By Ray King
This is the second of two stories about grants from the Federal Office of Emergency Management that were awarded to Jefferson County to help cover damages that resulted in flooding on the Arkansas River in 2019.
The first of those grants was to cover costs associated with tearing down eight homes that were determined by FEMA to be substandard while the second, for $302,590.22 had, according to Karen Blevins, the coordinator of the Jefferson County Office of Emergency Management, had a different purpose.
Blevins went on to explain how the process was going to work.
She said homeowners were given the choice of deciding which federal grant they were going to apply for, one that would have paid them to see the residence torn down, or the one that called for elevating the property, which required a 25-percent match.
“It’s very expensive to elevated homes so we only had two that selected that,” she said.
The two grants do not provide funds for other damages such as to roads or other county property.
