(Radio Iowa) – State officials have approved a loan to a southwest Iowa county to cover debris removal costs from last year’s Missouri River flooding. More than 450 homes in Hamburg and other areas of Fremont County were flooded in early 2019. FEMA officials initially agreed to pay about 146-thousand dollars for debris removal, then notified the county FEMA would only provide about a tenth of that to settle the contract. The 131-thousand dollar state loan was approved by the state Executive Council this week.

Fremont County will have 20 years to pay off the loan — the annual installments will be about 65-hundred dollars. There were about seven-thousand residents living in Fremont County in 2018 according to the U.S. Census and only eight other counties had smaller populations.