To help lessen flooding risk, Cedar Rapids looks upstream

CEDAR FALLS — Farm fields once blanketed the ground where the new Cedar Falls High School is taking shape. It’s being built with sustainability in mind — and that extends to the land surrounding the structure.

Instead of precipitation falling onto the property, entering the storm sewer system and ending up in the Cedar River, water will be stored on-site through natural infrastructure. More than 20 acres of reconstructed prairie will encircle the high school, along with four bioretention cells that amount to 7,000 square feet. The combined projects will absorb and treat an estimated 5.4 million gallons of stormwater a year — enough to fill about eight Olympic-size swimming pools.

Every drop of water kept from the Cedar River counts. Projects like bioretention basins in developed communities or cover crops on agricultural land help catch and store runoff. Otherwise, the water can enter nearby waterways and devastate downstream communities — a fate Cedar Rapids knows all too well after the 2008 flood.

Ever since, the city of Cedar Rapids has been working with surrounding communities on flood mitigation projects throughout the Cedar River watershed, where 5 million acres of land drain into the Cedar River. These partnerships often come in the form of watershed management authorities, commonly referred to as WMAs. Iowa’s 27 existing WMAs cover 40 percent of the state.

Those collaborations, among others, are helping reduce flood risks in Cedar Rapids and beyond in preparation for the next time the Cedar River inevitably rises.

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Beginning of WMAs

Much of the city’s collaboration with upstream communities has been in the name of improving water quality. Those projects have traced back to the 2000s. But after the catastrophic 2008 flood hit, new motivations emerged.

The Iowa Legislature passed legislation in 2010 that authorized the creation of watershed management authorities, which are intergovernmental agreements between jurisdictions within a watershed to plan, manage and collaborate on projects. Cities, counties and soil and water conservation districts can all participate.

“Legislators began to realize … we need to create some structure for communities to be able to partner on these flooding catastrophes that really don't seem to be going away,” said Mary Beth Stevenson, the Cedar Rapids watersheds and source water coordinator.

Since then, WMAs have taken off around the state. The Cedar River watershed now hosts four WMAs: the Indian Creek WMA, created in 2012; the Upper Cedar WMA, created in 2013; the Middle Cedar WMA, created in 2016; and the Lower Cedar WMA, created in 2017.

Cedar Rapids is part of the Indian Creek, Middle Cedar and Lower Cedar WMAs. Stevenson currently serves as chair of the Middle Cedar WMA Board and helps coordinate the city’s collaborations with surrounding communities.

“They're not necessarily projects that we're … doing all the legwork for, because that's really kind of difficult for us to do as a city,” she said. “The best that we can do is contribute to those partnerships or write grants that bring the resources out, and then we have somebody go out and promote them for us.”

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Progress in the watershed

Once the WMAs in the Cedar River watershed were established, collaborations began.

Those in the Middle Cedar WMA, which spans 10 counties including Linn County, were largely supported by the Iowa Watershed Approach — a statewide program promoting flood reduction efforts and water quality improvements. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development awarded the statewide effort $96.9 million in 2016.

The Middle Cedar WMA received $11.2 million — the highest award of any WMA in the state, Stevenson said. That money went toward hiring a watershed coordinator and developing a watershed management plan. In total, the funds resulted in 88 best management practices in the watershed:

“More than half of the projects are expected to provide a reasonable degree of flood storage capability” by slowing, storing, absorbing or decreasing runoff, read a recent University of Iowa evaluation of the projects.

Water quality vs. water quantity projects

Projects in the Cedar River watershed largely belong to two categories, Stevenson said: those that focus on water quality, and those that focus on soil health.

Bioreactors and saturated buffer strips, for example, are water quality projects that focus on removing contaminants from agricultural runoff.

Projects that improve soil health include cover crops, reduced tillage and flood plain restoration. Healthy soil contains more organic matter and becomes spongier than unhealthy soils — allowing it to absorb much more water. For every 1 percent of organic matter content, soil can hold 16,500 gallons of water. That reduction in runoff adds up in times of flooding.

Would those practices have prevented the 2008 flooding? Probably not, Stevenson said.

"But when we're talking about more localized flooding, and we're talking about lowering the peak and the flood impacts to some degree, that's where those healthy soils really come into play,“ she said.

Cedar Rapids’ other partnerships — many of which focus on water quality — have resulted in additional projects in the Cedar River watershed that also mitigate flood impacts.

For example, the city’s Middle Cedar Partnership Project was funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and executed between 2015 and 2020. It resulted in 17,629 acres of cover crops, 11,646 acres of conservation tillage and one oxbow restoration.

