Brownfield

Message from Pike County, Illinois

Our good friend Blake Roderick, Executive Director of Pike and Scott County Farm Bureaus and Two Rivers Farm Bureau Foundation sent an update that we were all very pleased to receive.  The news was good this time for the region Blake represents in fighting the 2008 floods.  Julie Harker and Tom Steever spent some time a couple of weeks ago with Blake - on the levees - in west central Illinois.  Blake continued to keep us abreast of the situation as river levels fell. 

Update from Pike County
Wednesday, July 2, 2008:

Monitoring the 54-miles of main-stem Mississippi River levees in the Sny Island Drainage District of Pike County will continue for several more days. River levels crested three times at near record levels during the 2008 flood.

The Mississippi River will be under major flood stage in the next couple of days—points south of US 54 are at or below major flood stage today. All the points along the Sny will be at or below flood stage within a week.

Yellow River flooding

Thanks to Charlie McConnell at FCS Financial for sharing some pictures Jim Maag shot of flooding from Yellow Creek at the east edge of Brookfield, Missouri.  These tractors are in the same field.  One got out.  The other did not.

Unfortunately, sites like this one are not uncommon in many areas of the Midwest this year.  We have a whole slew of flood pictures on the Brownfield website Fighting the 2008 Flood page.

 

Straight line winds

More deadly weather moved across the Midwest over the week-end.  Brownfield's Pete Shinn, headquartered in downtown Omaha, Nebraska was smack dab in the middle of a dangerous storm late Friday afternoon.  From Pete:

Here are a handful of pics taken right after Friday's storm in Omaha. It knocked out power to around 130,000 customers, myself included, and killed two teenagers in Council Bluffs when a tree fell on their car. It's the only time in my life I've been scared of a weather event. Straight-line winds of up to 115 mph knocked over lots of trees and snapped power poles like twigs. The whole thing blew up and was over in 10 minutes. Wild! Crews finally got power restored to our building last night at about 8:30 p.m.

Levee terminology

The terminology used by those fighting the Midwestern floods, although quite familiar to someone who lives or grew up near a river, can sound like a different language to those unfamiliar with levee terms and definitions.  The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers website features some key levee terms and definitions:

Levee: an earthen embankment, floodwall, or structure along a water course whose purpose is flood risk reduction or water conveyance.

Federal responsibility: there is no single agency with responsibility for levee oversight nationwide. The Corps has specific and limited responsibilities for approximately 2,000 levees nationwide.

Local responsibility: the responsibilities of local levee owner or sponsor are broad and may include levee safety; land use planning and development; building codes; and operations, maintenance, repair, rehabilitation and replacement of the levee.

Levee certification: the certification of levees for FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program is the responsibility of the local levee owner or sponsor.

Federally authorized levee: typically designed and built by the Corps in cooperation with a local sponsor then turned over to a local sponsor to operate and maintain.

Non-federal levee: designed, built, and managed by a non-federal entity.

Corps funding eligibility: federally authorized and some non-federal levees may be eligible for Corps rehabilitation assistance funding.

Overtopping: water levels exceed the crest elevation of a levee and flow into protected areas. Levee may be damaged but not compromised. Flooding occurs from overflow/overwash (waves) and other sources. The levee must be inspected.

Overtopping breach: a breach whose cause is known to be a result of overtopping (system exceeded). The levee has been compromised after overtopping and must be repaired to function prior to the next event.

Breach: a rupture, break or gap whose cause has not been determined.

Failure breach: a breach for which a cause of failure is known based on an investigation to determine the cause.

High water in NW Missouri

On his way to cover the Livestock Marketing Association meeting in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Tom Steever ran into some high water in northwestern Missouri. 

This is a tractor we saw on the way to Sioux Falls.  This was along Hwy. 36  between Macon and St. Joe.  We had to divert about 20 miles because of high water along that route.

Tom

Brownfield's Katie Allen talked to the farmer who owns the tractor in the photo.  You can read her story on the Brownfield website.

From the fields

More rain moving through parts of the Midwest means Brownfield's flood coverage will, unfortunately, continue for some time.

I interviewed a Pioneer agronomist in southern Illinois today who said corn planting wrapped up last week, tailed closely by soybean planting.  As wheat harvest is underway and double crop beans are going in, Scott Eversgerd told me many of the fields in that part of the state could use about an inch of rain.  That's hard to believe when there are many farm fields across the region that have water standing in them, like this one.  Julie Harker took the picture this afternoon on her drive from Columbia to Jefferson City, Missouri, on Highway 63 before the Missouri River bridge.

