Commissioners plan flood mitigation efforts

D.E. Smoot, Muskogee Phoenix, Okla.
·2 min read

Apr. 20—Muskogee County commissioners selected a Tulsa-based firm to provide scoping and engineering services with hopes the county will be awarded a $1.5 million grant to kick off flood mitigation efforts.

District 1 Commissioner Ken Doke said the work would be funded by an advance assistance grant commissioners hope to secure from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. He said the work that would be performed by Meshek & Associates would include "a couple of studies" that would help commissioners get a handle on costs of much larger projects expected to be funded with community development block grants being made available in response to flooding in 2019.

What was described as "unprecedented flows and river stages and elevations" flooding along the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System at the Port of Muskogee" and upstream flooding to Tulsa began in May 2019 and continued into June. Floodwaters inundated more than 350 homes and businesses in Muskogee County.

Doke said scoping and engineering services would help delineate needs and costs once the CDBG funds are secured for the larger projects. Much of the funding for those projects is for mitigation related to housing needs and flood mitigation.

"We suspect that when we started applying to use that money for immediate housing needs that in order to get that federal money they were going to ask for things like floor elevations or base-flood elevations," Doke said. "We didn't want to have to wait for that CDBG money to do those studies, so we found that FEMA had advance assistance that will allow us to do pre-scoping, pre-engineering studies and elevations."

Emergency Management Director Jeff Smith said Meshek was the best-qualified firm to respond to the county's request for qualifications. It won't go to work unless the county gets the advance assistance grant and negotiates the scope and terms of the job.

"This is not a shovel-driven grant like we normally get," Smith said. "This grant only goes toward the engineering, the pre-scoping of the mitigation efforts so we can identify whether we need to redo a road ... or change an elevation for a house or base flood elevations — it will really help our floodplain program."

Smith said the primary focus of the grants is "to help the citizens recover" from the 2019 floods. There are hopes there will be additional funds available to identify roads that may need to be raised to avoid being inundated by future flooding.