The City of Manhattan has come out with estimates of the damage caused by the Labor Day Wildcat Creek flood — and the cost is in the millions.
Manhattan City Manager Ron Fehr was on Tuesday’s edition of KMAN’s In Focus and said the flash flooding caused $17.2 million in damage. He broke that down into private and public real estate damage — $14.5 million of which was sustained by private structures while $2.7 million was sustained by city property.
Additionally, Fehr said that a dozen properties suffered damage amounting to “50 percent or more” of the property’s value or had suffered damage in successive storms amounting to 25 percent or more of their property’s value. Of those properties, eight were residential and four were commercial.
He said that a lot of the city damages occurred at local parks, amounting $1.5 million of the $2.7 million total. Fehr said that Anneberg Park in particular took a “pretty big hit” and some parts remain closed.
“A lot of the parking lot that’s right up against where the stream jumped out of its bank and flowed across — most of that parking lot is in the Anneberg Lake,” Fehr said. “That will need to be dredged out and re-done.”
He added that the stream bank near Anneberg “deteriorated substantially” and a protective fence along the bank was taken out by flood water.
Fehr said other park damage occurred at Linear Park where there’s a “huge log-jam” of debris where the stream makes a 90 degree turn.
The stream bank there was also washed out significantly.
Other notable city property damage was sustained by a couple sanitary sewer lift stations, the armoring protecting the Scenic Drive bridge (but not the structure itself), as well as Poliska Lane. Fehr added that the city still has a lot of work to do in cleaning out sediment from storm sewer lines and cleaning out debris in general along the creek.
Manhattan Mayor Linda Morse was also in-studio on that episode of In Focus. She said the repairs are going to be costly, but the city will have to figure out a way to fit them into their tight budget.
“These are the kinds of things that we just have to fix right away, they can’t be put off for five years,” Morse said.
Gov. Jeff Colyer made a request for a federal disaster declaration following his own state declaration, opening up the possibilities for three types of federal public assistance declarations. The Small Business Administration made their declaration on Monday, which makes low-interest federal disaster loans available for small business owners as well as homeowners and renters.
Fehr thinks the scale of the flooding and subsequent damage will meet the threshold for a public assistance declaration by FEMA as well. That declaration would give eligible applicants — typically states, federally recognized tribal governments, U.S. territories, local governments, and some private
non-profit organizations — the chance to receive federal grants to pay for restoration costs related to the disaster.
“Usually those are 75 percent federal funds, 25 percent local,” Fehr said. “Sometimes the state participates, sometimes they don’t.”
