Vernon visits Grand Forks to see levees, floodwalls firsthand

CEDAR RAPIDS - Council member Monica Vernon was in Grand Forks, N.D., on business Wednesday and took time to tour the flood protection system there and across the Red River of the North in East Grand Forks, Minn.

Those communities were hit by a flood disaster in 1997, and Cedar Rapids has used them as test cases of sorts to see how communities get back on their feet and how they get the federal government to fund a flood-protection system.

In a phone interview from Grand Forks late Wednesday afternoon, Vernon said she is impressed with how the flood-protection systems in place in the two cities “marry functionality with aesthetics.”

The systems include levees and permanent flood walls in Grand Forks and removable flood walls in East Grand Forks.

Vernon said the walls in Grand Forks use a mix of limestone and masonry in a “very tasteful” way.

The flood-protection systems there took about 10 years to put in place completely, and they have performed fine, she reported.

The greenway in Grand Forks was partially flooded on Wednesday, and Vernon said it was easy to see how the walkways in the greenway are quickly cleaned up after the water recedes.

Vernon said Grand Forks, with a population of about 70,000, has done a good job of providing incentives so that neighborhoods close to the downtown in which there were buyouts and demolitions now have filled back in with new houses. She said there also are several mid-rise housing developments going up in the downtown.

“I'm an optimistic person, and I'm more optimistic after I look at this – seeing all this housing,” she said. “

Vernon's firm, Vernon Research Group, did a research study for the United Way in Grand Forks, and she was there Wednesday to present a report. The trip was paid for by her firm, not the city of Cedar Rapids.

Her tour guide was Lonnie Laffen of JLG Architects of Grand Forks, who has provided consulting services to the city of Cedar Rapids and the city's Downtown District.