Hazardous mitigation plan updated

MT. PLEASANT — Henry County Board of Supervisors met members of Southeast Iowa Regional Planning Commission to discuss a Hazardous Mitigation Plan, which they intent to adopt at their next meeting.

The supervisors welcomed Gail Thomas from SEIRP to discuss the updated hazardous mitigation plan for the county at their regular meeting Thursday, Dec. 14.

Thomas poured over the previous mitigation plan for the county and developed an updated plan for the supervisor’s approval.

According to Emergency Management Director Walt Jackson, these plans require updates every five years, so, Thomas has worked to put together this plan since July.

These plans then go through multiple levels of government for approval to eventually receive approval from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

According to Jackson, once the supervisors adopt the plan, it will be sent to the state level.

“They have a review at the back of this plan and they have a check sheet that they go through and check if it meets criteria,” he explained. “If it meets all their criteria, and we get their stamp of approval then they sent it to the region seven center of FEMA and they do the same thing.”

SEIRP Assistant Director Zach Nunn gave additional information on the importance of keeping the county’s hazardous mitigation plan up to date.

“Part of the reason we want to keep these up to date is FEMA has certain grant programs and some of the action items that we’re talking about need to be in there to be adopted by certain agencies to be eligible for some of the different programs …” Nunn said.

While Jackson says this plan does not guarantee that the county will receive funds in the event of a disaster, it is a necessary step if the need arises.

“Knock on wood, we haven’t had a natural disaster in the time that I have been here,” Jackson said. “We’ve had small disasters and whatnot, but we cannot get federal funding for emergency management if we don’t have this plan.”

While Thomas presented the board with a thick hazardous mitigation plan document, she only pointed out a few topics of interest.

According to Thomas, she included mitigation plans for the dam in the county.

“I don’t know that we even need to include it, because it’s not a high hazard dam, but it is called a significant dam under certain criteria that they use, so, I did include it.”

Thomas added a section about expansive soils to the mitigation plan, as well.

“In some parts of the county, expansive soils are a real issue and in some parts it's not,” Thomas said. “But when I started to look at Henry Count, you have a serious incident of expansive soils.”

According to Thomas this section was added to plan primarily as an educational aspect and encouraged the county to find a way to inform those seeking to build new basement type structures of expansive soil so they can plan appropriately.

With agreement from the supervisors, Thomas said she heard from many communities that there were concerns about stray feral cats throughout the county, too.

“It is actually a wildlife issue at this point,” Thomas said. “ … I put it in there because more than one community raised this concern. I know that stray cats are not ordinarily something, but what has happened is these cats are proliferating and become a hindrance to the wildlife and there’s really very little that can be done about it.”

According to Thomas, many of the changes and updates made to the hazardous mitigation plan are community driven.

At the end of Thursday’s meeting, the Board of Supervisors stated that they intended to review and hopefully adopt an update version of this plan at the Tuesday, Dec. 19 meeting.

Comments: AnnaMarie.Ward@southeastiowaunion.com