(Radio Iowa) – The state is holding a series of town hall meetings to discuss the condition of Iowa’s levees and other flood mitigation efforts. The meetings are being held by the Office of Levee Safety, within the Iowa Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. Mark Newhall heads the office, which was created by the legislature last year. Newhall says the town halls serve multiple purposes, but most importantly, he says, is to hear from people working and living in and around the levees. “Meet with the levee sponsors, their financial agents, the county emergency managers, and if they’re available — the people living and working behind the levees to get a better understanding of the challenges they’re facing,” Newhall says, “whether it’s a bureaucratic or a financial issue and to get a better read.”

A state study of the levee system in 2021 and 2022 helped identify trouble areas in need of repair along the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. Of the 115 segments assessed, Newhall says nearly 48% were rated unacceptable during U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ inspections.”A levee could either be rated acceptable, minimally acceptable, or unacceptable,” Newhall says, “so the fact that almost half of the levees we looked at were rated as unacceptable caught a lot of people’s attention.” He says the money aspect of the study was also eye-opening. “We dug into their financials over a five-year period from 2017 to 2021,” Newhall says, “and we found that over half of the districts we looked at, their average annual revenues were less than their average annual expenses.”

Newhall says part of the levee improvement program is developing a rating system to better identify the most at-risk areas. He says a program launched last year includes matching funds over the next five years to address maintenance and repairs. “The state of Iowa comes in with a 50% match to the local levee sponsor to help them address issues with their levees,” he says. “The way the program is designed is that we get $5 million annually through gaming revenues.”

Newhall says one advantage to the gaming revenues is that any unused dollars can be rolled over into the following year. The 16 town hall meetings started last month and will run through March. See the full schedule here:

https://homelandsecurity.iowa.gov/levee-safety/