County officials hear about levee, Fresno, floodplain mapping

Hill County officials discussed an update on the levee system and announced a new Montana State University Extension Service central region department head during their monthly meeting Thursday.

Hill County Planner Amy Ferguson said she and the county commissioners attended a meeting at the beginning of the month hosted by the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation about flood plain mapping.

“We are in the process of redoing the floodplain maps since the ones in my office are old, from the ’80s,” she said. “Unfortunately, though, this is quite the process to get flood plain maps updated, so they won’t be done for another two to three years. They are doing it and looking at the levee, so it’s a long process, but we’ll get there.” 

Hill County Commissioner Mark Peterson said right now, they are waiting on the Army Corps of Engineers to approve their system-wide improvement framework, or SWIF, which has to do with the levee repairs they are working on.

The Milk River levee was built in the 1950s to prevent flooding in Havre and North Havre, which had been a regular occurrence before it was built.

The Army Corps says the levee has developed operations and maintenance deficiencies and needs improvements before the corps will certify it.

“We are working on possible funding for the levee repairs. We’ll have a meeting tomorrow morning along those lines. We are working with DNRC on our floodplain kick-off that’s similar to what Amy talked about. And basically what that’ll be is they’ll do a study, they’ll (simulate breaching) the levee in different locations and then will map out how they will estimate what the water impact will be,” Peterson said. “It’ll have a lot of impact as it goes on.

Peterson also addressed work planned by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation on Fresno Dam located about 10 miles west of Havre.

“We are working with the Bureau of Reclamation on what the work they will be doing on Fresno Dam is, and depending on how they do it, it could mean the closure of the road over the dam for the better part of two years,” Peterson said.

He added that at this point BOR representatives feel they have some ideas on how they can shorten that time to shorter periods.

Montana State University-Hill County Extension Agent Jasmine Carbajal said they have new a central region director for Extension, Tracy Mosely.

Carbajal said Mosely started Nov. 15. 

Hill County Weed Control District Supervisor Terry Turner said he attended a conference in Missoula this month, where he learned people can download an app called “Seek” by iNaturalist. People can take pictures of plants and animals and the app will then provide a brief description of what it is.

He added that it’ll help identify weeds when people bring them to him.

There will not be a County Officials meeting next month, but the meetings will resume Thursday, Jan. 16, in the Timmons Room in the Hill County Courthouse.