The Sac City City Council voted unanimously on Tuesday evening to establish a watershed management coalition with cities existing within the Raccoon River watershed. City Administrator, Adam Ledford says the area is much larger than people realize.
Those counties are primarily Buena Vista, Pocahontas, Sac, Calhoun, Webster, Carroll, Greene, Guthrie, Dallas and Polk with small segments of surrounding counties. The city is joining the coalition to qualify for grants from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) that it would not be eligible for before joining.
In Ledford’s nearly 10 years with Sac City, he remembers three separate instances where it was declared a disaster area by FEMA, and this causes major problems for many of the cities’ aging systems.
The grants offered by FEMA allow for cities inside the watershed to preemptively repair those issues before a flood or other disaster causes further problems.