Not all river bottoms are flooded

The Brownfield team has done a stellar job of telling the stories of flooding and the impact of adverse weather conditions throughout the Midwest.  Although many acres of cropland have been flooded, there are areas where the crops do NOT have their legs in water and actually look quite good.  Rain does make grain -- unless of course there's just too much of it.

Cornfields in the Missouri River bottoms just outside of Lexington, Missouri were looking pretty good when I drove past them last Sunday afternoon.

Special webpage on Flood Coverage

For weeks now, Brownfield Ag News team members have been telling the stories of torrential rains, severe windstorms, tornadoes, and flooding, wreaking havoc across the Heartland of our country.  Promotions Coordinator Kari McKinney thought we should create a page where visitors to our website can access all of our on-line flood coverage so she went to work on it.

You'll find stories, audio, video and links to important information.

Check it out:  Fighting the 2008 Flood

High and dry in Cedar Rapids

The sun is shining and there are just a few puffy white clouds in the sky as I write this at my computer on Thursday morning. The birds are chirping and the dogs are running around the lush green back yard. It is hard to imagine that just a little over mile away there is devastation due to the flood of 2008.

It is now a week since the flood waters started rushing into a vast area of Cedar Rapids along the Cedar River. There are those that still talk about the flood of 93, but that is in the history books now as the flood of 2008 is being called a 500 year flood. Until last week Cedar Rapids was a bright and shiny city, but that is no more as mud and trash cover a wide area of downtown and into the low lying neighborhoods. Family owned businesses that had been there for years are filled with icky stuff and the mold is starting to grow on the floors and walls. Many will clean it up or rebuild others say they will close up shop.

Reporting on the floods

From Wisconsin to Iowa, Indiana to Illinois, Missouri to Nebraska and beyond, weather and flooding have been front and center in agricultural news, markets and weather programming on Brownfield Ag News for weeks now.  Having grown up near the Illinois River where my family has farmed for generations, so much of this year is reminiscent for me, personally, of 1993. 

Each morning and throughout the day, the Brownfield Ag News Team works together to cover all aspects of the "Fighting the Floods of 2008." 

Julie Harker and Tom Steever are in either Missouri or Illinois today, covering the fight on both sides of the Mississippi River.  Julie sent back some pictures of efforts underway in Adams County, Illinois and across the river in Hannibal, Missouri.  They arrived in Quincy, Illinois yesterday and will spend the rest of the week with farmers and community members working hard to hold back the mighty Mississippi River from Quincy, Illinois to St. Louis, Missouri.

We all know someone who has been personally impacted by these floods.  So many farm kids from the Midwest went off to college and took jobs in other places, but the ties they have to the soil of the home farm remains strong. 

Courtney Yuskis grew up on a farm near Warsaw, Illinois.  She is now Director of the Country Living Association.  Upon learning about the levee break in that area, I emailed her, letting her know she and her family are in my thoughts.  I was saddened to receive her reply:

Unfortunately, about 95% of my family's land will be underwater by tonight. I have been here since Saturday, fighting what was eventually a losing battle. We just took a final drive through the bottoms (about 30,000 acres will be flooded by this break); it's surreal to think that all of those crops will be lost.

This is a personal message and one I would not typically share, but I know there are many others of us who have experienced the same thing - either in 1993 or today.  The amazing thing about farmers and agricultural communities is their ability to pick themselves up and put the pieces back together again. 

Julie Harker sent back some pictures taken Wednesday on the levee in Adams County, Illinois.  In addition to telling their stories through Brownfield Ag News, Julie took shovel in hand to assist in filling sandbags. 

This is what Julie had to say about that experience:

I asked if I could shovel a few bags of sand because I did not do that during the 1993 & ‘95 floods in my home state of Missouri. At that time, I worked behind the scenes at Missourinet, Brownfield’s sister network in Jefferson City. I conducted interviews by telephone, attended Corps briefings, and produced newscasts as those historic floods unfolded.  But I did not get away to help sandbag then.   Not by any stretch did the folks at the Quincy, IL command center NEED me to help shovel last week. They LET me shovel because I asked.  I thank them for letting me help in that small way – three or four bags I believe it was. The sandbagging effort in Quincy (and Pleasant Hill) was amazing - so many, working so hard. I applaud their efforts.