In addition to transportation, another important component of Congressment Walz's infrastructure budget requests is for flood relief. While last August flooding in Southeastern Minnesota was the most deadly and dramatic, other parts of the district also suffered from the effects of flooding.
KEYC-TV reports Owatonna Hopes Federal Aid Will Boost Flood Control Efforts. There's video available at the link. Some details from the story:
Despite being far away from any river, folks in one area of Owatonna suffered from two separate floods in August and October of 2007.
Owatonna Mayor Thomas Kuntz says, "That caused some problems with about 270 homes on our southeast side of town. Some of them getting just a little amount of water in their basement to some of them having their egress windows busted out and their whole basement flooded."
The Southeast corner had flooding problems for the past five years, and this fall, the city took action. But when they looked to the state for help...," Kuntz says, "There's about 43 million dollars in request they have about 10 million dollars to be able to service that. The answer to Owatonna was zero. Zero dollars."
The city pressed on, highlighting 8 projects that would alleviate the constant flooding.
But even with issuing 3.7 million dollars in bonds, Owatonna could only afford the top four projects.So the city is looking to their Congressman, Democrat Tim Walz, to do what he can to get federal funding. . . .
When Congressman Walz talks about his budget requests coming from local leaders and going through vetting by his staff, these sorts of details underly that general statement. Wants or needs? Sounds like a necessary project rather than wasteful pork.
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