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Farmer: Corps won’t allow local levee control amid floods

A farmer in Northwest Missouri whose lower fields are too flooded to plant says he supports making flood control the TOP priority of the Corps of Engineers Missouri River management plan, “One of the reasons we have water here still over our fields is because the Corps won’t let our local levee board open up a levee to let this out.”

Richard Oswald says the infrastructure is 80 to 90 years old, “And all these levees and all these dams and things were built for conditions and the situation they had back then in the 1930s and ‘40s.”

He says the lower breach that opened after they were flooded in March is maintaining a higher than necessary level of water where he lives. And, Oswald tells Brownfield Ag News railroads are ignoring FEMA rules, further holding water back, “That hasn’t stopped (railroads) from hauling in humongous loads and amounts of rock and repairing their rails and their rail lines. And so that is starting to hold the water back here and that, too, is keeping the water deeper.”

Oswald’s farm is in Atchison County, Missouri, across from Brownville, Nebraska. The governors of Missouri, Iowa and Nebraska are meeting in Council Bluffs, Iowa on Friday to continue their talks with Corps officials about prioritizing flood control.