Yates farmers will receive flood relief

YATES COUNTY--A little more than three months away from the one year anniversary of 2014 flood, Yates County farmers will finally see
relief funding for their damaged fields. Congressman Tom Reed's (R-Corning) office announced Wednesday, Feb. 25, Yates County farmers would be receiving nearly $284,000 in disaster relief to help repair the damage to fields sustained during the May 2014 flooding. The aid money will be administered by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) through the emergency conservation program.
"I am pleased to see that the funding has come through for this critical step in aiding the farmers of Yates County to recover from the terrible flood of May 14 and 16, 2014." said Tom Eskildsen of the Yates County Soil and Water Conservation District. "The flood washed away thousands of tons of productive farmland in a matter of hours leaving large areas of washouts and deposited debris. Many locations were left with no soil to re-build cropland and vineyards from. Farmers in affected areas have spent countless hours cleaning storm debris, filling in washouts, and repairing fences damaged during the storm."
Eskildsen said the relief money will go to reimburse some 30 farms for the work spent rebuilding their crop fields following the flooding, although he added it will be years before the fields are back to the way they were prior to the flooding.
"The funding from this program will reimburse the farms for these hours spent and also allow them to finish reconstructing cropland to productive states," Eskildsen said. "Rebuilding cropland to full productive value prior to the storm will take several years, but these first steps are the most important in aiding the agricultural community recovery."
However, Eskildsen said there are still other farms in the county that will not receive aid money that were also damaged during the flooding events last May.
"This is very difficult to put a hard number to, I would say the number is at least 60 farms that I personally visited in the aftermath of the storm," Eskildsen said. "There are certainly others out there. Damage can range from heavy amounts of erosion and debris to cropland that is flooded and under water for long periods of time."
Eskildsen said for many farms, the process of finding soil to fill in heavily eroded areas and removing storm debris was the first and hardest part. He said this work involved the use of bulldozers, excavators and farm tillage equipment.
"Some farms had a very difficult time finding the soil to fill holes in so trucking soil from adjacent areas was needed," Eskildsen said. "Once the washouts are filled in and the debris is removed, the farm then needs to try and start the process of re-building the topsoil back. Farmers will import organic matter, lime, and seed the area to a cover crop."
Eskildsen said building of topsoil and organic matter is a very slow process, adding it could take several years to see productive value of the cropland back to pre-flood conditions.