Governors meet to plan how to prevent future flooding

Flood waters have impacted Iowa, Missouri and Nebraska. The governors said they needed to talk to the U.S Army Corp of Engineers on how they should be approaching recovery phase. 

“Short term, we are going to concentrate on really dealing with the 4 major breaches and figure out a way we can stop the inflow, and then long term, we are going to sit down and talk about what that strategy looks like,” Kim Reynolds, governor of Iowa, said. 

Governor Ricketts gave an example of what needs to be done differently. 

“If you look at the levees 613 and 616, it took 6 years and 6 million dollars to get that permitted, in fact, they were suppose to work on that this month while the state of Nebraska appropriated money for that 2 years ago for them to start, so that permitting process has got to be faster,” Ricketts said. 

Towns are still underwater, so the temporary fixes are critical. 

Gov. Reynolds says any temporary levee going into place needs to be a part of the permanent levee moving forward. 

Missouri governor, Mike Parson, said, it’s their job as governors to make their case, and if it means going to congress or meeting with representatives at the White House, they will do that. 

“I think Governor Reynolds and Governor Ricketts both have said… this is not about my state, or her state, or his state… this is about all our states. We have to manage the Missouri river as much as we can together,” Gov. Parson said. 

The governors all agree that they have to do something different to prevent anymore flooding in the future.