By Steve Brawner, © 2019 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

July 2, 2019

Hindsight is 20-20, and in hindsight what happened last Thursday probably should have happened sooner.

But hindsight is only useful as a learning tool, so now it’s time for its more valuable cousin, foresight.

On June 27, Gov. Asa Hutchinson announced he was creating the Arkansas Levee Task Force to recommend how to maintain and strengthen the state’s levees. Because the levees have been weakened by the recent historic flooding, the task force will have a short timeline to complete its report by the end of the year.

Meanwhile, the governor said he will seek quick (and certain) legislative approval to spend $10 million on immediate repairs, particularly for the Holla Bend Levee in Yell County, which dramatically breached, and the Lollie Levee in Faulkner County, which hung on by a thread.

Task forces are a favorite tool for this governor, and he has used them to lay groundwork and build support on a variety of concerns, including highway funding, health care spending, and school safety. Members of these task forces take their cues from the governor while also offering their independent perspectives. The Levee Task Force’s recommendations probably will form the foundation for the state’s next steps.

The condition of the state’s levees was not a surprise. Constructed by the Corps of Engineers in the first half of the 20th century, they were handed over to local boards that became inactive as their members aged and/or died off and were not replaced. The big mounds of dirt did their jobs well enough and became part of the landscape – just one more example of current generations benefiting from the foresight of previous ones.

But big mounds of dirt must be maintained like anything else, and a generation that has foresight will take steps to further improve them. Neither happened. Ten years ago in 2009, a legislative audit report said the state should take greater responsibility for those levees. That report gathered dust on a shelf. After a levee breached behind his home, Sen. Jason Rapert, R-Conway, sponsored legislation in 2016 requiring county clerks to report to the Arkansas Natural Resources Commission regarding their counties’ levees, their state of repair and their organizational structure. The legislation authorized county judges to reappoint members to defunct levee boards.

That was a start, but as Hutchinson reported Thursday, of the state’s 93 levees, fewer than 20 made reports as required by the law. Some did not report because no one was overseeing them. Any levee that has failed to meet minimum standards, including board oversight, is ineligible for Corps of Engineering funding to repair it. That includes the Holla Bend Levee.

Hindsight being 20-20, the local boards should have been refilled as their members died off last century. And something should have been done after that 2009 report. And after Rapert’s law was passed in 2016, the county judges should have reconstituted the levee boards. And when they didn’t, the state should have made them do it or taken over the levees itself.

Now that the waters are receding, it’s time for foresight with the benefit of hindsight. Step one: The state should ensure each levee has someone in charge of it, local or state. That should happen as soon as possible.

Step two is deciding what to spend on the levees. The state will no doubt seek federal funds wherever it can find them, because that’s what state governments do. But where federal funds are not available, the state should invest the money itself.

Hutchinson guessed that the public and private costs from the flooding will exceed “well over $100 million.” That’s not including the disrupted lives and interrupted commerce.

We probably would have been better off laying $1 million worth of dirt on each of those 93 levees, but that’s hindsight. Will we have the foresight to maintain and strengthen the levees now?