This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Aug. 5, 2013 - Twenty years after the Great Flood of ’93, Susan Schillinger remains firmly planted on the Mississippi River floodplain, still living in her repaired two-story white frame house, one of the remaining structures of "old town” Valmeyer.
Schillinger’s cheerful front porch, trimmed for summer in red geraniums and Fourth of July ribbons, was under water on Aug. 2, 1993, along with 95 percent of the village’s more than 350 homes, businesses and public buildings after a breached levee allowed the river to flow through.
When the water receded, Schillinger was one of the first to clean out the river’s leavings and reclaim her home that she believes to be about 100 years old. Though water had nearly reached the ceiling on the first floor and the place was stinking with mud, muck and debris, inspectors found no structural damage, she said.
So Schillinger stubbornly stayed put, opting out of the village’s plan to relocate to a new site on the bluffs.
"I’m not one to walk away from my commitments. Had there been structural damage, that would have been a different story,’’ she said. "How could I destroy something this old that had withstood such a disaster?’’
Schillinger, who moved to Valmeyer in 1980, said she attended meetings about the new town but decided she didn’t need a fancy new house.
"It’s like a big subdivision,’’ she said. "Do I want a house that looks like everybody else’s? This is fine for me.’’
Instead, Schillinger watched the flood-damaged village being emptied and buildings torn down on properties that had been bought out through the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s hazard mitigation program. The buyouts, which are designed to lessen the impact of future disasters, totalled about $23 million in Valmeyer.
"There were some gorgeous two-story houses,’’ she said. “It hurt to see them torn down.’’
Old town and new town
In 1993, Schillinger looked out on a village where 900 people lived and worked. Today, she can see a few scattered houses amid fields thick with corn and soybeans. The area, used primarily for recreation now, has a playground and outdoor sports fields.
Though she misses the community that was, Schillinger said she still likes living here -- in the peace and quiet. She is mindful of the river and pays close attention when it rises, such as this past spring when moderate flooding forced the closing of Bluff Road, a two-lane road that hugs the bluffs as it winds through the floodplain, south from Columbia.
"That made me nervous,’’ she said.
About 50 people still live within the confines of the original village of Valmeyer, according to Dennis Knobloch, who was mayor during the disaster and still holds the title of village administrator. The village annexed everything between the old village in the floodplain and the new site on the bluffs.
"Some people call it ‘old Valmeyer’ and ‘new Valmeyer,’ but there is no such thing. It’s just one Valmeyer,’’ Knobloch said.
Every Fourth of July, thousands of people return to the old part of town for a baseball tournament and fireworks celebration that has been a tradition for decades. Even though the place was still in ruins in July 1994, the village held the celebration just as it always did.
"People trickled back in to their homes. Despite the stench and mud, they threw their blankets on their lawns and sat where they always did to watch the parade,’’ he said. "We still have the celebration. It’s our tribute to the old town.’’
And to this day, people still congregate where their houses used to be, he said.
Room to grow
On paper, the village’s relocation can seem cut and dried, and it is often cited as a success story by advocates of floodplain buyouts. The village was recognized in 1996 by President Bill Clinton's Council for Sustainable Development.
But as Knobloch points out, relocation was never about recreating a Mayberry on the hill, and the Valmeyer of 2013 is not at all like the town lost to the flood.
The village, in its rolling setting on the bluffs, has grown to 1,263 people, about half of them were flood victims in ’93. Because most of the nearly 400 homes were built within the same time frame, the community has a homogenous feel -- of newness. An adjacent development that would add an additional 260 homes stalled during the recession.
Prices for homes currently for sale range from about $100,000 for a one–story, three-bedroom ranch to more than $200,000 for larger homes.
The relocation brought opportunities for growth because floodplain restrictions had prevented any new construction in the old village, Knobloch said.
"A lot of people coming back are the next generation,’’ he said. "With the restrictions in the floodplain on what you could do as far as maintaining or building new structures or renovating existing homes, a lot of the younger folks used to move somewhere else. Now, we’re seeing the next generation staying -- or coming.”
The village has faced a tougher challenge in attracting businesses. There is one restaurant/bar and a gas station with a convenience store. The planned retail district is empty, except for a couple of bank branches -– a reminder that most of the 25 businesses in pre-flood Valmeyer did not make the move up the hill.
There are two major employers in town -- MAR Graphics, a printing company which relocated from the old community and Rock City, a warehousing facility being developed in an old quarry the village owns under the bluffs. (See related story.)
