BELLEVILLE NEWS-DEMOCRAT
Monday, February 22, 2010
By Mike Fitzgerald

Metro-east leaders are considering whether to file a federal lawsuit to force the Federal Emergency Management Agency to disclose the evidence that has led it to declare that local flood protection levees are worthless.

And FEMA’s failure so far to show its evidence for de-accrediting metro-east flood levees has led some local leaders say that FEMA is trying to replenish coffers drained by enormous insurance claims paid out in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

FEMA is executing this plan through its efforts to decertify levees and drastically raise flood insurance premiums all across the nation, according to Alan Dunstan, the Madison County Board chairman.

“FEMA lost a lot of money when Katrina hit,” Dunstan said. “I’ll be honest with you. It’s a money grab.”

Cat Langel, a FEMA spokeswoman, and other FEMA officials have declined to answer questions about this theory, referring questions about levee certification to the corps. The corps has already revealed it has provided little information regarding metro-east levees to FEMA.

The Southwestern Illinois Flood Prevention District Council, in Collinsville, met behind closed doors last week to discuss its legal options, including a possible lawsuit, to force FEMA to show its proof for determining the levees are functionally useless — a finding many local leaders dispute because these levees have withstood every Mississippi River flood for the past 30 years.

Nonetheless, FEMA has used this finding to justify plans to raise flood insurance rates by several multiples early next year for 150,000 American Bottoms property owners in Madison, St. Clair and Monroe counties.

Metro-east leaders, however, have decried these plans, arguing the higher flood insurance premiums will wreak economic havoc for businesses in the American Bottoms and force homeowners, especially those in low-income neighborhoods, to flee.

The council met just a few weeks after FEMA officials in Washington, D.C., rejected requests by Madison and St. Clair county leaders to provide “expedited” processing of Freedom of Information Act requests filed by the flood district council in early November for agency data on local levees.

Les Sterman, the council’s chief engineer, expressed frustration at FEMA’s rapid denial of the requests to speed up its response to the November FOIA petitions, as well as the agency’s four-month delay in responding to the original information request.

“I think it’s frankly reprehensible on their part that a decision that is so costly, historic to this region — they cannot even explain why they did it,” said Sterman, who is also leading the region’s efforts to upgrade metro-east levees to meet Army Corps of Engineers standards.

Meeting those new, more exacting standards could cost more than $500 million, with local taxpayers being expected to pay most of that cost.

Langel acknowledged that her agency received on Nov. 4 the flood district FOIA request for information regarding the levees in Madison, Monroe, and St. Clair counties.

Langel declined to answer questions on why it is taking so long for the agency to comply with the council’s.

But Langel noted in an e-mail to the News-Democrat that the length of time to comply to a FOIA request depends “entirely on the request itself,” as well as the number of agency components required to contribute to the response.

“Any and all information related to the FOIA request will be released to the requester as soon as all the information is complete,” Langel wrote.

Robert Haida, the St. Clair County state’s attorney, who handled the county request for a speeded-up FOIA response, said he is questioning the “validity” of FEMA’s position regarding the levees based on its failure to respond to the request.

“Any time in my professional life when I deal with someone who takes a position, but they won’t tell me why, I question the validity of their position,” Haida said.
FEMA isn’t giving the cold shoulder simply to metro-east leaders. It is still ignoring a demand by U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Springfield, early last month to release data on metro-east levees, as well as to brief local leaders and residents.
Charles N. Davis, the executive director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition, in Columbia, Mo., said he was not surprised at FEMA’s refusal to respond to information requests for levee data.

Davis recalled how, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, FEMA had failed to respond to repeated media FOIA requests about the toxicity of flood waters around New Orleans and chemicals contained in trailers provided to evacuees.

“It took Congressional intervention to get anything out of FEMA at least twice,” said Davis, an associate professor at the University of Missouri School of Journalism.

In addition, FEMA’s track record of refusing to comply with FOIA requests is a “perfect reflection” of the two of the biggest problems with the law governing the FOIA, Davis said.

