In North Jefferson City, farm fields are under water. Scores of ball games have been canceled. Our airport is closed, along with its restaurant. The Noren Access isn’t close to being accessible. Likewise, the pedestrian bridge is shuttered, and there’s no access for walkers/cyclists to and from the Katy Trail. The Central Missouri Master Gardener’s property is submerged, and so are the community garden plots. Same with the community building and dog park.
It’s easy to look at the flooding and see all the negative consequences.
But if you’ve lived in this community through the 1990s, you might look at the flooding and see something else: a visionary plan that worked.
That side of the river wasn’t always North Jefferson City. It was a community of about 400 people called Cedar City, complete with its own gas station and other businesses.
Jefferson City took in Cedar City in the late 1980s through a consolidation process, after Cedar City officials determined construction of the new, northbound/eastbound bridge over the river was going to eliminate businesses that were key to its revenues.
After the floods of 1993 and 1995, our city leaders made the tough decision to implement a flood buyout program, encouraged by the federal government, and clear homes out of the floodplain on the city’s north side.
Our levee on the north side holds water up to about 30 feet, creating what the federal government called the “500-year floodplain.” That supposedly means each year there’s a statistical chance of one in 500 that the river will top the levee.
It was easy to see that those odds weren’t holding up any more than the levees were in the early ’90s.
Each time the old Cedar City became flooded, the federal government paid for homeowners to rebuild through the National Flood Insurance Program. It wasn’t a wise use of tax money.
The buyout program encouraged flooded-out residents of North Jefferson City to sell their properties to the city, which would then use the land for ball fields, gardens and other “passive uses.”
It was a long and arduous process coordinated by the city’s Law Department, headed by Allen Garner at the time, and the city’s flood buyout program coordinator, Melva Fast.
It took years of wrangling and negotiating and — we can only imagine — mountains of paperwork that involved both city and federal agencies. At the time, some complained the city was twisting homeowners’ arms to sell. No one was forced to sell their homes, but eventually, almost all did.
Ironically, the current flood highlights our success. Our city’s leaders in the ’90s — including the late Mayor Louise Gardner, Mayor Duane Schreimann and the City Council — made a tough decision that wasn’t popular with everyone.
But that decision, and the hard work to implement it, has saved taxpayer money — now and in the future — while preventing a community of 400 from having to rebuild their homes and lives again.
News Tribune