Rob: After a two-year long drought, this year's rains have been a welcome relief
and a growing burden.
Heavy downpours this summer ruined crops, upturned lives, and
damaged several communities.
Today on Oklahoma HORIZON we focus on those areas of our state still dealing
with the aftermath, after the flood, and we begin by heading to Caddo County.
Rob: When the sky opened up this past August 19th, parts of Caddo County
received as much as 12 inches of rain, in just five hours.
Flooding was rampant, endangering lives and washing out 150 bridges.
Farmers lost crops and their land.
Duane Stevens: Here is what it's done to a 70 acre field.
It's just demolished it, and probably 4 to 5 inches
of silt over the top of it.
Rob: Duane Stevens is one of a long list of landowners, with land now
out of production.
Rob: To date, over 2,000 emergency assistance applications have been
filed at the local conservation office, with
a price tag close to $10 million.
Amanda Tye: We've seen gaps across fields as wide as 18 feet.
We've seen ponds that have lost dams, structures with
cuts through them that are 55 feet deep.
So the damage is extensive, and repairs are going to be a long time in
getting fixed, and damage along the creeks, where dikes have broken out, has
put silt in fields that are going to be definitely a long lasting effect to
those producers.
Rob: Which is why a group of lawmakers and conservation officials
toured just some of the damage, land eroded by rushing water.
Now it's easy to see just how dramatic the flooding was here in mid August.
Off to my right, and off to my left, there's about a 30 foot gap of land that
washed away, that eventually took out an entire roadway.
Phil Perryman: This is used a lot for transportation across.
So there's hundreds of people that use this road daily.
Rob: But no more.
A 100 foot gash now cuts through the roadway that plunges then another 100
foot down, making any repair here both difficult and costly.
Something officials with the Natural Resource Conservation Service say
will affect everyone.
Perryman: Not only from a flood control standpoint, but also transportation.
Rob: But what is inconvenient for motorists
has become devastating for landowners.
Farm fields are now gulleys, completely eroded, and unusable.
Roy Green: As you can see behind me, this is from the last rain we got.
We got 15 inches of rain in about 4 or 5 hours,
and the sugar sand just couldn't take it.
Rob: Statewide damage to the land could reach as much as $30 million,
damage that could get worse, with the next heavy rain.
State Senator Ron Justice.
Senator Ron Justice: It's a statewide problem and not just a local problem.
I think it's so important that we recognize that and we not think of it just as
an individual producer, or an individual community or county.
But it's a statewide problem, and if we work together, as a state, to
solve this problem, then we're going to be solving a problem for years to
come, and a problem that's going to affect people
all over the state of Oklahoma.
Rob: Oklahoma's Conservation Commission hopes to receive an
additional $8.8 million from the legislature to repair not just the
damage, but protect against future disasters.
Mike Thralls: The conservation infrastructure has been
seriously damaged, and we need to repair that damage.
We had flood control structures across this state, 2100 of them that
held, and prevented maybe $350 million worth of damage, but we have
sustained damage that needs to be repaired.
Rob: Before we lose more land to the power of Mother Nature.