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WINSLOW — Leaders in this flood-devastated village are discovering that relocating a town is much more difficult and time-consuming than they envisioned.
Some residents who opposed the move now think it’s never going to happen.
In 2019, the nearby Elkhorn River topped its banks, pouring up to 5 feet of floodwaters across the community, which lies 16 miles north of Fremont.
So many homes in the town of then-140 residents were inundated, and flooding had become so commonplace, that federal officials offered homeowners a buyout for their property, and town leaders voted to pursue moving the town to higher ground.
Nearly two dozen homes have been burned to the ground since, and patches of dirt mark where some houses that were bought out used to stand.
But plans to rebuild the town on higher ground, adjacent to Logan View High School along U.S. Highway 77, have stalled, and some community leaders figure that five years after the flood, the move is never going to happen.
“People have moved on,” said Rick Addink, a local mechanic and member of the Winslow Village Board.
Most people who took the buyout, say Addink and other detractors of the relocation, have found new homes in nearby Hooper or Fremont. They estimate that fewer than 10 are still interested in what they project will be an expensive endeavor to build a new home amid escalating construction costs and establish a new town on what is now a cornfield.
But others who supported the move still hold out hope.
Zach Klein, Winslow’s fire chief and a member of the town board, said those interested in relocating are moving cautiously, in an effort not to miss anything in what has been roughly estimated to cost $15 million to $16 million to buy a new town site and build roads, sewers and water lines.
But a town “relocation committee” — the group planning the relocation — hasn’t met in months, and while an application is pending for federal funds to finance a new sewer system, efforts remain to find grants to build streets and a water system.
“I personally would love it to go through. But keeping enough momentum is difficult,” Klein said.
“We’re being very diligent,” he added. “The next couple of steps are huge.”
About 13 to 15 homes remain in Winslow, along with a shuttered bar, co-op and hair salon on its deserted Main Street. The post office is gone, and the community hall where the village office used to be located is closed, awaiting up to $100,000 in repairs.
The 2019 “bomb cyclone” flood — which washed out a dam in north-central Nebraska and caused more than $1 billion in damages statewide — was one in a series of floods that have struck Winslow, which sits in a broad floodplain along U.S. Highway 77 just south of the Elkhorn River.
Since then, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has spent $2.25 million to buy out about 30 properties, according to Erv Portis, the state’s assistant director of emergency management. The buyouts covered about 75% of the properties’ pre-flood value, and once taken, that means the property becomes permanent green space.
But Portis said Winslow is now on its own and must seek additional government grants if it hopes to construct a new town where a cornfield now sits.
“They need to build consensus on what they want to do, is the first thing. But then do they have the funding to build the roads, the water system and the wastewater system?” he asked.
‘’You don’t simply relocate a city,” Portis said.
