– FEMA officially announces VC can maintain flood wall

WASHINGTON – Senator John Hoeven and Senator Heidi Heitkamp’s offices, Wednesday, announced that, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) officially stated that Valley City can maintain its floodwall. The decision from FEMA is a result of a fix Heitkamp wrote and successfully included in the funding bill Congress passed last month that allowed Valley City to keep in place the existing floodwall.

Heitkamp’s provision followed a meeting she held on March 10 with the Valley City mayor, commissioners, and other local officials involved in flood protection efforts during which she updated them about her efforts to try to include her provision in the funding bill.

Click here to view the letter from FEMA confirming Valley City can keep its floodwall because of Heitkamp’s provision in the spending bill.

Heitkamp states, “Residents in Valley City need strong flood protection in place to keep families and the community safe. And as of today, it’s official – FEMA confirmed that Valley City will be able to maintain its floodwall. “I’m proud to have passed a fix through Congress that made this possible. Without it, FEMA would have forced Valley City to remove this critical floodwall and exposed residents to potentially devastating floods in the future. Now, Valley City will be able to stay strong and families living there will remain safe from floods. That’s something we should all celebrate and it’s a good day for common sense.”

Click here to view the letter from FEMA confirming Valley City can keep its floodwall because of Heitkamp’s provision in the spending bill.

After Valley City built a floodwall to provide permanent flood protection to keep residents safe, it became known that the land where part of the wall is located is deed restricted because the land was purchased through the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Hazard Mitigation Grant Program. As a result, FEMA had told the city to remove the floodwall at a cost of at least $150,000 — despite the fact that the entire purpose of the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program is to reduce impacts from natural disasters, including flooding — and then develop an alternative flood protection plan, which would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars more.

To prevent that from happening, Heitkamp successfully worked to include language in the federal funding bill Congress passed in March that allowed the floodwall to remain on this property. Heitkamp had been working with senators on the Senate Appropriations Committee and Senate Homeland Security Committee to press the issue, as well as with the North Dakota State Water Commission and the North Dakota Department of Emergency Services to gather their input.

The flood fights in Valley City during the 2009 and 2011 floods – the first and second worst floods in the city’s history – cost $19 million, of which $16 million was state and federal funds and $3 million was local funds. Following those floods, the city has been working to put in place permanent flood protection to keep the city and residents protected and reduce costs.

This first phase of the project where a combination of a floodwall and levee were constructed to protect the university area, which includes 79 homes and seven businesses with a combined value of $49 million, is where the FEMA deed restricted lot in question is located. This part of the city’s comprehensive flood protection effort was completed in 2016 and the city took great care to avoid three other FEMA deed restricted lots in developing and constructing the project, however, the lot in question was identified as city-owned. Last year, it was discovered the lot had been purchased with FEMA Hazard Mitigation Grant Program funds.