As damage assessment continues on campus and around Story County, an effort is already underway to declare 46 of Iowa’s counties as presidential disaster areas.

Thursday, Gov. Chet Culver announced a request for nearly $35 million in federal assistance to pay for cleanup costs from ice and snow showers that occurred Feb. 24. If approved, the money will go to the 46 counties whose initial damage estimates exceeded the per capita limit for the federal public assistance program. Bret Voorhees, spokesman for the Iowa department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, said uninsured damages per capita to individual Iowans did not meet the requirements for federal aid.

All 99 Iowa counties have been declared state disaster areas, eligible for state cleanup assistance. Most of the federal request, nearly $32 million, will be used to reimburse rural electric cooperatives for the cost of repairing damaged and destroyed power lines throughout the state. Voorhees said damage estimates are in part calculated by working with agencies such as rural electric cooperatives that have incurred damage.

“In some cases, it is a visual inspection. In some cases, they show us the paperwork to justify their request,” Voorhees said. “Once it is granted, there is a whole process of tracking the money once it is given out to those agencies.”

The request for federal assistance must first be approved by the Department of Homeland Security’s regional office in Kansas City before being reviewed by the national office in Washington, D.C., and being approved by the president. Voorhees said the process could take up to several weeks. U.S. Senators Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, have requested that President Bush fast-track the request.

On the state side, Brad Anderson, communications director for the governor’s office, said little more can be done politically to expedite the process. “What we are doing is making sure we dot all our I’s and cross all our T’s to make sure it goes through all the right agencies to make sure we get the federal support,” Anderson said.

Story County is one of the counties eligible for federal assistance. County Emergency Management Coordinator Lori Morrissey said initial estimates given to the Federal Emergency Management Administration show $674,000 in damages. She said more than half of that cost was assessed for cleanup of trees and other debris. If federal funds are approved, Morrissey said they should cover 75 percent of cleanup costs, with the state of Iowa paying 10 percent and the county responsible for 15 percent of the cost.

Debris is also a problem on campus. Lester Lawson, manager of facilities maintenance with facilities planning and management, said campus workers would likely be clearing downed trees and branches until graduation in early May. Lawson said facilities planning and management has estimated cleanup will cost $192,000, some of which will be paid in the course of normal maintenance operations, but will also limit time and resources for planned maintenance projects. Although cost estimates have been made, Lawson said the long-term effects on campus plants and aesthetics are still uncertain.

“The goal was to make campus as safe as it could be as quickly as we could make it that way,” Lawson said. “As you walk around, you will notice large piles of things because what we were trying to do is make campus safe. We really have not spent a lot of time yet going back to evaluate those trees.”

The Presidential Public Assistance Program provides aid to local governments to repair infrastructures, such as roads, power lines and bridges. It does not provide for damages incurred by private citizens or private property. On Tuesday, the Iowa Legislature created a $1 million individual assistance program for low-income Iowans. Under the program, individuals with an annual income less than 130 percent of the federal poverty guidelines are eligible for grants of up to $3,319 to pay for uninsured damages caused by the storms. More information about the program is available on the state of Iowa Web site.