The tragic flooding in Texas last weekend led to a lengthy discussion about flood preparedness in Bell County during Tuesday’s Fiscal Court meeting.

Judge-Executive Albey Brock opened the meeting by taking a minute to speak about that tragedy and remind Bell Countians to be wary and to take flood watches and warnings seriously.

“That can happen anywhere. We’ve seen devastating flooding in eastern Kentucky north of us and it’s obvious that we’re getting bigger rains,” he said. “We try to be as prepared as we possibly can. We’ve got very conscientious leadership in Emergency Management, we stay on top of the weather, we do everything we can to be ready. But guys, if the good Lord puts that much water down — it raised 26 feet in 45 minutes — there’s no amount of ditching, tiling, bridging, it would just be devastating.”

He said everyone had become numb to hearing about flash flood watches and often ignored them.

“I hope seeing what happened in Texas, and because of the type of weather patterns we’ve been witnessing in our region the last couple of years, that we’d be a lot more cognitive of that. Especially if you live in a low-lying area or anywhere close to a creek or any big water tributary,” Brock said. “If you hear about a flood watch you’ve got to be ready because sometimes by the time you get a flood warning it’s too late.”

Magistrate Joe Hammontree said he had also thought about what the county could do to help mitigate flooding. He said Floyd and Knott counties had applied with the Division of Water to dredge creeks and channels and suggested that Bell County should do the same.

“When I went to visit my dad the other day, it rained for about two hours and the water had gotten over the bridge. When I was a kid it had to rain for two weeks before it would get over that bridge,” he said. “(Back then) I could jump off of that bridge and it was hard to touch the bottom. Now the water is a foot deep. It’s filled in from the strip mining, the logging and everything. . .  I was shocked by how bad it was.”

Brock said he agreed and was anxious to see how the Division of the Water and the state would address those permits that had been applied for.

“We should be able to do more of that without fear of being fined,” he said. “They tried to fine us $60,000 in 2010 and 2011 for taking debris out of the creek at Ambleside. We had a big rain and a flood that got up close to some of those houses. We were under a declared emergency and proactively went in there and dipped that creek out and hauled that material off.”

Brock said a few months later he was getting notices from the Division of Water that the county was going to face two $30,000 fines for being in the creek without a permit and disrupting the habitat of the black-sided dace.

“We fought them and nothing came of it because I basically told them if faced with the same situation under a declared emergency I would do the same thing again,” he said.

Paul Dengel, the community liaison for USDA Rural Development in London, was in attendance at the meeting and said they were working with the Division of Water on a projects to add “green sinks” in Clay County and Morehead.

“Basically when the water rises it goes into a little area — in a lot of places they are used as soccer fields and things like that — they have a permeable bottom so the water will drain back out,” he said. “It’s for areas that don’t have much other use that sit alongside waterways.”

He said often dredging creeks will just make the water move faster during a flood event and cause downstream erosion.

“FEMA buyout lands are really good for that type of thing, NRCS public-private partnerships are good for this,” Dengel said. “There’s another project where they’re lowering the flood plane by half a foot by using a 60-acre piece of land that a private owner has. 43 acres of it are going to be turned into wetlands. The owner doesn’t have to pay anything pretty much, they just have a conservation easement, and now they’ve got a hunting spot that floods but it also lowers the flood plane. It’s a win-win for everybody.”

Brock asked Dengel if he could officially look at all the tributaries in Bell County and see where the problem areas are and come up with some potential solutions.

Dengel said he would get up with the Division of Water to start talking about a Watershed Management Plan.

“It all starts there. Once you have a Watershed Management Plan in place, then you can use that to start applying for different funding mechanisms,” he said.

Brock said the county was 100-percent on board with looking at those kinds of solutions and suggested Dengel get together with Emergency Management Director George Smith to go over maps and anything else needed to start working on a Watershed Management Plan.

A question came in through the meeting’s live stream about adding rain gauges along the Cumberland River, specifically at the Page bridge. Bell County currently only has one gauge on the river near Pineville.

Brock said the county gets information on the river’s flood stage from Harlan County’s gauge at Baxter and that typically lets them know what to expect as the river crests.

“That’s part of our emergency planning. We go to great lengths to try and be ready, we move our ambulances, we stage our equipment in different areas so that in the event something happens in one of those low-lying areas we don’t get trapped and we can get to all areas of the county,” he said.

“I can’t stress this enough. If we get a rain event like what they experienced in Texas and what we’ve seen on a very small scale here in certain areas, all that preparation won’t be enough. We could have a gauge every 100 feet and it won’t be enough,” Brock said. “We as humans are going to have to pay more attention when these things come. If you live in an area that is prone to flooding you need to get out (when there’s a watch or warning).