The state was granted $24 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds to purchase easements from landowners, who retain ownership of the property but agree to land use and building restrictions. In short, the land is turned from cropland to non-cropland, which means a wetland, a dry mix, a forestry mix or just leaving it alone.
The goal is to protect against future floods, improve water quality and habitat for wildlife and reduce the need for disaster assistance in the future.
"It's a perpetual easement, it's a conservation easement," said Rich Sims, state conservationist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service in Iowa. But the hope is that the easements also save money in the long run and help protect from major floods like the June 2008 flood that destroyed more than 5,000 structures.
Sims said the landowners will save money by not having to pay crop insurance and a long-term savings will be realized when floods do less damage. That’s expected as water is collected in the easement areas, which will take the pressure off upstream and downstream areas and levees
Additionally levees in the area will not be repaired as some of the land is allowed to flood. Those repairs would have cost upwards of $400,000. Sims said eventually the levee district, comprised of 3,500 to 4,000 acres of Army Corps of Engineers levees, will be disbanded as more of the area is added to the conservation easement program.
"If all the acres are in a conservation easement program and the land use is taken away from crop, there’s not reason to have a levee district anymore because there is no cropland to protect," Sims said.
The state chose 42 applications for easements and signed on 34 landowners for options to purchase. Surveys are being conducted on the land to make sure the coordinates and property lines are correct, and Sims said the process has added a couple of folks to a local firm's payroll.
"We got a thank you e-mail from a surveying firm in New Hampton," Sims said. "They said they'd hired two additional people and now they could have three crews work throughout the state and in other states."
Photo courtesy of Patsy Lynch/FEMA.
