By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
Missouri Gov. Mike Parson returns to Atchison County, hearing about repairs to a major Missouri River levee which broke in 2019, flooding a wide swath of northwest Missouri.
Governor Parson recalls seeing the devastation that spring.
“You wondered how in the world are we going to put all the pieces back together? And, more importantly, how are you going to prevent it from happening in the future?” Parson tells reporters after visiting with local officials as well as officials with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at the White Barn Event Center near Rock Port.
Local officials thought they had answers to the questions Parson asked.
But they needed the state’s help.
Officials with the Atchison County Levee District along with local elective officials began pushing for a levee setback. They reasoned moving the levee, officially called L-536 near the Holt-Atchison County line, back would give floodwaters room to pool, taking pressure off the levee. That extra room could make the difference between the levee holding or the levee breaking as it did in 2019, 2011, and 1993.
Parson says members of his administration, especially within the Department of Natural Resources, warmed to the idea. Then, they actively lobbied for it with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and other federal agencies.
The result: a rebuilt levee, set back and ready for the next major Missouri River flood.
“But I do believe this will be the model of the future for a lot of other counties in our state,” Parson says. “We’re going to be able to look at this county in particular and say, when all the pieces fall together you can get some really good things done.”
Parson says the state had to work with the Corps and work with local agencies and landowners to pull it off. First, he needed to get various state agencies to unite behind the project.
“The state has a tremendous amount of resources when we can put all our agencies together and see what’s the best way to move forward,” according to Parson.
It also took work on the local level and the cooperation of farmers who owned the land needed for a setback.
“And saying, okay, what are the obstacles to moving back a levee? I understand the value of land being a farmer myself, but I also know sometimes you have to do the better good for other people as you move forward,” Parson says.
Parson also credits the new cooperation he is seeing from his fellow governors who have seen Missouri River flooding do too much destruction too many times.
“I think also the governors being united with what happened in Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas,” Parson says. “We all knew this was a major project for this river and that we were all going to have to do something. So, again, I think it’s bringing a lot of people to the table that have knowledge (about) how to change things. But, look, there’s a lot of work to be done. This is a great success story today, but this is a big river.”
Parson has been meeting with governors from the three other states, uniting to change the Missouri River levee system, which failed so spectacularly in 2019. He left the meeting in Atchison County for Council Bluffs, Iowa where he met with the governors of the three other states.