For months, Holt County residents have leveled concerns and criticism toward the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over their flooded property. Now they can make their complaints official.

On Tuesday, County Clerk Kathy Kunkel released an e-mail detailing how landowners in the county can individually file claims against the Corps for damage.

“We would like to pool the claim forms together from everyone who believes they have damage related to the USACE’s actions this spring and summer along the Missouri River in Holt County,” the e-mail stated. Meant to potentially supplement money that will not be recouped in flood or damage claims filed to insurance agencies, Ms. Kunkel was surprised by the wording on the claim documents.

“The Corps have not admitted to this being a man-made disaster, but they have put up there on their (site) ... a place where their language is saying ‘If you believe that you have damages because of this act, you have the right to file a federal tort claim using this form,’” she said.

Individuals in Holt County can pick up the packets at city offices in Craig and Mound City, as well as the county clerk’s office in Oregon, Mo. The claims must be filed by Aug. 5.

While the initiative to get Holt County residents to file damage claims is driven by volunteers, Ms. Kunkel said she’s helping gather the paperwork for interested people.

“If everyone turns in how much damage they have, we can start adding it up and get some good figures,” she said.

Outlining the claim further, Ms. Kunkel said citizens can attempt to recoup money they may never see again, due to the flood.

“You’re going to have to say or show that you had homeowners or flood insurance that covered ‘X’-amount of damages. But your damages are greater than that, and you want to try to recoup those from the Corps,” she said.

Two things Ms. Kunkel wanted to make clear: residents shouldn’t expect to automatically receive money for filing claims and, to a greater extreme, shouldn’t expect to get money at all, seeing as how the same papers are being filed by displaced residents from Montana to central Missouri.

“I think in fairness from the community volunteers, nobody’s really anticipating that the Corps is going to pay anybody money,” she said.

In 2010, Ms. Kunkel said more than $100 million worth of crops were damaged due to flooding in areas such as Big Lake, Corning and Craig. In addition, about $1 million was spent on road construction, while the amount of damage incurred by houses was not released.

With a much larger scope, Ms. Kunkel said she is trying to crunch totals for damage to both property and agriculture in the area. Currently, one of the few numbers she has is an estimated $7 million that will need to be spent on repairs to roads, bridges, culverts and levees.

“But that doesn’t include the crop loss or cleaning up an agricultural field because it has sand, tree limbs and debris from a break ... those are the USDA kind of things,” she said.

“There’s some hope among the group that should they not receive any remedy from the Corps, then potentially they’ve done some of the legwork to move on a class-action lawsuit.”

Andrew Gaug can be reached at andrew.gaug@newspressnow.com.