“That is the lack of any responsiveness mechanism between requester and the agency, and the lack of any sort of penalty,” said Davis.

As a result, he said, the FEMA bureaucracy “will sort of yawn and blink while the entire region is begging for some information about something that’s this important to that region’s economy.”

ILLINOIS BUSINESS JOURNAL
January 2010
by Alan J. Ortbals
Opinion

Aug. 15, 2007 has become an important date in local history. It was on that date that representatives from the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced that they would be changing their flood maps of the American Bottom – an action, they said, that was triggered by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ decision to decertify our levees. The Bottom, with its 150,000 residents, 50,000 jobs and billions of dollars of developed real estate, would be declared a high-hazard flood zone…more

BELLEVILLE NEWS-DEMOCRAT
Saturday, February 20, 2010
By Mike Fitzgerald

The cost of upgrading Mississippi River flood protection levees in Wood River and East St. Louis to meet the federal “500-year flood” standard will surpass $270 million, the commander of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers District in St. Louis has revealed to metro-east officials.

The cost for repairing the Wood River levee network will run to $111 million, while the cost for upgrading the Metro East Sanitary District to the 500-year standard will be about $159 million. Both estimates are based the best analysis achieved yet of soil conditions on both levees, according to Col. Tom O’Hara Jr., the commander of the St. Louis district.

Overall, the cost of repairing metro-east levees is still in the range of between $300 million and $500 million, O’Hara told the Southwestern Illinois Flood Prevention District Council during a meeting in Collinsville.

Although O’Hara emphasized that the region’s system of levees is not in imminent danger of collapse, he called the situation “urgent” and called on the district to move quickly to fortify the aging levee system, which dates to the 1940s.

“Make this a system that doesn’t have to be reactive, that doesn’t mean flood fighting,” O’Hara said.

Members of the district board, however, continued to wonder where they will get the money needed to begin and end such a big-ticket infrastructure project within a timely manner.

The corps budget for 2011 only sets aside $2.1 million for local flood levee repairs, while future annual appropriations are not guaranteed.

Revenue from a half-cent sales tax that Madison, St. Clair and Monroe counties began collecting in January 2009 is only amounting to $10 million a year — down from the $12 million, as several council members ruefully noted.

“We’re doing everything we’ve been asked to do locally,” Madison County Board Chairman Alan Dunstan said. “And we’re still in a box because we can’t get the federal funding.”

“To present solutions we cannot fund is to present no solution at all,” said Jim Pennekamp, another council member.

ILLINOIS BUSINESS JOURNAL
February 2010
By Alan J. Ortbals

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin and U.S. Rep. Jerry Costello are working together to craft a solution to the looming implementation of new Federal Emergency Management Agency flood maps. But there is still disagreement on a key point: Should property owners in the flood plain be required to buy flood insurance? …more

ILLINOIS BUSINESS JOURNAL
January 2010
By Alan J. Ortbals

The Southwestern Illinois Flood Prevention District Council is considering filing an injunction to block the Federal Emergency Management Agency from implementing its revised maps. The new maps will show virtually the entire American Bottom as a high-hazard flood plain and they are due to take effect this summer…more

BELLEVILLE NEWS-DEMOCRAT
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Opinion

Sen. Dick Durbin last week added his voice to the chorus calling for FEMA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to explain themselves on the metro-east levees.

“Understanding the structural integrity of the levees in the metro-east area and the risk to those living behind them is fundamentally important to my constituents: hundreds of thousands of lives and billions in economic activity are at stake,” Durbin wrote to the two agencies.

Local leaders asked for this information months ago, but have yet to get a detailed response.

It’s difficult to understand why the agencies haven’t answered. FEMA has been telling metro-east residents that it’s as if the levees don’t exist. So what information led FEMA to that conclusion?

We’re waiting.

