Panel urges better watershed management; question is how to fund it

The clock is ticking, but Iowa lawmakers will be hard-pressed to find funds for measures to reduce the impact of future flooding on residents, businesses, communities, and soil and water quality.

The Water Resources Coordinating Council, created by the Iowa Legislature earlier this year, called for a regional approach to flood-plain and storm-water regulation, integrating wetlands into drainage systems and educating the public on flood risks and prevention strategies.

Pretty dry stuff, concedes Sen. Rob Hogg, D-Cedar Rapids, but as chairman of the Senate Rebuild Iowa Committee, he sees an urgent need to act.

“Something has to happen in 2010,” Hogg said, “because if not in 2010, then unless there is another disaster, people tend to forget.”

To fund its $45 million recommendations, the council proposed a sales tax on bottled water and collecting a redemption fee on bottled water similar to pop and beer bottles. Repeated attempts to expand Iowa's bottle bill have gone nowhere in the Legislature, though.

“No one likes paying higher taxes,” Hogg said. “The challenge for us is whether we have a compelling enough program that Iowans are willing to pay. We can't afford to repeat the floods of 2008.

“I drink my fair share of bottled water. I wouldn't want to pay more, but if it keeps downtown Cedar Rapids from flooding, that's a small price to pay.”

The most significant recommendation, say Hogg and Chuck Gipp, soil division director for the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, is basing future flood-plain management on the 500-year flood plain rather than the 100-year flood plain.

“That means a lot of new property will have to comply with flood-plain regulations,” Hogg said, “but I think we've seen what happens when we ignore the potential for damage. If we've learned anything from 2008, it's that we have to change the way we protect against flooding.”

It will be a major change, Gipp said, because many Iowa communities grew up along rivers and flood plains are densely developed.

“It's one thing to work and play in a flood plain, but quite another to sleep in the flood plain,” Gipp said, suggesting new regulations would limit, possibly prohibit, residential development in the flood plain.

“We have to look at how we can reduce the potential damage and loss of life,” he said.

Another significant recommendation, Hogg said, is allowing cities to enter into binding agreements with upstream landowners to create flood-mitigation systems. Cities could agree to pay landowners for crop losses when levees are opened to flood their fields rather than send water downstream to flood densely populated communities.

Those measures could reduce the cost of flood prevention systems - flood walls and levees, for example - being contemplated in places like Cedar Rapids, he said.

The report calls for $35 million for a watershed demonstration project and $10 million for rural levees and landowner compensation.

The recommendations are “one small step” toward flood protection, said Don Palmer of Cedar Rapids, an engineer who worked on the Apollo moon shot and has studied flood-control measures in his retirement.

The key now, said Palmer, will be developing the leadership to implement the changes and the political will to move forward.