Fooling with nature and our future

By Ralph Rosenberg

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To control floods, much of the nation's efforts have focused on building higher and stronger levees, dams, and flood walls. These non-sustainable decisions cause rivers to rise higher and faster, impacting downstream communities and the entire river basin and leading to patterns where we are constantly trying to catch up after each devastating flood event occurs.

Instead, it is time for Iowa to improve management of floodplains and better use the landscape's natural ability to capture and store floodwaters. As our state has faced flooding disasters in 1993, 2008, 2010 and 2011, we have heard increasing discussion of the relationship between land use and flooding. Permanent, long-term action in this area has remained elusive.

My own first experience watching government respond to a flooding crisis came during the flood of 1993. I was a state senator representing Story County (our home in Ames took on 3 feet of water in the basement - mild compared to what many of my constituents faced). I served on a legislative committee that focused mostly on whether the Army Corps erred in its decisions on releases of water from flood control reservoirs. The committee did not discuss long-term land use policies. Even after the Clinton administration review called on states to take the role of “the nation's principal flood-plain managers” to prevent a repeat of the 1993 disaster, Iowa stood silent for the next 15 years.

In 2008, as Iowa again struggled to rebound from devastating severe weather and flooding, the issue of flood plain management became impossible to ignore. This time, the state's response was better: The Legislature did create the Iowa Flood Center and managed to pass five of the 16 flood plain management recommendations from the Water Resources Coordinating Council, related to education, governance (creating Watershed Management Authorities) and implementation of pilot flood mitigation projects. Since then, the state has received federal funds to begin implementing these efforts.

After 2008 and additional flooding in 2010 and 2011, Iowa has still failed to adopt statewide, long-term solutions recommended by the Water Resources Coordinating Council and others, including policies to restrict new development in the 500-year flood plain.

It is time for us to embrace policies that move people and structures out of harm's way, allowing wetlands and floodplains to slow and absorb excess water during spring floods. Wetland preservation and restoration, cover crops, grass waterways, buffer strips and other soil-conservation practices help the land act like a sponge, recharge groundwaters, and slow soil and nutrient loss from farmlands and urban areas.

In cities and on farms, if we treat rain like the valuable resource it is, holding it on the land for as long as possible, allowing it to infiltrate and be cleansed before it gets to a creek or river, this achieves flood-plain management and water quality and soil-conservation goals. To learn more about the available options, I suggest watching a short video by The Nature Conservancy at nature.org/floodplains that describes how natural solutions hold back floods.

Iowans want policymakers to adopt policies for creating long-term solutions that conserve our soil, improve water quality in our rivers and streams, and recharge our aquifers.

While we are still cautious about attributing any single weather event to climate change, experts predict that as the climate warms, we will have more intense and powerful weather events. They tell us that doing something now to curb our greenhouse-gas emissions will help us avert potentially worse events.

Solutions are doable. In Iowa, there is great opportunity. Our rich soil and our abundant waters, as well as the air we breathe, are the capital upon which farming and vibrant communities depend. Policies and laws to protect this capital for the long term will require a change in business as usual in Iowa.

The citizens of Cedar Rapids and other communities showed what Iowans can do to address a crisis. Let us have policies adopted to prevent crises for all of Iowa.

Ralph Rosenberg, director, Iowa Environmental Council. Comments: rosenberg@iaenvironment.org