Now if Durbin will just add his support to Rep. Jerry Costello’s flood map bill. The new maps will decertify the levees and raise insurance rates for hundreds of people.

Durbin got FEMA to delay the maps until 2011, but that could be just a five-month reprieve. Costello’s bill would give the metro-east at least seven years before the new maps and higher rates take effect.

BELLEVILLE NEWS-DEMOCRAT
Wednesday, January 06, 2010
By Mike Fitzgerald
Opinion

Your editorial regarding flood insurance identifies a pressing issue, but irresponsibly dismisses a dangerous scenario.

I agree that property owners in the metro-east flood plain should not face dramatic increases in flood insurance rates — particularly during the current economic climate. I support the effort to put a stop to sudden, unfair increases in flood insurance rates.

But I cannot cavalierly dismiss, as you do, the financial danger that uninsured residents and businesses face in that flood plain. The evidence is clear — metro-east levees are not structurally sound and may not hold back floodwaters of a major storm.

The long-term solution is obvious. We must fix the aging levees as quickly as possible. However, as this work is being done, it is irresponsible to leave thousands who have invested millions in their homes and businesses financially unprotected.

Over the past few months I have pushed FEMA to identify a short-term administrative solution and they have done so.

At the same time, I am working with Congressman Costello to craft comprehensive legislation to introduce in the Senate. While I support his legislative effort in the House, his bill may need to be improved in order to fully protect Metro East residents and businesses.

This is not the first time we have worked with FEMA to protect the region from high insurance rates. In 2008, we won a delay that leveled the playing field in the St. Louis region while encouraging those who could afford insurance to buy it as soon as possible.

Your editorial asked me to “phone home.” I ask that next time you phone my office to check the facts before implying that I have been ignoring this important issue.

BELLEVILLE NEWS-DEMOCRAT
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
By Mike Fitzgerald

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Springfield, on Tuesday called on the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to release publicly their data on metro-east levees, as well as to brief local leaders and residents.

“Having access to information and your commitment to work with the local communities in addressing their concerns should be the bedrock of updating flood maps in any area,” Durbin said in a statement released Tuesday.

Durbin’s call for the release of information by the two federal agencies follows by one day his announcement that he convinced FEMA to delay until January 2011 new flood-insurance rate maps for Madison, St. Clair and Monroe counties.

And Durbin’s request follows by two days a News-Democrat story raising questions about FEMA’s refusal to show what evidence, if any, the agency has indicating the deficiencies of flood-protection levees in Madison, St. Clair and Monroe counties.
“This additional time brings with it an opportunity for all of those affected by the updating of flood maps a chance to better understand the status of the levees in question and the flood-mapping process,” Durbin said in the press release.

Cat Langel, a spokeswoman for the FEMA regional office in Chicago, declined to comment for this story.

“Questions about certification (of levees) need to be directed to the Army Corps of Engineers,” Langel said.

A spokesman for the corps office in St. Louis did not return calls seeking comment.
Over the past two years, FEMA officials have refused to disclose what data they possess indicating the structural deficiencies of flood-protection levees in Madison, St. Clair and Monroe counties, or what reasons led the Corps to refuse to recertify the levees the corps had built.

Nonetheless, FEMA has announced plans to publish new flood-insurance rate maps for the three counties based on the assumption the levees are functionally useless. As a result of the new maps, the cost of flood insurance premiums was expected to soar for 150,000 owners of property west of Illinois 157 in the three counties.

Late last year, the Southwestern Illinois Flood Prevention Council, in Collinsville, filed extensive requests under the federal Freedom of Information Act to obtain FEMA data on the flood levees. So far FEMA has not complied with the FOIA requests.

Les Sterman, the council’s chief engineer, welcomed Durbin’s call on FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers to release to the public their data and analysis of metro-east levees.

“Anything the senator can do to expedite that response will be helpful,” Sterman said. “I’m curious to see what they have because it might be helpful in how they made the decision (on the flood maps) and possibly the things we need to address in the fixes.”