USACE to fully fund Tulsa West Tulsa Levees upgrade project

Photo By Sara Goodeyon | Left to right, Tulsa District Emergency Management Chief Bill Smiley, Indian Nations Council of Governments Executive Director Rich Brierre, Tulsa County Drainage District No. 12 Director Todd Kilpatrick, District 2 Tulsa County Commissioner Karen Keith, City of Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum, and Tulsa Regional Chamber of Commerce President and Chief Executive Officer Michael S. Neal celebrate after Wednesday’s press conference announcing that the Tulsa and West Tulsa Levees Project is fully funded with $137.4 million from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.  

TULSA, OK, UNITED STATES

01.21.2022

Story by Sara Goodeyon 

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Tulsa District

TULSA, Okla. — The Tulsa and West Tulsa Levees Project is now fully funded with $137.4 million from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as a result of legislation that funds disaster recovery.
The announcement came Wednesday when the Corps released the Civil Works studies, projects and programs that would be implemented in Fiscal Year 2022 with the $22.81 billion in supplemental funding provided in two recently enacted laws — the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act; and the 2022 Disaster Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act.
“With this funding from the Army Corps we can finish modernizing and upgrading the levees from the unacceptable version we began with to levees that will protect our children and our children’s children,” said District 2 Tulsa County Commissioner Karen Keith at a press conference Wednesday afternoon announcing the funding. “This has been a priority of mine for as long as I can remember and I am grateful for the tireless work of the Army Corps Chief of Engineers’ Lt. Gen Spellmon, his predecessor Lt. Gen. Semonite, Brig. Gen. Beck, and Col. Preston and their staff.”
The flood of 2019 exposed the fragility of the levee system which protects more than 10,000 people who live behind them and about as many who work or go to school there.
“It’s about an 8 square mile area, it has over 4 thousand parcels,” said Indian Nations Council of Governments Executive Director Rich Brierre. “It’s estimated that 2 billion dollars of property is protected by the levees, including residential, commercial, industrial, utilities, public facilities, and infrastructure.”
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Headquarters, Southwestern Division, and Tulsa District has been working with the Tulsa County Drainage District No. 12, Tulsa County, The City of Tulsa, and the City of Sand Springs for more than a decade to bring the project to this point.
“With projects of this magnitude, this is an incredibly short period of time to go from authorization of a project, to fully funded in about five years. It often takes decades, there are many projects that are authorized but never have a completed feasibility study. Many of them have a feasibility study but are never fully appropriated. But this is something that has been done in record time. We’re celebrating that today, the record time for the feasibility study,” said Brierre.
The project is now in the pre-engineering and design phase with the initial work projected to begin in the summer.
“As we move forward, we’ll continue with the full partnership of the Corps, the local agencies and participate to get this job done. We appreciate the effort of everyone involved,” said Tulsa District Emergency Management Chief Bill Smiley, who has been involved with the levees project since the effort began to improve the system.

• Date Taken: 01.21.2022
• Date Posted: 01.21.2022 14:17
• Story ID: 413226
• Location: TULSA, OK, US