A turn-of-the-20th-century flood killed twelve people in Glendive, but it wasn’t until 1959 that the Army Corps of Engineers built the 2-mile earthen levee around West Glendive.
Mayor Deb Dion says it didn’t take long for the town to realize the structure, essentially a grassy hill, was too low.
“When we get an ice dam, that raises the water level pretty fast, and so you don’t always have time to know that you need to get out,” said Dion.
Nearly 5,000 people live in Glendive in eastern Montana’s Dawson County. The Army Corps says 50 commercial properties and nearly 180 homes are exposed in West Glendive, with roughly 30 lives at risk in an extreme scenario if the levee fails.
In the middle of it all is the Casitas Del Rio mobile home park.
Some residents say they don’t believe the levee will fail, since it hasn’t happened yet, but retired widow Francis Lynn Weigum isn’t so sure. She lives with her pets next to the levee and recalls evacuating years ago.
“I just want to be safer,” she said. “These are the only two grocery stores we have. If we flooded, we would have nowhere to go.”
In 2017, Dawson County and the City of Glendive asked the Army Corps for help, and started meeting and planning with local partner, research nonprofit Headwaters Economics, in 2021.
Now, after a lot of preparation, the Army Corps is proposing a solution: to raise the levee up three and a half feet and add a drainage system for an estimated $11.5 million dollars. Local governments will need to cover 35 percent of the cost, and officials are trying to rally public support.
On the night of Thursday, May 15th, Greg Johnson with the Army Corps of Engineers led the first public meeting about the proposed solution.
Johnson told attendees snacking on plates of food that there’s been at least three instances where the water has come within a foot or two of topping the levee.
He said that risk and its potential impact makes West Glendive one of the most vulnerable areas in the Omaha district, which includes all or parts of ten states.
“For a small community with a few hundred structures behind a levee, the risk of something going bad, really bad, seems pretty high,” said Johnson.
Included in the crowd sitting alongside community members were government representatives with Dawson County, the City of Glendive and U.S. Senator Steve Daines' office.
A couple of attendees at the gathering said they own property in West Glendive and have tried to expand or sell, but butted up against floodplain limitations or pricey insurance. Some businesses have left.
Dawson County Commissioner Joe Sharbono said that’s a big reason why the county is teaming up with the city to push for the levee improvements.
“We’re restricted by the river and what we can do because of the floodplain,” said Sharbono. “If we can alleviate that problem, we can develop in West Glendive, and that is what we desperately need to do because it’s the only area we have to grow in. For Glendive to grow, this has to happen.”
Also in attendance was investment and insurance agent Melonie Beeler, who lives on 10 acres behind a strip mall in West Glendive.
Beeler said she can’t expand on her property because of the floodplain, which also put a hard stop to her moving her office into the mall area, but Glendive is otherwise centrally located off the interstate between Billings and Bismarck.
“We could potentially be a hub economically, but we’re limited significantly by the floodplain rules because businesses can’t just build and build what they need to build,” said Beeler.
In her car by the levee, Glendive Mayor Deb Dion said she has a lot of hope for the project moving ahead.
“It’s taken years to get where we are now, and I really don’t want to be one to drop the ball on this," she said. "I really want to push it forward.”
The Army Corps solution and report on the levee project is up for public review.
If all goes according to plan, the city and county is slated to sign an agreement with the Army Corp this winter.
