Column - Waiting for a Deluge of Ideas

The Gazette's Orlan Love provided us with a sobering picture Sunday morning of Iowa's soggy situation.

Throughout his well-sourced, front-page story, troubling statistics stacked up like sandbags.

Iowa is in the midst of a historic stretch of heavy rainfall years. The last four years, 2007-2010, are each among the 11 wettest on record. Long-term trendlines also show that our saturation isn't some climatic fluke.

Climate experts don't expect the deluge parade to end any time soon.

Meeting this threat should be a top policy priority - with huge public safety and economic implications. We're going to need leaders with some guts, imagination and political skills to figure out how best to reduce the flooding threat and put a plan into action. I'm talking about long-term changes in the way we develop and use land, not bureaucratic Band-Aids. Whoever is governor in January should lead the charge.

The trouble is, the two leading candidates haven't told us what they would do.

Gov. Chet Culver, to his credit, seems to understand the scope of the problem. And his administration has invested tens of millions of dollars from the I-JOBS bonding program on flood prevention. Good start.

But those dollars are a thin slice of the massive program, and I-JOBS' excesses - including overinflated job creation claims - have forced Culver to play defense instead of addressing the future. He also could have fought harder for significant watershed management bills that languished in a Legislature controlled by his party.

His Republican rival, former Gov. Terry Branstad, is critical of Culver, but hasn't said what flood prevention would look like on his watch. He stopped in Cedar Rapids earlier this month and smacked Culver's flood response as “dysfunctional.” Branstad, on the other hand, vowed to be “emphatic, understanding and realistic,” while also surrounding himself with “capable, talented people.”

If platitudes were a plan, Branstad would be all set. We know he doesn't like bonding. We know he repeatedly uses the word “realistic,” which, in my years of watching government, I've found is usually synonymous with “status quo.” Branstad's critics contend that's essentially what happened after the Flood of 1993, when a stack of watershed management recommendations were shelved while he was governor.

There's still plenty of time to show us a vision. I hope that by Oct. 7, when Culver and Branstad meet in a debate in Cedar Rapids, they'll have some ideas to share. Because you can bet they'll be asked.

Comments: (319) 398-8452; todd.dorman@gazcomm.com