When one of the century’s worst floods swallowed this little river town 19 months ago, the community looked as if it had seen its last days.
But the deluge turned out to be the waters of life.
Today, Pattonsburg, a town of about 200 people, is making history. With the help of millions in federal disaster aid, the town is picking up and moving to higher ground-homes, churches, the hardware store, even Bettie’s Cafe.
That alone makes Pattonsburg a novelty. So far, it’s one of only two towns ravaged by the 1993 floods ready to be completely relocated with federal help. But beyond that, Pattonsburg is about to become one of the United States’ most environmentally perfect communities.
If all goes as planned, city hall will have solar heat. Ponds and wetlands will serve as storm drains, filtering runoff from streets and lawns. And manure from a local hog plant will provide the town’s electricity.
When it changes addresses, the hard-luck town will be a model for other communities to consider as the federal government helps move more of them out of floodplains in the years ahead.
“Pattonsburg is on the cutting edge,” said Chris Kelsey, a Kansas City architect in charge of a 30-member team designing the new community. “There won’t be any other community in the country quite like it-if we get it done.”
It’s a huge job, easier dreamed than done. But the question now is whether the new Pattonsburg will live up to its billing as a marvel of energy efficiency that is easy on the environment and relies on nature for many basic needs, but still able to build an economy that can sustain it.
And as a dream, it is not just some Washington bureaucrat’s fantasy, but rather a compilation of what Pattonsburg people want.
Indeed, at town meetings, they’ve picked out where streets should go, whom their neighbors will be, where the school will sit. Like a couple building a dream home, the townsfolk have wrestled with all the things on their wish list vs. what their builders say can be done. And they’ve decided virtually everything with a quick public vote.
This summer, the new town should begin rising up two miles north of the old one, in what now is a rolling corn field.
“We’ve been given a rare opportunity,” said Mayor David Warford. “This is a chance for the community to survive.”
A town like Pattonsburg never could have afforded such a wildly ambitious effort on its own. The town’s entire budget for a year is just $200,000.
To apply for the disaster aid, the town and state filed reams of forms with the Federal Emergency Management Agency during 1994. The paperwork was enough to fill an entire filing cabinet at city hall.
Their persistence paid off: The town landed nearly $12 million.
In the meantime, the federal government already was helping to move another town ravaged by the Midwestern floods-Valmeyer, Ill., a Mississippi River hamlet just south of St. Louis.
Since the ’93 floods, about 140 towns from nine Midwestern states have been approved for help to move, either in part or entirely. The agency has committed $97 million to the projects and expects to spend more as it receives requests from other areas hit hard by recent flooding.
“We’re doing this to break the historical cycles of destruction and rebuilding,” said FEMA spokesman Mark Stevens. “It’ll relieve the burden on the taxpayers.”
Originally, federal officials and advocates of “sustainable development”-the jargon used to describe what’s being done in Pattonsburg-wanted to try the design ideas in Valmeyer. But Valmeyer had already started cutting streets and was too far along to employ most of the ideas.
So Pattonsburg became the model.
Last September, almost everybody in town gathered in the gym at the only school, where 225 kids are enrolled in every grade from kindergarten through high school.
It was the first in a series of town gatherings with a collection of experts-architects, real estate developers, even sociologists-who would guide the townsfolk as they built their new home.
A roar of ideas filled the room as designers scribbled on an easel pad, filling page after page with ideas. As the meetings progressed, the audience cast votes with stickers: pasting up green for good, yellow for so-so and red for no way.
At one meeting, a designer brought along a tackle box filled with miniature blocks for buildings and clumps of steel wool to symbolize trees. Members of the crowd began moving pieces of the puzzle around, while others huddled over drawings, arguing over what worked best.
They wanted big yards, lots of walkways and not too many parking lots. They voted on whether to have a town square or Main Street, as Pattonsburg does now.
Main Street won out. Business owners fought to make sure that downtown didn’t look like a strip mall. They wanted storefronts to have an individual character, figuring it would help maintain the small-town feel.
The experts laid out streets so that the longest side of buildings faced to the south, allowing for the greatest amount of exposure to the sun. They suggested ways to use berms and trees as buffers to help buildings ward off the cold.
As they created the design, the experts sought to make the town not only functional, but beautiful. They wove the community into the natural terrain and tried to avoid cutting down trees. By using existing ponds and a creek as storm drainage, the city will minimize the storm sewers that must be built and save as much as $3 million.
Then there are the hogs-keepers of the flame, so to speak.
Designers plan to capture methane gas emitted from the mass of manure at a huge corporate hog farm near town and use the gas to fire the town’s generating station.
“Pattonsburg only needs 16,000 hogs” to turn on every light in town, said Kelsey, the leader of the design team. And the hog plant has a virtual unlimited supply: 500,000 head of swine.
The old town has 142 livable homes now. City officials figure that 40 or 50 will move; other homeowners will build new. The town also hopes to save a few city-owned buildings, including an old stone city hall.
Throughout all this, one goal has stayed foremost: Make Pattonsburg an attractive place to outside businesses. That will create jobs and stem the flow of young people out of town.
With news of the new town being born, Pattonsburg’s mayor already has heard from two out-of-town businesses that are thinking of opening up in town. If they do, those companies will bring about 35 jobs, a vital jolt in a town like Pattonsburg.
But headaches remain.
The city failed to get enough money to pay for moving its school. Now city officials are lobbying Washington to come up with another $4.5 million.
Moreover, the town has learned that the government can’t move any of the town’s three churches because of constitutional restraints.
“If it’s God’s will for us to move, then He will provide the resources,” said the Rev. Ron Ratcliff, pastor at the First Baptist Church.
