PERU – State Sen. Julie Slama warned there is still work ahead before repairs on the Peru levee begin, but told participants of a Peru Town Hall Tuesday there is now a path forward.

The US Army Corps of Engineers has spent over $100 million to repair 54 levee systems following the Missouri River basin flooding in 2019, but Peru’s levee R562 was not eligible for corps’ assistance.

Slama: “The corps had designated Peru’s levee as being inactive thanks not to a structural failures but to paperwork that hadn’t been filed in a timely manner.”

The local levee board did not complete a System Wide Improvement Framework plan required for local districts to show how they could transition levees to meet corps standards.

 

The Peru levee was built in 1954 and had never breached and the cost of the framework plan was estimated at $2,000. The levee board reported it used its resources for levee improvements, rather than on the SWIF.  Until passage of new federal legislation, the board faces a $60 million repair bill without federal help.

Slama credited U.S. Congressman Adrian Smith for getting language in the Water Resources Act, which is expected to be passed by Congress in December. She said the language allows inactive levee districts to qualify for levee repairs if they pay the cost of what caused them to be inactive in the first place.

Slama: “Once the water bill passes we still have several more steps to go through with the corps, satisfying those statutory requirements and covering those costs, but this is really the first time we’ve seen a light at the end of the tunnel.”

She said repair of the levee is a big deal not only for Peru’s infrastructure, but its longterm development.