Rain fell on top of floodwater Tuesday just as the highest levels of the river were beginning to recede — exactly what Pottawattamie County residents did not want to see.

Things are starting to look good on the Iowa side of Interstate 680. Crews are sweeping up debris left behind by the flood. County officials want to check out gravel roads to see how they made out after the waters came down, but first they had to move some big pieces of debris blocking the roads.

Officials discovered that some of the gravel roads look better than they had expected, but some of the surrounding farmland didn’t fare so well. Crews are guiding the water now, trying to move it off the fields faster.

“At this point, it’s too late,” said Frank Moran. “We’ve already lost the crops for this year, so for next year, they have a lot of clean up to do between now and next year’s crop.”

Moran is a trustee for the Pigeon Creek Drainage District. He says there’s a lot of work to be done to better control high water.

“The levee runs north right there, so it needs to be taller then from this point. We were saying that the intersate is lower than it should be and from this point to the river to the Mormon Bridge, we need to build a levee on the north side to protect it.”

John Rosengren is consulting engineer looking over the project. He told 6 News the goal is to return the levees to their pre-flood conditions, and there are a number of reasons why that has to happen.

Money is a big one.

“Trying to make them more stable,” Rosengren said. “FEMA helped pay last time for some mitigation measures, which helped strengthen the levees in some areas. Wider slopes, things like that. Where we made repair, we’ll see if they recover again this time.”

But first, the Omaha metro has to get through the summer and hope that heavy rain doesn’t raise the water levels again.

Officials estimate it will cost $2-3 million to bring the levees in the pigeon creek area back to pre-flood status.

Source - https://www.wowt.com