"We are more of a bedroom community,’’ said Howard Heavner, the current mayor. “We’re close enough to St. Louis that people can work there. A lot of people like it here because we are close to the city but still out in the country.’’
He noted that it’s less than 10 miles to drive to stores in Waterloo, so residents don’t have to go far to buy groceries.
"But the reality is we’d like to get a grocery store, and if our new subdivision picks up, we likely could,’’ he said.
Visitors to the community are always impressed by the natural setting, he said.
"We take for granted how pretty it is. Basically, it was like building a town in a state park. There are deer and foxes. It’s really a quiet place, too,’’ he said and then laughed. "You go out at night and wonder if anyone’s alive.”
'Rome wasn't built in a day'
Heavner, who has been mayor for eight years, is one of the “newcomers” to the village, though he grew up in rural Valmeyer and has taught agriculture at the Valmeyer high school for more than 30 years.
"We had looked at building a house in Valmeyer but couldn’t because of the floodplain restrictions,’’ he said.
He understands the calls for relocating floodplain communities, but he believes there is no one answer.
"Every situation is different,’’ he said. “In ours, the flood took all the churches and stores and everything. The whole darn infrastructure of the town was in the flood so it just made sense.”
But the process, which has involved dealing with federal, state and local governments, has taken years to tie up loose ends.
"Rome wasn’t built in a day, and it’s going to take a lot of time,’’ he said.
Heavner said the village, which depends largely on municipal taxes for revenue, took a while to get back on its feet. The Rock City development has recently added dollars into the village coffers, as has the decision to lease empty ground in old town to farmers.
"Instead of paying people $20,000 to $25,000 to mow and keep the weeds down, we flipped that around and they’re paying us $20,000 to $25,000,’’ he said.
Knobloch said that residents of the flooded village took financial hits, whether they rebuilt or moved. Buyout packages, which took into account flood insurance payouts, were intended to make people “whole” after the disaster. But they were based on pre-flood value of the lost buildings and not on how much it would cost to rebuild. Most of the people who had paid off their mortgages and owned their properties outright had to take out new mortgages. People with existing mortgages at the time had new mortgages that were larger and of longer durations.
"Just about everybody took a step backward,’’ he said.
That said, Knobloch believes the village was right to relocate.
"There’s no doubt in my mind that had we not done this -- and just let things happen as they would have with the old town -- there would either be no Valmeyer at this point or it would be a very sorry place. Because I think no matter what we had done, there still would have been quite a few of the people who having gone through what they did would have hightailed it out. Without doing what we had done there, there would not have been this place for future generations.’’
'We're up on the hill now'
Lowell Nabers, 74, who was among the first residents of the new village, said that what still stands out in his mind was the toll the flood took on the older residents, particularly elderly women who owned modest little homes that they couldn’t afford to replace.
"That’s the sad part," he said.
Nabers, who grew up in the Valmeyer area, lived in a one-story ranch home on a lake, at the northern edge of town. Though his home had 7 feet of water inside, he was able to gut the structure for repair. But because his wife didn’t want to live in the abandoned floodplain, they chose to sell and buy a home in the new town.
Nabers said he had flood insurance, though it didn’t cover his losses, and his home was not in the village limits so it wasn’t covered in the buyout. But he and his wife had jobs and were able to survive.
"It put a lot of hardship on everybody,’’ he said. “But the young people can survive. They’ve got jobs. Most work in St. Louis or someplace else and they commute back and forth. They just moved to another place. They can afford to move or can get a loan. Those older widow women couldn’t do that.’’
Nabers echoed the sentiments of other residents who say they like the new village, but it is a very different community from the old place where everybody knew everybody.
"It is a beautiful town, and a walking town, with sidewalks everywhere,’’ he said. "It’s a great community. It’s got room to grow now, and it is growing, but the economy is so bad. There are a few people who lost their homes in the recession. People who lost their jobs and couldn’t afford their house anymore. And a lot of people didn’t figure on building a new house when they were in their 50s.’’
Though new Valmeyer is just a mile or so from the old town, moving here was like moving to another part of the country, far removed from the threats of the river.
"We’re up on the hill," Nabers said. "If it gets us now, it gets everybody else.”
Nabers said the flood turned lives upside down -- and changed everything.
"You’ve still got this in your heart, and wish it was like it used to be, but that’s not going to happen," he said. "Nothing is forever."
