Floodwaters from heavy rains in late June caused about $500,000 in damages within the city of Winfield alone, officials said Monday.
Much of what the city spends will be in labor costs, said city manager Warren Porter. The cost of the latest storm, coupled with more than $400,000 in damage from wind and rain storms earlier in the month, have put repair expenditures well above normal.
“Basically we’re pushing a million for the month of June just for emergencies,” Porter said.
Officials are hopeful the city will be reimbursed by the federal government for expenses related to flooding. President George W. Bush has approved a disaster declaration that includes Cowley County.
With the attention being paid to recent flooding, Porter is not so optimistic that damage from the earlier storm will be covered.
Brian Stone, director for Cowley County Emergency Management, was meeting with representatives from the Federal Emergency Management Agency Monday to assess damage county wide. FEMA is touring several Kansas counties.
Much of the damage in Winfield occurred at the fairground. Water ripped through the side of Barn 4 and tore away some metal siding. Material costs for repairing the barn will run about $20,000.
“We know that because we want to get it fixed before the fair,” Porter said.
Other structural damage is mostly minor, though city crews have spent considerable time cleaning up at the fairground. Some of the fencing around seldom-used ballfields at the facility have been or will be taken down and not replaced.
Porter said the damage will not rival that seen after flooding in 1998. One positive is that regularly scheduled highway work will create ground up street materials that can be used to repair some roads at the fairground.
A number of electrical outlets for campers will need to dried out and have their fuses changed.
Elsewhere in the city, about $5,000 will be spent to patch potholes created when the bedding underneath the streets became saturated.
But some of the more time-consuming work will occur at the city lake. For the first time in at least a quarter century, Porter said, the lake poured over into an emergency spillway.
Water levels at the lake were more than eight feet above normal. The force of the water damaged the emergency spillway.
“There was some scouring,” Porter said. “The water moved a lot of rock and soil. There’s a lot of work to do to put that stuff back.”
