Last week, I was fortunate to spend some time at the Nebraska Chapter Conference. Of the many great educational sessions, I was intrigued by the presentation by Al Shoemaker, Public Works Director for the City of Blair on the banks of the Missouri River. Early this year they were challenged by the rising floodwaters to protect their water and wastewater treatment plants from inundation. As you can imagine, that would have meant the shutdown of both facilities and a tremendous impact on the community. While the rest of the community was high and dry, Public Works, working with their federal partners (US Army Corps of Engineers and FEMA) and their private partners (contractors and neighboring industry) worked together to build embankments, protect vehicular access to the plant and modify intakes and outflow structures that would be underwater. The results were that both facilities continued to operate throughout the flood.
I was very impressed by the focused commitment of the local, federal and private partners. The actual water level rise far exceeded their predictions and they continually had to reevaluate their protection plan. They believe that the stars may be aligned again this coming year, so the lessons learned this year will be invaluable to them in the future.
We often don’t hear these stories because nothing bad happened. I would guess that the community probably doesn’t really know the efforts that the Public Works staff went through to save these critical life line systems – potable water and sanitary sewer. I know these same efforts happen every year in small and large communities and we should be very proud of our public works brothers and sisters who work tirelessly to protect our communities.
So to the PW men and women of Blair, Nebraska – Great Job!!!
How Public Works beat the mighty Missouri
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