Branstad ready to work with community on Lake Delhi dam restoration

Despite initial skepticism with the project, Gov. Terry Branstad is budgeting $5 million for restoration of the Lake Delhi dam in Delaware County.

That's the amount sought by supporters of restoring the dam that creates Lake Delhi on the Maquoketa River between Manchester and Hopkinton. A bill filed in the first week of the 2012 legislative session, Senate File 2002, seeks two $2.5 million appropriations from the Rebuild Iowa Infrastructure Fund to the Department of Natural Resources to rebuild the dam.

Visits to the lake helped Branstad overcome reservations about state participation in the project that is expected to cost about $12 million, based on a state-funded study. He included a $2.5 million appropriation from the Natural Resources Capital fund in the fiscal 2013 budget and said Jan. 13 he plans to include another $2.5 million in 2014.

“I've seen what they've done, the commitment they've made,” Branstad said about the community around Lake Delhi, which was a popular boating area surrounded by permanent and weekend residences until flooding in July 2010 damaged the dam and drained the lake.

That's a turnaround for the GOP governor. Last year, he used his line-item veto on House File 648, a bill that appropriated no state funds for the proposed Lake Delhi dam and lake restoration but expressed the Legislature's intent to participate in the project.

Steve Leonard, president of the Lake Delhi trustees, doesn't think it was one thing in particular that changed the governor's mind. Instead, he said, by visiting the area Branstad saw the damage – physical and economic – caused by the July 2010 flood that breached the dam as well as the community's willingness to rise to the challenge.

“We came at it as a partnership, that we were putting skin in the game and not looking for a handout,” Leonard said Jan. 16.

In the year since Branstad vetoed the intent language, property owners around Lake Delhi have approved s substantial tax hike to help pay for rebuilding the dam that cost them their lakefront property. They approved issuing up to $6,091,104 in general obligation bonds to pay for the project.

Also, members of the Lake Delhi Recreation Association have voted to authorize their board to transfer ownership of the failed dam that impounded the former Delaware County lake to the community's official governing body.

A private fundraising campaign has generated about $1.7 million, Leonard added.

The goal is to begin work on the restoration this year. Actual construction is likely to take a year, depending on weather, Leonard said.