Sen Brown tours flood-prone Findlay

FINDLAY, Ohio - Progress is being made to attempt to make Findlay's floods less intense and less frequent.

The Flag City was able to secure $1.5 million in federal funds earlier this year and already that money is being used to devise a plan for the city.

U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown, who visited Findlay and the Blanchard River on Monday, said a project like this usually takes five years just to assess and plan before any construction.

In Findlay, though, that time should be cut down to around three years because of the community's involvement and the federal funding.

"In about three years we will see construction of walls and that's assuming everything goes correctly between now and then," said Tony Iriti, former Findlay mayor, now the president of the Northwest Ohio Flood Mitigation Partnership that Findlay, the Village of Ottawa and Putnam County have formed.

"This really is an example of a community partnership stepping up and working with the federal government to make this happen faster then it would have otherwise," Sen. Brown said.

The regional organization is working with the Army Corps of Engineers to figure out what needs to be done to stop rising flood waters from the Blanchard River and how much it will cost.

Once a plan is in place the federal government will be asked to pay 65-percent of the project's funding while the remaining 35-percent will have to be raised locally.

The flood mitigation partnership hopes Hancock County and Putnam County residents will pass a sales tax that is on November's general election ballot that will fund the local portion of the project.

"It really will show the interest lies in this community to get this problem fixed once and for all," Iriti said.

The project will not fix the flooding problem for good, but have flooding occur every five, 10 or 20 years, Sen. Brown told FOX Toledo News.

Once complete, the hope is that a major flood will only take place along the Blanchard every 100 years, not every time a soaking rain invades the region.

Findlay and Ottawa experienced three major floods over the past two years - August 2007, February 2008, and March 2009.