Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 6, 1994 TAG: 9401060112
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder Newspapers
DATELINE: WAPELLO, IOWA LENGTH: Medium
Last summer, floods again covered her family's fields - the 17th time since 1929. But in 1993, Boysen, who inherited most of the land, was forced to consider something her father never did: giving up.
In a gesture that indicates just how costly last summer's flooding was, she and 12 other landowners in this valley are planning to sell the rights to 3,000 acres of their farmland to the federal government. The government said it will never be farmed again.
Instead, it will become a wetland - something it was before being settled in the 19th century, said soil experts, and something the land has flirted with ever since.
The buyout is a pilot project being touted by Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy as a partial answer to last summer's disastrous floods. With $15 million in hand, the government is seeking to buy easements and land from farmers in eight Midwestern states this month.
The idea is to create along the rivers small pockets of wetlands that can absorb future flooding, federal officials said. The government will save money by not repairing the levees, and the public can enjoy the wild, uncultivated land.
Meanwhile, the farmers will be able to avoid the expense of restoring their fields and use the money they earn from selling rights to the land to buy better, higher ground.
But for people like Boysen, 47, who grew up on a 100-year-old family farm, the decision to sell reverberates with questions of heritage, of the meaning of land, of whether flooding has been a curse in her family or the source of a heroic struggle.
"I really have mixed emotions on it," Boysen said while sitting at her dining room table. "I think a lot about land and value and having it. It kind of hurts that you are kind of selling it, in a way, not having it anymore. It's not going to be productive anymore. It won't ever be. It won't ever be the same again. I guess that's what hurts - the change."
In Wapello, population 2,011, the countryside still has not recovered from last summer's flooding.
The land is stained black, as black as if there had been an oil spill. Rot and mold cover the ground where water stood waist-high for months. Fields are dotted with sandbars and the curled carcasses of trees.
In the woods, the trees wear dark collars of residue. Deer browse through dead undergrowth.
Boysen's family still has the 1846 land grant signed by President James K. Polk, which records their ancestors' claim to the land. "But nothing is forever," Jack Parsons, a cousin and owner of 40 acres, said.
All told, the flood caused $1.8 million in damage to the lowland where Boysen and her neighbors farm. Fixing their local levee would cost an additional $700,000 to $800,000. Although the Army Corps of Engineers would pay 80 percent of the cost, Boysen and her neighbors estimate it would take 10 years to pay off their share of the debt.
"In that time, it might flood three more times," noted Parsons.
The government's program, the Emergency Wetlands Reserve Program, offers to pay farmers in hard-hit areas for easements to fields that border rivers. The government would leave some levees unrepaired, and use the fields in times of flooding to absorb water.
The farmers, in turn, would be allowed to use parts of the land for grazing or growing walnut trees, which can tolerate some flooding, but in general would be encouraged to return the land to wetlands.
What makes the Wapello project different is its large scope, and that most farmers plan to sell the land itself, not just easements.
Parsons said local farmers thought the price for the easements - $683 per acre - wasn't high enough, and asked to be bought out in full.
So the government enlisted the help of several nonprofit organizations, including the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation, the Conservation Fund and Ducks Unlimited. Together, the groups and the government have raised about $3.7 million to buy 3,000 acres outright. The government offered from $300 to $1,000 per acre to buy the land, depending on how damaged it was by the flooding.
In Wapello, the decision to sell or not sell has been part of the conversation at the Tomahawk Cafe for nearly a month.
"It sounds good to me because of the expense anymore," Yotter, a young farmer who is tired of fighting flooding, said. "Our interest is the money, and reinvesting it in the land and going on."
by CNB