:53
glad to hear they're all over it and we hope
they continue to be and i want to let you finish up we got a couple actually three questions in the pipe here for you is there anything more on the the actual report on this page just think it's your last one it's my last one i'm ready for questions uh what 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 to the level that it was correct and so the 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
Speaker 348
3:25:45
them to do 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 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
Speaker 348
3:26:18
am not sure but i did that for um for mr buns when when
you 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're recognized then we've got four questions waiting on you uh you made a comment
Senator Ricky Hill
Unverified
3:27:08
just a 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 2017 right
Speaker 321
3:27:16
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 all ran together
Senator Ricky Hill
Unverified
3:27:25
i'm sorry the flood that uh flood the whole town was
Speaker 336
3:27:31
that the one two years ago so this this is a great story um the pocahontas levy is a great story because that was a defunct levy that did not qualify 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 348
3:28:08
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 record for 2011 was another record event and during that particular time they were 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 were able to go in and make those repairs okay
Senator Ricky Hill
Unverified
3:29:11
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 uh see if we're two years away three years four years or six years kind of what we're looking at because there's
damage uh on the ladies 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
Speaker 336
3:29:42
repair correct the non-federal 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
Speaker 346
3:29:53
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
Speaker 336
3:30:02
of of the construction of the design 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.
Speaker 372
3:30:22
Thank you, Senator Jason. Question for
Representative Johnny Rye
Unverified
3:30:24
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 375
3:30:45
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 recognized, sir. Thank you. Thank you.
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
3:31:09
Mr. Chair, my question is, I was going back and 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 it's my understanding and I may have been told incorrectly that sometimes these reports come back no one gets them, bad addresses whatever reason I just want to make sure
that if you guys are going to be 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 baseline as far as what we
Speaker 336
3:33:00
should be able to hold downstream Okay, and thank you, and that's that's a complex question actually So what what we are doing is that we're we're gonna 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 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 create more capacity. And we really don't have any authority to kind of increase capacity based on, you know, maybe a new pattern
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 in
Speaker 337
3:34:18
order to protect to a higher level so if that answers your question
yeah you I'm sorry you want to go again there represent it back push your
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
3:34:35
mic again yeah there you go you know your life so just say so had your levels been lower have you had you been maintaining a lower level and 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 have done? Could we have 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 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
Speaker 336
3:35:25
plan works right now the way it's defined and i described this prior is that they do flood releases in on
Speaker 346
3:35:32
those tulsa lakes to try to achieve these certain flows at van
Speaker 356
3:35:36
buren pull that mic close to you sir i'm sorry about that um
Speaker 336
3:35:42
at van buren so you know And 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 navigation industry when the flows are too high for them to be able 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
Speaker 385
3:36:42
be able to just punch it and you're 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
Speaker 386
3:36:52
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 i did hear
Speaker 336
3:37:00
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 say that right that's for our whole program which includes the white river lakes and you know all of all every system that we have operations
Speaker 321
3:37:25
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 million to $50 million a year for the operation and
Speaker 323
3:37:40
maintenance of the McClellan-Curr-Arkansas River Navigation System.
Speaker 337
3:37:42
And that includes hydropower and parks and recreation and all of the different missions that we have as navigation. Thank you.
Speaker 385
3:37:52
Mr. Chair, do I have permission for a follow-up here? um then it was said in
Speaker 386
3:37:57
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 levies that we build and if we continue to invest in levies 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 rapert and others have said before on maybe another reservoir in this chain because if not we're only asking for for greater problems in the future and i know that there's money and there's issues but this issue isn't going away and
Speaker 337
3:39:14
this is something that we need to look at So
Speaker 336
3:39:18
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 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
3:40:07
Representative Bentley? thank you chairman I just have one quick question Mary Bentley covered Dardanelle so right there at the at the night when the levee over top there the water level in Lake Dardanelle was 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 mean with the next one 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 375
3:40:56
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
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 if you don't have that try to find that so that we
could get that and i appreciate you being here you know i should have probably said this the first it's very interesting i talked with center stubblefield one of the interesting aspects of this that has not really been fully vetted out i spoke with i will just say someone in 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 a hog farm in 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 um 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
Speaker 393
3:43:34
need that with that thank you so much we're adjourned
Unknown speaker
3:43:47
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Agenda
No agenda available.
Documents
No documents posted.
Speakers
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
Senator Jason Rapert Chair
Unverified
Speaker 9
Speaker 17
Speaker 6
Speaker 16
Senator Linda Chesterfield Chair
Unverified
Representative Jon S. Eubanks
Unverified
Speaker 3
Speaker 56
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
Speaker 66
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
Speaker 21
Speaker 70
Representative Roger D. Lynch
Unverified
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
Chair
Unverified
Speaker 98
Speaker 106
Speaker 112
Speaker 114
Speaker 115
Speaker 118
Speaker 131
Speaker 133
Speaker 137
Speaker 145
Speaker 147
Speaker 134
Speaker 166
Speaker 180
Speaker 184
Speaker 186
Speaker 189
Senator Ricky Hill
Unverified
Speaker 194
Representative Vivian Flowers
Unverified
Speaker 211
Speaker 222
Speaker 223
Speaker 226
Speaker 230
Speaker 237
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
Speaker 73
Speaker 238
Speaker 263
Speaker 271
Speaker 275
Speaker 274
Speaker 286
Speaker 300
Speaker 298
Speaker 273
Speaker 306
Speaker 307
Speaker 312
Speaker 316
Speaker 321
Speaker 325
Speaker 326
Speaker 331
Speaker 336
Speaker 339
Speaker 345
Speaker 346
Speaker 348
Speaker 335
Speaker 372
Representative Johnny Rye
Unverified
Speaker 375
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
Speaker 337
Speaker 356
Speaker 385
Speaker 386
Speaker 323
Speaker 319
Speaker 393