MUNSTER | Town Council President Helen Brown said Monday that the town will move forward with constructing its own temporary levee to protect the town until the permanent levee reaches Munster.
"We cannot count on the Little Calumet River Basin Development Commission," Brown said. "The commission is like a pass-through. No one has direct responsibility to finish this project."
Fulfilling a commitment to meet in communities in the flood plain, the Little Calumet River Basin Development Commission will next meet Wednesday in Munster Town Hall.
Officials representing the town of Munster have met with the commission since September's massive rainfall resulted in millions of dollars of damage to the town.
The embattled commission has been faulted by U.S. Rep. Pete Visclosky, D-Ind., and Northwest Indiana lawmakers for not completing the federal levee in time to prevent the damage in September. Two weeks ago, a second commissioner, Vice Chairman Robert Marszalek, resigned his post, following the example of veteran Commissioner Steve Davis and longtime Executive Director Dan Gardner.
Brown said she hopes the urgency expressed by Visclosky and state Sen. Frank Mrvan, D-Hammond, pressures the commission to finish the levee, which ends at the Illinois state line.
"But right now our problem is Munster," she said. "It's going to be very expensive, but we don't see any way around it."
Town Manager Tom DeGiulio said the temporary fix will involve a two-mile stretch along the river between Northcote and Hohman avenues. Engineers are assessing the area to build up the existing levee to about a 600-foot elevation to equalize the Munster levee to that of Hammond's on the other side of the river. Cost estimates are not complete.
Following the flood, immediate repairs were made to segments of the levee where it had been overwhelmed by the river. Concrete barriers will be installed in some segments while others will be cleaned of debris and replaced with clay. A few spots will be walled with sandbags.
"This is not something that can be done in a couple of weeks," DeGiulio said. "You want to be able to provide as much protection as is realistically possible."
Munster's reinforced levee must be built so it can be taken down by contractors as they complete the permanent levee.
Brown and DeGiulio are among those who call levee maintenance the highest priority. Currently the cities and towns along the river become responsible only for their stretch of the levee when it is completed.
Brown and DeGiulio argue that creating a single entity to oversee the levee would avoid the build-up of debris that contributed to September's flooding.
"If we do not maintain this levee system we might as well not build it," Brown said.
DeGiulio said such oversight involves a regionwide approach to overseeing not just the Little Calumet River but drainage ditches to the south of the river. Blockages must be cleaned out promptly and often individual communities don't have the proper equipment.
"Delay is the problem," he said. "The quick rise in the water level is because of some of the blockages."
Some of the blockages encountered in mid-September were the result of the tornado that occurred in early August, DeGiulio said.
