Mid-1970s flood-control research rediscovered

Efforts to understand and manage flooding along the Cedar and Iowa rivers may benefit from the chance rediscovery of years of research into the subject.

The lack of progress decades after the reports were published, though, also demonstrates the power of inertia.

“We've got to figure out the way to do this,” said Linn County Supervisor Linda Langston. “The thing that I found most troubling is, we had this research in hand.”

Langston is the temporary curator of volumes of research discovered three years ago by Stacie Johnson in a file in Washington County.

Johnson, now with the Linn County-Cedar Rapids Solid Waste Agency, said she “accidentally found” the research while attending a 2007 meeting on water-quality issues at Lake Darling. She attended the meeting on her own time and was not working for the waste agency then.

“I like doing research and just reading about things that happen,” said Johnson.

The material was put aside and forgotten until recently.

“I came across it again and just couldn't believe what I saw,” Johnson said.

Most of the reports were published between 1974 and '76 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The most recent, “Trade-offs Between Water Quality and Profitability in Iowa Agriculture,” was released by the state in 1993.

While most of the reports deal with water quality, there's also basic research on the two rivers' watersheds and a report on “Water Impoundment Opportunities,” locating sites for flood-control reservoirs in every county in the Cedar River watershed.

Bill Ehm, Iowa Department of Natural Resources water policy director, said much of the basic research should still be useful.

“Those were pretty good plans,” he said. “The difference today is instead of paper maps, we've got it electronically. It's much more easy to handle. Since that time, we've developed better models on what the problems are and how to handle those problems. It does surprise some people that 30 years ago we were doing stuff (that) today we think is brand new.”

Langston plans to have the reports scanned, so they can be accessed online. So far, only a 1979 management plan for the two rivers' watersheds has been scanned.

The reports include suggestions for watershed management that would have been implemented by conservancy districts, but the laws authorizing the districts were repealed by the Legislature in the late 1980s.

“As a department here - and I think a lot of our partner agencies really think - we need to be working on a watershed basis,” said Ehm. “You get into the Cedar and Iowa watersheds, and it's hard for people clear down at the bottom end to relate to people up in Mason City or Austin, Minnesota.”

Langston said people do understand now. “Can we use this and move forward?” she said.