Legislation would encourage dredging of Cedar River

Legislators from Linn County are pushing a bill that would encourage more dredging of the Cedar River.

A bill in the Senate Ways and Means Committee would cut the fees contractors must pay to remove sand and gravel from the river in Linn County.

Instead of 25 cents per ton, the fee would be 10 cents per ton. The legislation would last five years.

“To get a private contractor to go out and dredge the river, there's really no incentive to do that,” said Rep. Kraig Paulsen, R-Hiawatha, who helped draft the bill with Sen. Rob Hogg, D-Cedar Rapids.

“We're going to amend it to be clear that it's removal of sand and gravel for purposes of flood control,” Hogg said.

Paulsen and Sen. Swati Dandekar, D-Marion, will discuss the proposal, along with several other state issues, during a town hall meeting at 10 a.m. Saturday at the Hiawatha Public Library.

Seven vendors in the state already dredge Iowa rivers, and legislators don't want them complaining when companies get a 15-cent-per-ton discount from the Department of Natural Resources in Linn County.

While dredging the river has consistently come up since the flood, it's not clear the practice reduces flood risk, and the Corps of Engineers rarely recommends it as a flood-protection measure.

Col. Shawn McGinley, commander and district engineer for the Corps' Rock Island, Ill., district office, reported earlier this month that dredging would provide “minor and localized reductions” in water levels, reductions that would vanish as the river bottom filled in.

Hogg acknowledged that “to be effective as a flood control measure, the dredging has to be pretty much continuous.”

The bill likely won't come out of committee until the second week in March, but members of both parties support it, and Paulsen gives it a “better than even shot” of passage.

Dandekar will be the bill's floor manager.