OMAHA, Neb. -- As part of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Omaha District’s aggressive recovery from the 2019 unregulated runoff event, the District began breach repair on the Union Dike levee near Valley, NE. Due to the potential of additional precipitation, the breach on the Platte River impacts public safety in the local area. Repair work is expected to take six days to complete.
Omaha District also has personnel in Sioux Falls, South Dakota providing technical assistance to the city in regards to high flows and snow melt. The city of Sioux Falls is also using a Corps-provided sandbag filling machine that has filled more than 23,000 sandbags.
As part of the effort to begin the restoration of the federal levee system, and other levees, south of Omaha, the District is scheduled to mail levee rehab letters on Monday, March 25 so levee sponsors can begin the process of requesting repairs. Much of the local federal levee system remains compromised due to the record inflows surpassing their designed protection levels.
As of noon today, there were 47 confirmed breaches at L-611-614 (South of Council Bluffs, Iowa), L-601 (South of Glenwood, Iowa), L-594 (near Fremont County, Iowa), L-575 (Fremont County, Iowa), L-550 (Atchison County, Missouri), L-536 (Atchinson County, Missouri), R-613 (Sarpy County, Nebraska), R-562 (Nemaha County, Nebraska), Western Sarpy (Ashland, Nebraska), Clear Creek (Ashland, Nebraska), Union Levee (Valley, Nebraska), and R-573 (Otoe County, Nebraska). In addition levees L-611-614 & L-550 remain overtopping.
Omaha District continues to send out teams to monitor and assess the damage to the levee system and begin planning for repairs.
Omaha District’s focus remains on ensuring the safety of citizens and communicating the conditions on the river systems to all of our partners and stakeholders. The Corps continues to provide flood fight assistance to state, local, and tribal government agencies.
The Omaha District has distributed approximately:
- 227,000 sandbags,
- 2,020 super sandbags,
- 9,930 feet of HESCO barriers,
- 7 pumps
- 21 poly rolls.
The first source of information for citizens is their local emergency managers. For questions or concerns you can call 211, which is a national resource hotline and website geared to local area needs.