Dealing with nature’s ‘new normal’

By The Gazette Editorial Board

So what most Iowans suspected is verified: Iowa is enduring its wettest three-year period in the 127 years official weather records have been kept. Indeed, it seems like every month or week, another city or county is slammed by severe flooding.

Mother Nature unleashed its latest extreme assault this week on the Ames/Colfax/Des Moines area. Iowa State University sustained damage to eight buildings, a teenager was swept away to her death, hundreds were evacuated, and so on.

The new normal for Iowa? No one can be sure but we would be foolish to ignore this trend.

This is not just about areas within 100-year flood plains, or what used to pass for that designation. 500-year flood plains seems to be morphing into the more feared 100-year version.

Gov. Culver's I-JOBS initiative, launched after our most fearsome flood of all time, the 2008 disaster, takes a serious stab at assisting both recovery and future flood mitigation. Cedar Rapids has fared well so far in I-JOBS grants - $50-plus million; in Linn County, more than $115 million.

Projects here are among I-JOBS' 1,688 created as of last month. They will bring some sorely needed infrastructure repairs and rebuilding in a smarter way to better protect facilities against future floods. They preserve and add at least some temporary jobs in the private sector.

Iowa's high bond rating, favorable interest rates and using gaming revenue, not a tax increase, to fund I-JOBS eases some of the risk and pain of this huge debt in a state that still faces massive budget shortfalls.

Still, it's too early to evaluate the impact of I-JOBS. And of the $704.5 million committed over the first year, a mere $36 million is designated for supporting watershed-related projects - a drop in the bucket when you remember that, other than the weather itself, the state of our watersheds is by far the biggest factor in the massive, much more frequent flooding we've seen in these past three years.

We've said it before and will keep saying it. State policymakers and other leaders in both the public and private sector must focus and cooperate on devising and incorporating better, broader water-management practices. That means more restrictions on development, more concrete actions that truly address watershed management. A drier future requires it.