By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
Levee repairs along the Missouri River are ongoing and the Army Corps of Engineers has granted its largest contract ever for the Kansas City District to repair and raise the levee protecting St. Joseph as well as Elwood, Wathena, and Rosecrans Memorial Airport.
The contract totals 14-Million dollars. It is the fifth in a series of six contracts to improve flood control in northwest Missouri and northeast Kansas.
Project manager Craig Weltig with the Army Corps of Engineers says the work will raise the levees.
"We have a raise of an average of like one foot on the left bank and a raise up to three and a half feet on the right bank," Weltig tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. "So, the improvements consist of like I said levee raises, under seepage berms including stability berms on the backside, directly on the backside of the levee."
The cost of improvements to the levees will be shared by the federal government and local jurisdictions with the federal government picking up 65-percent of the cost. The rest will be paid by Buchanan County, St. Joseph, and the state of Missouri.
Weltig says the biggest reason for the large contract is the number of materials needed.
"Overall, though, the levee raises on the right bank there adjacent to Elwood, Wathena, and Rosecrans it's roughly one and a half million cubic yards of material that's being moved," Weltig says. "And that's the equivalent to roughly 900 miles of dump trucks back-to-back, if you parked them bumper to bumper."
Weltig says the overall project is aimed at flood prevention and protection for northwest Missouri and northeast Kansas.
"Providing actually increased flood risk reduction, we're $2.3 billion worth of investment that includes residential, commercial, industrial, and of course military with Rosecrans and the support of the Missouri Air National Guard the 139th Airlift Wing," Weltig explains.
The project is set to begin this winter and is designed to be an 18-month long process.