Levee District 2 Board Reflects On Peaceful Year; Looks Ahead

By MARK EVANS

mevans@stegenherald.com

Levee District No. 2 Chair Chris Kertz reported on a peaceful year during the district board’s annual meeting last Thursday night.

“There was not a whole lot going on,” Kertz told the board and visitors. “We didn’t have any flooding. We closed the levee.

“We did purchase some of the components for the new low-ground pump. We’ve got all the pipe on site now and we also have the pump on site. It’s just a matter of getting it fabricated and putting it in.”

He said he was hopeful of getting that done this fall.

All the money expected from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) from past floods has come in, Kertz said.

“We did finish up some flood damage, mainly barrow areas from when we fixed the levee,” he said.

The Riverside Levee, which suffered more damage in 2019, after being breached by the New Year’s Eve 2015 flash flood and finally repaired in 2018, had been one of the biggest projects two years ago.

In the past year, other projects could be addressed.

Kertz reported that the old 30-inch pump was removed and sent off for a total rebuild. He said it is now in “new condition.”

He noted that “quite a bit of money” was spent “resloping” the levee from the marina down to the port, to satisfy U.S. Army Corps of Engineers concerns during previous inspections.

“It was a sore spot with our corps inspections,” he said. “They did not like how that was graded.”

It has been graded to “a decent slope” in Kertz’ words, and passed a recent inspection.

Meanwhile, a video inspection of all the district piping was done. It came back with no issues, Kertz said.

Some sand boil areas that had been problems all the way back to the 1993 flood, were also addressed. A lime-based product was used to address it.

“We mixed in some lime-based product that came from the local water plant, put that down, excavated the dirt, put that down as a barrier layer and put the dirt back on top,” he said.

He is hopeful that it will address the problem.

“We’re hoping th