The latest round of USDA funding is dedicated to the Cedar River Source Water Partnership, which officially launched in January. In 2022, $265,000 went toward more than 4,200 acres in cover crops. Funding for more than 5,100 acres of cover crops has been allocated in 2023.

“If we just spread the money out all over the place, it's harder to track the actual benefits,” said Stevenson, who helps rank and approve the applications. “But if we're more concentrated on the areas of high need, then I think we're going to be able to show greater impact.”

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Mapping the progress

The University of Iowa Flood Center was created after the 2008 floods and has had an active research role in several WMAs, said program manager Kate Giannini.

Researchers initially conducted hydrologic assessments of watersheds to map how water flows off their landscapes, to identify priority areas for flood mitigation and to measure the impact of possible mitigation projects.

They created a model, called GHOST, to run the different combinations of projects and watersheds through climate change scenarios to “predict” flooding in Iowa. The projections helped WMAs set long-term goals for their watersheds.

Modeling showed that the Middle Cedar WMA’s soil health projects through the Iowa Watershed Approach had great local impacts — sometimes up to 80 percent in flood reduction. But the Cedar River watershed and its 224 sub-watersheds will need many more of the projects to get the desired protections.

“Those projects were just a drop in the bucket,” Giannini said. “I think it really opened a lot of people’s eyes to the need that we have and how much more work and funding that will need to continue to address climate change in our watersheds.”

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Partner response

Getting farmers and landowners to install flood mitigation practices is tough, said Fred Abels, chair of the Grundy County Soil and Water Conservation District. But, by being part of a WMA, his jurisdiction has access to more resources and collaboration.

He has been the Grundy County representative in the Middle Cedar WMA since its inception. Last year, Grundy County installed about 45,000 acres of cover crops — among the top counties in Iowa, Abels said. The Black Hawk Creek and Wolf Creek watersheds both flow into the Cedar River and down to Cedar Rapids.

“I think that's great that (Cedar Rapids) wants to work with farmers and landowners upstream because that's where it all starts,” he said. “That's where you're going to get the most bang for your buck.”

Just east, Black Hawk County suffered an estimated $7 million in damages during the flood, said Vern Fish, the executive director of the Black Hawk County Conservation Board during the disaster. Bridges were blown out; roads were destroyed; his own housing was decimated.

From then until his retirement in 2017, Fish said he spent his career “flood proofing” the county. He helped the board acquire habitats and open space to preserve natural infrastructure that absorbs water. He worked on creating more wetlands across the county. And, thanks to flood buyouts, the board restored more than 250 acres of flood plain in Waterloo to give the Cedar River more space.

With every project, his mind was on the rest of the river communities in Eastern Iowa.

“We're all in this together,” said Fish, now a commissioner on the county’s Soil and Water Conservation District. “If we can do something to help Cedar Rapids, maybe some somebody in Charles City will do something that can help Black Hawk County — and they did. It became a series of dominoes going upstream.”

Cedar Rapids has a leadership role in many of its partnerships, said Jennifer Fencl, the environmental services director for the East Central Iowa Council of Governments. But since 2008, she has witnessed a general shift in the 60-plus cities in Eastern Iowa she works with. The growing collaborations between communities, agencies, retailers and more help move the needle on flood mitigation on a watershed scale.

“It just feels like there's momentum,” Fencl said. “What happens higher in whatever watershed you’re in has an impact on you, and you in turn impact somebody else. I think cities have grasped that.”

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More funding needed

The future of flood mitigation projects in the Cedar River watershed relies on the success of WMAs, Stevenson said. But many of the watershed-wide partnerships suffer from inconsistent funding.

The original legislation authorizing WMAs called for the formation of the groups but didn’t allocate them any money. Instead, they were left to find their own funding sources — like federal funds, local communities, grants and pandemic funds. Cedar Rapids contributes $10,000, $12,557 and $9,324 annually to the Lower Cedar WMA, Indian Creek WMA and Middle Cedar WMA, respectively.

In early 2022 and January 2023, the nonprofit Center for Rural Affairs surveyed Iowa WMAs to “capture a snapshot” of each entity’s capacity, plans and needs.

More than two-thirds of the state’s WMAs reported having completed and having in-progress plans for shaping the local watershed. Yet due to funding constraints, the groups told the center they’re losing the employees and capacity needed for implementing such projects, creating unmet demand for local conservation practices.

“There's never been a dedicated pot of money from the state of Iowa to help support these efforts,” Stevenson said. “Providing them with a consistent level of funding … that would be an incredibly beneficial, reliable, stable funding source that creates job opportunities.”

Brittney J. Miller is the Energy & Environment Reporter for The Gazette and a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues.

Comments: (319) 398-8370; brittney.miller@thegazette.com