Missouri River Flooding

OPPD officials say the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Station won’t reopen until they’re confident safety issues at the plant are resolved.

Utility leaders met in Washington, D.C., Wednesday with the NRC to update performance issues at the plant. Fort Calhoun Station has been closed since last April. Since then, the NRC has cited OPPD for multiple violations at the plant, including being ill-prepared for a flood. NRC officials say a fire at the plant last June also wasn’t reported within the required time frame.

The leader of the Corps of Engineers’ Omaha District believes the agency is better prepared in the event of flooding this year.

About 70 emergency managers and levee sponsors gathered Tuesday in Omaha for the annual Missouri River flood fight preparedness training. Last year’s Missouri River flooding inundated farms, businesses, and homes in western Iowa for more than three months.

Colonel Robert Ruch, Commander of the Corps’ Omaha District. He says last year’s flood provided some valuable lessons. “We’ve seen what sponsors do, what their closure plans are, and we see where the hiccups are because, you know, we have not had a major flood on this system in a very long time, especially north of the Platte River.”

Western Iowa residents forced out of their homes by Missouri River flooding may have another option for temporary housing.

Iowa Finance Authority spokeswoman Ashley Jared says flood victims can apply for a waiver to live in housing usually restricted by the federal government to low-income families.

Jared says the waiver applies to flood victims in Monona, Harrison, Pottawattamie, Mills, and Fremont counties. People who lived in those counties between May 25th and August first of 2011 can apply for the housing waiver.

Flood victims don’t have to be registered with FEMA to apply for the housing waiver. A list of eligible properties is available at www.iowafinanceauthority.gov/emergencyhousing.

Two more levee repair projects are underway south of Omaha following last summer’s Missouri River flooding.

The Corps of Engineers says a $43,000 contract was awarded for seeding along the levee from Bellevue to Plattsmouth. A $4.7 million repair project is also underway five miles south of Nebraska City.

Brett Budd, chief of the Omaha District’s Systems Restoration Team, says the work south of Nebraska City involves repairing scour holes and installing a seepage berm. He says the entire project will be complete by June first.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says additional storage space will be available in the six Missouri River main stem reservoirs this spring.

During a biweekly conference call Friday, Corps officials discussed conditions going in to the start of the spring runoff season, which begins March first. Jody Farhat, Chief of the Omaha District’s Water Management Division, says plains and mountain snowpack are below this time last year.

Farhat says warmer temperatures and less snow allowed the Corps to release additional water from the reservoirs, freeing up an additional 500,000 acre feet of space.

Meanwhile, 18 levee and other infrastructure repair projects are in the works following last summer’s Missouri River flooding.