County moves forward on plan for Milk River Levee

Work to bring the Havre-Milk River Levee back to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers specifications is continuing, with Hill County holding a conference call Monday to discuss the progress and what is next.

“Basically we are trying to figure out if we are going to proceed with the fixing of the levee and what we need to do to be able to proceed, so we needed to identify where we needed to get funding to fix the levee,” Hill County Commissioner Mark Peterson said this morning. “That is approximately $2.4 million today. That may increase just because of inflation, and so we … identified (an) Economic Development Administration loan, a little over $1.9 million, and then a possibility of a Coal Severance Tax loan of approximately $450,000.”

He said the county is looking at how to pay a loan off, and the time period to pay it, which is about 30 years at this time.

The Havre-Milk River Flood Protection Project was started and designed to prevent major flooding that regularly hit the city.

The system was completed in 1957 after major floods, including in 1938 and 1952, devastated the region.

The levee system comprises the city-operated Bullhook Dry Dam unit and the county-managed Milk River unit.

After inspections in March 2014 and January 2015, the Army Corps said the Milk River unit does not meet standards.

The Bullhook unit, despite it needing some minor attention, is within standards

The county has said problems with the levee include structures being erected too close or against the levee, trees growing on it and so on.

A floodplains assessment is underway, and once that is completed, if the levee isn’t certified, people in the floodplain may be required to carry flood insurance.

Peterson said people don’t need to worry that the levee is about to fail, but it has to be recertified.

At the call Monday, Bear Paw Development Corp. Director of Community Development Lisa Moisey said Hill County recently submitted a System-Wide Improvement  Framework, or SWIF, plan for the Havre-Milk River levee system. The county is responsible for the maintenance and structural integrity of that system.

“That was done to help bring the system in compliance with the United States Army Corps of Engineers, so that plan was submitted to the Army Corps to help justify their need to continue to ensure that levee will be rated,” she said. “ … The SWIF plan needs to help the county bring the system back to the Army Corps of Engineer’s attention by outlining all the deficiencies of the levee system and outlining potential solutions to those deficiencies and present a timeline and cost to bring the deficiencies and levee in compliance.” 

“Previous to the SWIF document we provided a letter of intent and that basically said that we intend to bring it up to certification levels and what that also did then is it put the responsibility back on Army Corps that if we had a flood they would come in and help us as if it was a certified levee,” Hill County Commissioner Mark Peterson said. 

Moisey said that through work of the county and Great West Engineering of Helena the cost to resolve these deficiencies is estimated at $2.4 million.

She added the question is how is the county is going to pay for that and what options are there, she said, adding that Great West and Bear Paw have looked into potential funding options through the Economic Development Administration through the disaster funding.

“The Economic Development Administration has been identified as a potential funder for this project through their disaster funding, available to counties where a federal disaster was declared in 2017 or 2018,” it said. “Hill County and the city of Havre qualify.

“The key with that funding source, however, is that we need to come up with a 20 percent local match, that can be in-kind or cash,” she said.

She said with the $2.4 million project they are estimating the Economic Development Administration portion would cover $1.9 million and that they have started investigating other potential funding sources for the match.

The suggested source for that is for the county to apply for a Coal Tax Severance Fund loan from the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation.

“We have some work to do to get us to the point where we have a commitment from them, but right now we just have a verbal interest and discussion on it,” she said. 

She added that the loan would require a mechanism to service the debt which is already in place and to generate funds toward the maintenance of the levee systems.

Peterson said this morning that the county is looking at possibly using an existing rural special improvement district that includes people on the north side of the river, but the county wants to look at all people the levee is protecting — which would be shown by the updated floodplain mapping.

“That will tell us where the impact would be within the city limits of Havre. We looked at a map that gave us some elevation to give us a rough idea,” Peterson said.

He added that the Hill County commissioners are trying to identify the property owners in that area, so that they can reach out and talk to them.

Moisey said this morning that part of the planning process is to see if expanding the boundaries of the RSID would be needed to use it as a funding mechanism.

“The question that Hill County needs to consider is, are the funds from the existing Rural Special Improvements District adequate to service that or do they need to look at making adjustments to the district boundary,” she said.

During Monday’s conference call, Peterson said he is calling DRNC Floodplain Outreach Specialist Nadene Wadsworth Wednesday to talk about how to put together a county levee committee that would consist of business people, government representatives and the public to be part of this committee to start having conversations and if there’s any guidance on which way to go.

“We’ve had different discussions, we’ve talked about the project, we talked about the steps we need to do from here to get an application and so what Great West and I wanted to do was to recap,” Moisey said. “The Economic Development Administration grant is open-ended in terms of a timeline, however, I think it’s in the county’s best interest to move expediently and not dilly dally if you want to do that.”

Craig Erickson of Great West Engineering said the county should expect to hear back within a month of the application being submitted to the EDA.

Peterson said this morning that getting the certification is vital to control insurance costs and to receive any help, if needed, from federal agencies.

“Our levee is in good shape. I don’t want people to feel that it’s insecure and not a functioning levee, it’s just not certified and we need to get the levee deficiencies updated and taken care,” he said. “Then, the Army Corps would most likely give us certification on it.

“Federal Emergency Management Agency is a different story. We don’t know how that’ll go,” he said, “But the other side of this is, if we don’t proceed to fix the levee, Federal Emergency Management Agency may require those that are in the impacted area to carry flood insurance and that is quite a bit more costly than fixing the levee over a period of years.”