Gohmert was Louisiana’s state conservationist when Hurricane Katrina wreaked historic devastation on that state. Decades of experience working for the government as a conservationist couldn’t have prepared him or anybody else for the destruction left in the wake of that hurricane and Hurricane Rita which followed.
Now Gohmert, 61, is back in his home state, taking the reigns as Texas’ state conservationist in Temple just as Central and North Texas are being hit by some historic floods.
Nobody - least of all Gohmert - is making comparisons between the Texas floods of 2007 and the widespread death and destruction that struck South Louisiana in 2005, but Gohmert has come to realize that lessons learned from one disaster can be applied to the next one.
“The devastation from Katrina and Rita was so utter and so complete, and not just what you saw in New Orleans either. The damage was way more than what you saw in New Orleans.
“Katrina wiped out whole towns and settlements. There was nothing left. No homes, no churches, no schools, no roads, no gas stations, no ice, very little law enforcement. There was nothing left.”
NRCS workers cleaned up debris from drainage areas, but human needs were the most pressing and the ones that were addressed first.
“So many lessons were learned,” Gohmert said of the Louisiana hurricanes. “It was a little like 9-11 in that we learned how to respond to something similar.”
Working in the aftermath of Katrina helped Gohmert put the widespread flooding in Central and North Texas in perspective, he said.
While the brunt of damage in New Orleans occurred because levees failed, the flood retention dams that the NRCS helped build in this area have held up during the recent floods despite the fact that many of them are 50 years old or older.
“Not one of them has failed,” Gohmert said.
Steve Bednarz, NRCS watershed program manager in Temple, said it’s hard to imagine worse damage from the recent floods but there could have been.
“These floodwater retarding structures have had a big impact in reducing flood damages, (saving) some $4.4 million worth in Lampasas and Bell counties alone,” he said.
The NRCS, which was started as the Soil Conservation Service in the wake of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, helped landowners and local entities build about 2,000 mostly small earthen dams in Texas to protect farmland.
The dams were built through the Watershed Protection and Flood Prevention Act, which authorized the NRCS to provide assistance to local sponsors with planning and installation of the dams.
More than 50 such dams were built in Bell and Lampasas counties. The dams were built to last 50 years, which means that many of them have reached the end of their intended life spans.
Local sponsors, who built the dam with cost-share assistance from NRCS, can renew the contracts, Gohmert said.
“We will notify them formally that they are no longer required to report to us because they have met that original requirement,” he said. “I don’t know a single sponsor that doesn’t value (the flood retention dams) as an asset both upstream and downstream. They have become as much a part of the infrastructure as roads or storm drains. They function now much like public works.”
As state conservationist, Gohmert is in charge of administering conservation programs designed to protect the state’s soil, water and other natural resources. Agency employees, including soil and rangeland management scientists, biologists and other specialists, help landowners develop conservation plans for their land.
The challenges for Gohmert and the NRCS are changing as the state’s population grows and priorities change. The priorities vary from one part of the state to another, he said.
In Central Texas, especially the Waco area, water quality issues associated with large-scale dairy operations rank high on residents’ list of conservation priorities, Gohmert said.
“Agriculture has an $87 billion impact on the Texas economy,” Gohmert said. “There’s no reason we can’t have policies and programs that benefit both agriculture and the environment.”
Gohmert, a Dewitt County native and graduate of Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, said he was anxious to return to Texas.
“I always wanted to return to Texas because it’s home, but I always counted where I was living at the time as home, whether it was in Louisiana or Arizona. That was always the most important place to me.”
ccoppedge@temple-telegram.com
