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Managers from the cities of Houghton and Hancock, along with the Houghton County Road Commission met recently with legislators in search of additional state aid that would pay contributions required for federal aid assistance that is needed to repair roadways in Houghton County damaged from flooding in June.
“We met with the appropriation committees for both the House and the Senate. We also met with the majority leader in the Senate to see if we can get more money from the State of Michigan for helping on paying for some or all of the local match that will be required for both the FEMA projects and Federal Highway roads as well,” said Hancock City Manager Glenn Anderson.
In natural disaster situations, such as the flood in June, there are a couple of federal assistance programs and each is responsible for a certain category of roadway. State Highways are covered by one program, and primary roads are covered by another. In order to receive that federal aid, each governing body is required to put it a percentage, but due to the amount of damage, that required amount is far higher than what the local governments can afford.
“In Houghton County, $9.2 million is our current estimate of what we need. That’s even after the governor had already given us about $5.2 million to help in the local match, which we appreciated very much but we’re still trying to get a little over $9 million which could go as high as $10 million before this is over,” Anderson said.
Anderson, along with Houghton County Road Engineer Kevin Harju and Houghton City Manager Eric Waara, have returned to the Copper Country, but it still may be a few weeks before they have an answer from the state.
Anderson said, “That we will not know until, the earliest would be December. Nothing’s going to happen before the election and of course there’s not going to be any budgetary movement on the state legislature until December at the earliest.”
Total damage to Houghton county roads is estimated at over $50 million. Anderson said, “In the city, we have about $10.6 million worth of damage related to the flood. We have several high priority projects. One is the storm sewer blowout in front of city hall on Montezuma Street. Our biggest one is Elevation Street from South Lincoln to North Lincoln. That’s our number one priority as we go into this fall.”
A dusting of snow this past weekend serves as a reminder that construction season in the Keweenaw Peninsula will be coming to an end in the upcoming weeks and will leave several road repairs waiting until spring, but progress is still being made locally. Houghton reopened its Montezuma Avenue today, after being restricted to one lane for over three months.
“Everyone’s proceeding on bidding out projects, designing projects, getting them out and getting them ready to bid both this fall and of course for 2019. These are projects that can’t be stopped while we wait for local match. They have to be done and we just have to hope that we can come up with more money,” Anderson said.
