Biohazard Cleanup Near North Valmeyer Valmeyer, IL

Valmeyer is a village in Monroe County whose name means 'valley of the Meyers' in German; it was platted in 1909 in the American Bottom floodplain of the Mississippi River to provide housing for workers at a large stone quarry.

The original Valmeyer sat in the Mississippi River floodplain and had been flooded before, in 1910, 1943, and 1944, despite a levee system built by the Army Corps of Engineers in the 1940s and 1950s.

On August 1, 1993, during the Great Flood of 1993, the Mississippi River breached a levee near Columbia, Illinois, and Valmeyer was inundated under as much as 16 feet of water.

The 1993 flood damaged about 90 percent of Valmeyer's homes, farmhouses, and commercial buildings beyond repair.

Rather than rebuild in the floodplain, Valmeyer's residents chose to relocate their entire town, making Valmeyer the best-known example of a 'managed retreat' from flooding in the United States.

The new Valmeyer was built about two miles east of the old site, on top of a limestone bluff more than 300 feet higher, for roughly $35 million, mostly paid for with federal and state assistance led by FEMA buyouts.

Ground was broken for the new town in December 1993, only about four months after the flood, and roughly 700 of the old town's 900 residents moved to the new Valmeyer.

A handsome new school was built to help form the center of the relocated village.

The old townsite, Old Valmeyer, is now mostly empty fields and farm ground with a surviving street grid, though the village's annual Fourth of July parade still runs down the old main street, past lots where houses once stood.

Valmeyer's relocation drew national and international attention, including a PBS Nova program, a front-page New York Times article, and a Smithsonian magazine feature in June 1996.