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Richard Apking expects the home he lived in for 30 years will be destroyed in a matter of months.
“The fire department will burn my house and my garage,” he said. “Then the village will have to contract with somebody to dig out the basement, the sidewalks and everything like that to return it to nature.”
Last year, Apking sold his flood-damaged house to the village of Winslow and moved to the nearby community of Fremont. Now, his old home and 19 other inundated properties in the small northeast Nebraska town will be set ablaze. The burnings are part of a plan to rebuild Winslow, but Apking said his house deserved better.
“FEMA has purchased it,” he said. “So, the only thing that can happen is it can be destroyed. I call it dumb.”
Four years ago, Winslow gained statewide attention for its ambitious plan to save the flood-destroyed community by abandoning its current location and moving everything uphill. However, after years of planning, the process of moving has stalled. Disagreements among residents are at the heart of a town-wide rift threatening to sink Winslow altogether.
Trading Winslow’s past for a future
In March 2019, heavy precipitation caused widespread flooding of Nebraska’s rivers. This included the Elkhorn River, which is located only a mile north of Winslow. According to the Nebraska Department of Natural Resources, the floodwater covered the town in as much as 4.76 feet of water, trapping some residents in their homes for several days.
In the end, 104 cities and five tribal nations in Nebraska received either state or federal flood declarations . In Winslow, residents returned to a destroyed community, but the town’s flooding wasn’t completely out of the ordinary. Because of its location in the Elkhorn River Valley, Winslow witnessed regular floods, which included four natural disaster events in the last 80 years.
Zach Klein is Winslow’s fire chief and a member of the village board. As a lifelong resident, he wanted a permanent solution to the town’s flooding problem.
“Winslow, as a community, means something to me,” Klein said. “It doesn't necessarily mean that it has to be in this spot.”
After consulting with town leaders, federal and state agencies, and a local engineering firm, Klein formed a plan. The town would purchase a plot of farmland several miles north of Winslow on a nearby hill. Residents would receive buyouts from FEMA for their damaged properties. The old homes would be destroyed, and in return for giving them up, the residents would be eligible for a free lot up on the hill.
“If they have that opportunity, and the next generation of people don't have to deal with that flooding, then I think that's a win,” Klein said.
The town secured $2.5 million from FEMA for the buyouts. But problems were already surfacing for Klein’s plan. Klein soon discovered that moving Winslow was illegal under a Nebraska law limiting the power of local governments. The state legislature eventually changed the law for Winslow, but by that point, Klein was battling another hurdle: paperwork. Klein said each time the town disputed with FEMA, it would add weeks to the timeline. This delayed the buyouts by years, but sales finally went through in the last few months of 2022.
Four years after the flood, Klein has just moved to the plan’s second phase. He burned two of the abandoned homes in early summer, and he said he expects to burn the rest of the homes by the year’s end. Still, Klein said the length of the project has started to take its toll.
“Fatigue is a good word,” he said. “Four years, it’s a long time.”
Even after receiving their buyouts, another problem has emerged for Winslow residents. The buyouts simply aren’t enough to cover the move. For example, Richard Apking received about $94,000 for his Winslow property, according to Dodge County records. However, a new home up on the hill cost at least $280,000.
For Apking, the time commitment for the new Winslow was also something he couldn’t afford.
“I wasn't going to live long enough to see a tree there get to be 20 feet tall,” he said. “So, it wasn't worth it to me.”
Affordability remains a major obstacle for moving local residents to the new Winslow. Out of all the residents who accepted the buyouts, Klein said only a couple have committed to building uphill.
The movers and the stayers
Some Winslow residents refused the buyouts altogether. This includes Rick Addink, who still lives in the same Winslow home he once lived in as a child. He said he was never convinced by the plan to move.
“I was in a cleanup mode from day one,” Addink said. “I wanted to start cleaning, getting the water out, rebuilding, doing whatever I had to do.”
In 2020, he joined Klein as a member of the village board, hoping to hold its members accountable, he said. Since the flood, he said money and time that should’ve gone to repairs is instead being funneled into the move. A majority of the town board has also moved out of Winslow after accepting their buyouts, which he said has further put the town’s needs on the back burner.
“We're four years out and nothing still has happened,” Addink said. “We have not done anything to improve the community here.”
The decision to stay or move is not as simple for other Winslow residents. After selling his house in Winslow, Richard Apking said he would rather live in the village’s current location than Fremont, a town around 270 times bigger. However, he said the cost of getting his damaged house up to code was just too high.
“It was just a whole lot of hassle,” he said. “And there was no guarantee that the next flood that came along wouldn't put me in the same condition that I was before.”
The plan to move will reach a critical point in the next two months, when the town will decide to either move forward with the land purchases or abandon the project altogether. Either way, Apking said his property will soon be nothing but prairie. He said the town itself may someday follow suit.
“I think Winslow will vanish,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong, I loved the town. I loved living there. I did.”
Regardless of the town’s decision, the now-abandoned homes will still be burned, cutting the community by nearly half its former size.