Answers, funds needed to stop flood damage

Months after the second major flood in three years, cleanup continues at some of the 400 damaged homes in Lake County, as local officials wrestle with their share of an estimated $1.1 million in flood-related bills.

What also lingers is a critical question: What can be done to prevent it from happening again?

The answer, some experts say, is nothing cheap -- if anything can be done at all.

"Aside from buying land and using it as a flood reservoir of some kind, there's not much more that can be done from our end," said Rita Lee, a water hydraulist with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources and an expert on the Chain O' Lakes and Fox River. "We've done all we can at the dams on the Fox River, and there isn't much land available for storage as it is."

Creating water storage space -- either by acquiring land or raising the seawall -- is one idea that has been looked at.

But, most of the land around the Chain is developed, primarily as single-family homes. So acquiring it would be expensive and complicated, officials say.

Creating more water storage on the Chain by raising seawalls and homes above flood levels is another option.

However, Lee said that's also very expensive -- estimated in the tens of millions of dollars.

The last major project on the Chain was installing the Obermeyer Gates at the Stratton Lock and Dam in McHenry and the Algonquin Dam.

The larger dam doors, built in 2002 with $3 million in federal and state dollars, allow more water to be released down river. Without those gates, she said, the 2007 flood would have been much worse because the water would have lingered days -- if not weeks -- longer.

Now, Lee says, "All we could really do now is look at individual areas that have flooded, either subdivisions or individual homes. There are flood-proofing measures that could be put in place with ring levees and raising homes."

Fox Lake building commissioner Bill Hart believes stringent rules in place are enough when it comes to remodeling homes. County and federal rules, he said, require that a home undergoing a major renovation must be raised 1 foot above the highest recorded flood levels.

"When over 50 percent of the home is worked on, then the first floor needs to be 1 foot over the levels recorded during the 100-year flood," he said. "We haven't added any local ordinances to make it stricter because this is pretty good."

Another possibility that has been discussed, Lee said, is building a dam at the Wisconsin border to control the amount of water coming south.

But, Lee said, even that would not have been enough to control the more than 13 inches of rain recorded in August.

It's not as simple as building a bigger dam to stop the water, she said. Water always runs to the lowest point, so the land around the dam would have to be raised, as would land and seawalls surrounding the Chain, Lee said.

Otherwise, the water -- and the flooding problem -- would just move to a lower-lying spot, said Ed Lescher, head of the Emergency Services Disaster Agency in Fox Lake.

Roughly 101 homes were flooded by the Chain and the Fox River in Fox Lake, and about $100,000 was spent by the village in sandbagging, overtime and cleanup efforts.

Water levels reached about 2 feet over flood levels in Fox Lake and about 7 feet over flood levels in northern New Munster, Wis., when more than 13 inches of rain fell between July 31 and Aug. 25.

At one point, it rained for 13 of 14 days in Fox Lake and Antioch.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is hoping local and state governments will take advantage of extra grant money available for the sole purpose of stopping the floods from returning.

Money is available to any Illinois community that comes up with a viable plan to protect homes and property continuously washed out by flood waters, said Jean Baker, spokeswoman from FEMA.

"These projects are proposed by local governments to the state," she said. "The state decides which ones are best, then brings them to us. Then, we release the money to help fund those programs."

The amount each community is eligible for depends on how much the emergency management agency has paid out in flood relief to that area, she said. Each area is eligible for grant money of 15 percent of what the agency has paid out. So, if FEMA paid $100,000 to homeowners for flood damages, the potential grant is $15,000 for flood mitigation.

Then, if someone comes up with a flood mitigation plan that could potentially help the area, FEMA would cover 75 percent of the proposed project.

Baker said FEMA is not limited on the amount of money available to be spent, but must adhere to the 15 percent of total homeowner and business payout.