Graphic:  IOWA RECOVERY CENTER 
		Palo Updates and Mitigates
The 2008 floods made the city
of Palo, Iowa believers in building their 
community stronger and safer.
FEMA works closely with these communities,
through a mitigation process, to make sure 
these plans become realities.


Tom Watson, City of Palo, Iowa, Infrastructure Commander: 

I have been in the area probably since uh 1970 and have done
 work for the city for the last 20 years as they needed since
they have very limited resources. I have a construction
company so we are used to the big equipment 
with back hoes and doing sewer work and things like that. 
That is what we are used to doing so we���ve kind of 
fit in a little niche to help the city along all the time 
and supplied pumps and stuff to what needs to 
get done. And when the flooding has occurred 
we have helped the lift stations by pumping and stuff.
We had started this sewer project before the flood 
and of course the flood interrupted it, caused lots of 
problems. And one of the things we redesigned as 
you notice the mound of dirt that our generator and 
our control panel. Basically, the original design 
standards was at the height you see the concrete 
pits and they were installed before the flood  so then 
we decided after the flood we���d raise it and now the 
height of the building and the generator is a good two 
feet above the 2008 flood level. So we became 
immediately proactive during the flood to elevate 
everything we could to higher elevations. 
We feel we are extremely well protected and we 
changed the design criteria on our lift station. 
We actually before the whole town of Palo ran 
through two uhhh  ten horse power pumps we 
had a total of twenty horse power pumping the 
sewage in Palo. Now I have three one hundred 
power pumps. What that makes a difference 
is that like this last flood even when we had 
nine inches of rain in 48 hours I was able to 
keep sewage out of people���s basement no 
matter how much infiltration when what they 
got with rain water and sump pumps and all 
that. Because one day one day alone I was 
pumping over 960,000 gallons because 
I had the pump capacity to keep the sewer 
lines dry so over capacity gave us quite 
an edge on helping to keep sewage out 
of the basement.  So that is a good thing.

Graphic:  IOWA RECOVERY CENTER 
		Palo Updates and Mitigates
 This FEMA funded project has 
already benefited the citizens of Palo.
During heavy rains in August 2008
the city���s pumping station was able to handle 
the job and still have excess pumping capacity.


www.fema.gov