Citizens' flood group wants say

LINCOLN — Elaine Binder finds herself swept up in a flood of activism.

The farmer and businesswoman lives in Table Rock, Neb., but owns crop ground in Iowa and Missouri, and 7,000 acres of it are under water from the flooded Missouri River.

Just as bad, she and her husband, Lynn Binder, have to drive dozens of miles out of their way to reach their farms because of closed bridges at Nebraska City, Brownville and Rulo.

She desperately wants things back to normal. And she wants them to stay normal.

That's why she is helping lead a grass-roots, multistate organization that calls itself Responsible River Management. The loose affiliation of farmers, business owners, lawyers, real estate agents, homeowners and municipal officials in the Missouri River corridor wants a say in future management of the river.

"We just think things have gone awry," she said this week. "We're tired of sitting on our duffs and not doing anything."

In recent weeks, they've organized their effort via meetings, phone calls, emails and Facebook. But the point isn't group therapy or massive complaint sessions. Instead, leaders are setting priorities and targeting their message to elected officials and government employees who call the shots on river policy, said Leo Ettleman, a Percival, Iowa, farmer who helped start the group.

"We decided we needed to get a coalition together," he said. "We wanted to get everyone on the same page so we're not all out there as individuals trying to beat our own drum."

While the group doesn't maintain a membership roster, it says it has members in Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri and South Dakota, and it hopes to expand to other states in the Missouri River drainage system.

Given the widespread belief that the flood could have been prevented, some might view Responsible River Management as a vehicle to vent anger. But Ettleman said group leaders discourage finger-pointing, especially at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the agency responsible for managing the river.

"We're not a vigilante group looking to throw the corps under the bus," he said. "We need to work with the corps."

The group's top priority: Rebuild levees, roads and bridges as soon as possible. Barricaded highways and bridges are hurting the economic viability of every community and every farm family in the Missouri River Valley. And until levees are restored, transportation routes can't be protected from future flooding.

But it's going to take weeks before the water recedes enough for levee engineers to get a clear look at the damage. Once releases from Gavins Point Dam in South Dakota fall to 90,000 cubic feet per second at the end of August, damage assessments will begin, said Carlos Lazo, a Corps of Engineers spokesman in Omaha. When the assessments are done, work will start.

"We're going to try to get it repaired as soon as possible," he said.

But no one is giving timelines.

David Sieck, a Glenwood, Iowa, farmer and one of the group's organizers, said he hopes state and federal roads departments will put repairs on a fast track. He and others worry that following the regular steps and procedures required for bridge and road projects will delay the recovery by months.

Group members also want to make sure a complete and accurate accounting of the damage is compiled. The tally must include the costs to railroads, utilities, private businesses, farms, public infrastructure and so on, Sieck said.

"I think when people really know what this is going to cost, it's going to be really, really scary," he said.

After dealing with the crisis, the group wants to help shape decisions on future management of the river. They want the corps' master manual to place greater emphasis on flood control.

In the meantime, group leaders said they are building relationships with members of Congress on both sides of the river. Last week, for example, Elaine Binder organized a meeting in Auburn between 25 group members and a representative from the office of U.S. Rep. Jeff Fortenberry.

"The congressman believes that getting roads and bridges reopened must be a top priority," said Josh Moenning, Fortenberry's spokesman. "He has been in discussions from Blair to Brownville, communities that have been deeply impacted economically."

And so Binder keeps sending out emails and making calls. She'll keep at it, she said, until the flood recedes into a bad memory.

"We just really need assurance this isn't going to happen again," she said.

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