A southwest Iowa community impacted by two major flooding events just eight years apart has been awarded critical funding.
Third District Congresswoman Cindy Axne recently announced that Hamburg has been awarded a new $7.9 million grant to fund infrastructure improvements aimed at protecting businesses and neighborhoods at risk of flooding along the Missouri River. The grant announcement was praised Tuesday morning by Senator Chuck Grassley, who says the community was hit twice by flooding in the same decade.
?I have to take you back to the 2011 flood,? Grassley said. ?There was a temporary levee put up to help. The town still got terribly flooded, but it would have been worse without this temporary levee. And then we worked hard so the (US Army Corps of Engineers) would leave that temporary levee in. I think there was something like millions of dollars that had to be expended because the Corps wouldn?t allow them to have it in because presumably it wasn?t up to standards.?
Grassley criticized the Corps for mandating the city to take down the temporary levee following the 2011 event. The community was hit again by Missouri River flooding in March 2019.
?And then, guess what, we have the 2019 flood, and the town is inundated again,? Grassley said. ?If that dike had been there, they still would have had water in town, but not as much. Can you believe it? It?s kind of like if you hit a mule with a 2×4 to get their attention. So, they had to have the 2019 flood to wake the Corps up that this levee ought to be put in and made permanent. That?s what most of the money is about.?
The grant, which was provided by the US Department of Commerce?s Economic Development Administration, is funded through additional funding secured in last year?s federal disaster aid bill. The grant was made possible by the regional planning efforts led by the Southwest Iowa Planning Council (SWIPCO) and is projected to support nearly 350 jobs.
Grassley made his comments in his weekly conference call with farm reporters Tuesday morning.
