Although DeKalb has taken care of immediate issues from last August’s flood, future preventative actions are still awaiting to be put in the works.

“This flood is basically closed as far as DeKalb County is concerned,” said Dennis Miller, coordinator of the DeKalb County Emergency Services and Disaster Agency.

Projects that were interrupted by the flood were still able to be completed.

At the time of the flood, workers were in the middle of rebuilding Annie Glidden Road north of Resource Bank, said DeKalb City Engineer Joel Maurer.

“The project was to expand the road and set it at a higher elevation,” Maurer said.

Despite the interruption, the project was able to continue and was completed in November.

As a result of the flood, many residents in the floodplain had to be evacuated from their homes while damage was being fixed.

“We’ve moved everyone back in,” said Russ Farnum, director of DeKalb Community Development. “As far as I know, all problems we documented have been corrected.”

Residents who remain to file claims from the flood do so through FEMA, not through DeKalb County.

“If someone filed a claim through FEMA, we have no record of that,” Miller said. “We can’t get involved with that.”

As for now, DeKalb’s biggest obstacle is to find funding for projects that would hopefully help prevent mass damage if another flood situation were to occur. DeKalb has already created a Storm Water Task Force.

“We’re trying to figure out what to do to get projects done from a financial standpoint,” Farnum said.

One of the main projects would be to take care of residents in the floodplain.

“A lot of housing in the floodplain got damaged, so homeowners had to stand a lot of their own losses with the damage on their house,” Maurer said. “We want to find funding sources for buying out homes that are chronically damaged by river flooding.”

After tearing down the property, they would leave the lots vacant so there would not be any future structures to get destroyed by flooding again, Maurer said.

Residents are already aware that their property may be bought out in the future.

“A number of them are wanting to be bought out because they are tired of their house flooding on a regular basis,” Farnum said.

“It has been difficult to find funds to buy those properties,” Maurer said, adding that the properties are mainly toward Lyons Park (Taylor Street area).

For this specific project, the city had applied for a highly competitive grant through FEMA, but was not chosen to receive this round’s grant.

“We’re going to continue to re-apply for the grant whenever it’s available,” Farnum said.

Another project in need of funding would be to fix the levee system.

“We are trying to apply for federal funding to support the cost of elevating the levee at several points that dip lower than they should be,” Maurer said, adding that they noticed some deficiencies in the levee system where it got overtopped by the big storm event last year.

“The levee crosses from where Lucinda crosses the river north through the Tilton Park area,” Farnum said.