Engineers busy analyzing levees for recertification
by LAREIGN WARD, Press Argus-Courier Staff Thursday, September 4, 2008 10:17 AM CDT
Engineers have been at work analyzing the Arkansas River levees for about a month in hopes of getting as close as possible to the April deadline for recertification, Van Buren Mayor Bob Freeman said Thursday.
Freeman and other local officials met with engineering firm Freeze and Nichols Inc. Tuesday.
"They just basically went over the schedule of what they plan on doing," Freeman said. "They've already started their survey work."
He said engineers have begun drilling down into the levees to check for soil stability.
"The initial schedule, they hoped to have the reports, the draft reports, done by the first of the year, but that's assuming there's no slippage in schedule," Freeman said. "They will give us updates as they go through. ... I'd say best case first of the year, but probably more realistically sometime in January we'll have a report in hand."
The levee protects Industrial Park and other areas of town from floodwaters. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is requiring the levees to be recertified by April 2009. If they aren't, the area surrounded by the levee could be reclassified as a flood zone, forcing property owners to either buy costly flood insurance or leave the area.
Freeman, along with County Judge John Hall and others, have criticized FEMA for having a poorly defined recertification plan with a near-impossible deadline. U.S. Rep. John Boozman and other representatives are working to convince Congress to extend the deadline based on Crawford County's good faith effort to complete the work.
While Freeman said analytical work should be done by early next year, he doubted it would be possible to repair any deficiencies by April.
"Best case scenario, we have no deficiencies, but you have to anticipate there's probably going to be something we have to take care of," the mayor said.
The schedule calls for most of the field work to be done by the end of November, with work on a report starting immediately afterward.
"And as the data is coming in, they'll be doing their analytical work," Freeman said. He said he hoped by October "we'll start getting some feedback of what we're facing."
The county is responsible for the inspection of 21 miles of the 22.5-mile levee system, while Van Buren must take care of the remaining portion. Officials have previously said the county and city are farther along in the recertification process than perhaps any other community in the United States.
"We're one of the few that are at least moving forward to find out what we've got," Freeman said. "We can't just sit back. What comes will come, and we've got to know the answer."
