Pooled resources, smart land use can curb flooding

By Sen. Rob Hogg

With the disaster on the Maquoketa River, our focus is again on helping people who have lost their homes and businesses. Once again, Iowans are suffering the economic and emotional devastation of catastrophic flooding.

The disaster on the Maquoketa is not the only flood damage Iowa has suffered this year. The Wapsipinicon River also flooded. Homes and businesses were damaged earlier this year on the Little Sioux, Des Moines and Boone rivers.

If these floods are declared a disaster by President Barack Obama, it will be the 15th presidential disaster declaration due to flooding in Iowa since 1990.

Since the Floods of 2008, I have been challenging Iowans to change the way we manage our watersheds and floodplains to minimize future peak flooding and flood damage. Unlike 1993, when the state did very little to try to prevent future disaster damage, the state is making progress on the prevention of future flood damage.

In 2010, the Iowa Legislature passed, and Gov. Chet Culver signed, a $30 million Disaster Mitigation Fund through I-JOBS, smart planning legislation for cities and counties, continued support for the Iowa Flood Center, a four-year program to update our flood maps and authority for our state agencies to participate in the federal Mississippi River Basin Initiative, or MRBI.

In 2011, we need to build on this progress.

Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to visit Austin, Minn., and Mitchell, Floyd and Bremer counties in Iowa - in the northern parts of the Cedar River basin - to learn more about the potential for watershed management that could reduce future flood damage in Cedar Rapids.

In Austin, after record flooding in September 2004 destroyed nearly 300 homes, local officials formed a Cedar River Watershed District to pursue cooperative efforts in four counties to reduce future flooding. The district just received $1.7 million through the MRBI to restore wetlands north of Austin to improve water quality and reduce peak flooding.

In Mitchell County, I attended an awards program for farmers who have adopted conservation practices that will reduce future flood damage. One farmer stabilized the bank along the Cedar River, and another established a riparian buffer along a tributary.

I also toured the 23,000-acre Spring Creek watershed, near Orchard, which will receive about $1 million from MRBI.

In Floyd County, on Highway T-64 north of Colwell, I visited a 67-acre prairie and wetland restoration funded through the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program.

In Bremer County, near Plainfield, I saw 157 acres of riparian farmland - land that flooded during 2008 - that has been returned to prairie and wetlands under the Emergency Watershed Program and Wetland Reserve Program.

Based on my tour, I am convinced that better watershed management can play a leading role in protecting Cedar Rapids in the future.

If we had 1,000 projects in the Cedar River basin like the CREP project in Floyd County, or the riparian farmland project in Bremer County, we could go a long way toward reducing peak flood events and preventing millions, if not billions, of dollars in flood damage. In addition, we would reap significant benefits for habitat, recreation, rural development and improved water quality.

It won't be easy. It will take plenty of staff and monetary support, and a lead agency responsible for accomplishing our flood-reduction goals. My estimate is that it will take 50 new watershed managers and $700 million for projects over the next 10 years in the Cedar River basin alone.

But if we can pool local, state, and federal resources to make this investment, along with smarter land use planning for our floodplains, we can say “never again” to the economic and emotional devastation that will otherwise result when the next flood hits.

Rob Hogg is state senator from District 19 in Cedar Rapids. He is chair of the Senate Rebuild Iowa Committee. He can be reached by e-mail at

robhogg@legis.state.ia.us