Flood-prevention work along the Kankakee River and its Yellow River tributary will get a $2.3 million boost from the new state budget.
“That’s a sign of the state’s willingness to invest in the Kankakee River basin,” said Scott Pelath, executive director of the Kankakee River Basin Commission.
The $2.3 million appropriation is more than double the largest KRBC appropriation in the past and nearly four times more than the commission received in the previous two state budgets, he said.
It also could be the last direct state appropriation to the Kankakee commission.
Legislation passed earlier in the Indiana General Assembly renames and pares down the size of the commission. It also creates a system of property assessments that will raise money for future projects in the Kankakee drainage basin of Lake, Porter, Jasper, Newton, LaPorte, Starke, Marshall and St. Joseph counties.
Those assessments -- including $1 per acre of agricultural property, $7 per residential parcel and $50 per commercial parcel -- will begin in 2021. The assessments are expected to raise nearly $3 million a year.
The current KRBC will meet one more time, on June 13 at the community center in Knox. It is expected to hear an engineering firm’s long-range recommendations for flood-control projects to be carried out by the new commission.
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The new body, the Kankakee River Basin and Yellow River Basin Development Commission, will take office in July. It will have nine members – one from each Indiana county in the Kankakee River basin, plus the Indiana Department of Natural Resources director. The current commission has 24 members – three from each county.
The $2.3 million appropriated in the state’s two-year budget will address problems already identified along the Kankakee and Yellow rivers, Pelath said.
“I think there’s a pretty clear consensus on where to start,” he said.
That includes expanding on a successful pilot project aimed at reducing the amount of sand coming into the Yellow River and, from there, into the Kankakee. The Yellow River sand has been a major source of sediment in the Kankakee.
The Yellow River pilot project was completed in 2017 and survived last year’s record flood with few repairs needed, Pelath said.
Other projects that could be carried with the new appropriation include repairing damaged river banks along the Kankakee and planting native vegetation on the slopes.
Tim Zorn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.