Some Iowa City homeowners say levee not needed

Iowa City is applying for funding to build a nearly $4 million flood levee to protect what it considers the most vulnerable part of the city, but some residents living in that area think the levee is unnecessary.

“We don't want anything,” said Jill Butler, a resident of the Baculis Mobile Home Park.  “We haven't asked for anything.”

Butler says the government's efforts to protect her community when the Iowa River rose in 2008 went “ridiculously overboard.”

“We're covered in Baculis,” she said.  “We didn't flood.  We won't flood.”

Butler says the sandbagging efforts of her neighborhood combined with a temporary berm built by Baculis Mobile Home Park owners in 1993 were sufficient to withstand the severe flooding two years ago.

“If [the water] gets higher than that we can sandbag on top of [the berm],” Butler said.  “We're fine.”

City officials and nearby landowners disagree.

“I guess I don't understand why you wouldn't want the help to save your park,” said Jim Hammes, owner of neighboring Thatcher Mobile Home Park.

Thatcher supports the city's desire to build the levee and said Friday he “can't wait until it's done.”

“We've gone through two pretty major floods in the area and [residents] were evacuated both times,” said Steve Long, community development coordinator for Iowa City.

Long said the city feels like building the proposed $3.8 million levee is the “best, most viable option” the city has to protect the 160 mobile homes and 400 residents combined along with the 20 businesses in the area.

The majority of the two mobile home parks and businesses sit in the flood plain, a few of them actually sit in the flood way.

Iowa City's proposed 2,700-foot-long levee would require three mobile homes in the Baculis community be removed.

“A lot of the people who live there live there because they want to be by a river,” Butler said.  “Yes, it has risks, but to me it's worth the risk."

While the city owns the majority of the land where the proposed levee would be built, Long said the city can't build without owning all of the property.

The city would need consent from the owner of Baculis Mobile Home Park to build the middle section of levee.  Butler said Friday that the owner's wife told her she doesn't think the levee is necessary.

If the city receives the I-JOBS funding it has applied for, construction could start late this year and finish in late fall of 2011.