Lake Delhi damage could top $150 million, dam repair may cost $5 million

Damage from late July flooding that breached the Lake Delhi dam could top $150 million and repairs to the dam itself could cost $5 million, according to information presented to a task force charged with finding resources for the recovery and rebuilding of the lake.

Finding those resources has become a larger challenge now that FEMA has decided neither the Lake Delhi Recreation Association, which holds title to the dam, nor the Combined Lake Delhi Recreation and Water Quality District, which levies taxes to operate it, are eligible for assistance, David Miller, Iowa Homeland Security Emergency Management Division administrator, told Gov. Chet Culver's Lake Delhi Recover and Rebuild Task Force.

Miller was one of several presenters at the 21-member panel's first meeting in Marion Aug. 27. The task force is planning four public input meetings to hear from local residents about the future of the lake. The first will be Sept. 10 at Maquoketa Valley High School in Delhi. Other hearings are tentatively scheduled Oct. 8 and 27, and Nov. 29. The task force's report to the governor is due Dec. 1.

Culver's charge to the task force is to develop strategies for both the recovery and rebuilding of the Lake Delhi area, “most specifically, whether and under what conditions the lake Delhi dam should be rebuilt.”

There seemed to be no question that the lake community should be rebuilt. There are about 900 homes and 600 permanent residents at the 450-acre lake on the Maquoketa River that was created by construction of a hydroelectric dam 88 years ago.

“It's an awesome place,” association President James Willey, a task force member, said. “Or it was.”

Rebuilding the dam to enable the association to complete its plans to generate electricity and add an emergency spillway, will cost about $5 million, Willey said.

James “Buzz” Graham, a trustee of the Combined Lake Delhi Recreation and Water Quality District, wants a plan to “restore the infrastructure and bring the lake back to one of the pristine areas of northeast Iowa.”

Delaware County Board Chairman Jeff Madlom also called for “putting the county and the lake are back like it was.”

However, there were questions about the wisdom of rebuilding the dam. About 200-foot section of the same was overtopped after 15 inches of rain fell across the 347 square mile watershed. The water level of the lake dropped about 10 in a little more than an hour after the dam was breached.

Some downstream task force members raised questions about the role the dam plays in water management and whether the task force was to assume the dam was going to be rebuilt.

Joe Hoger, whose family farm lies below the dam, said that as a boy he often wondered what would happen if the dam broke.

“Now I know. I never want to see it again,” Hoger said. He told the panel he lost about a third of his crop – roughly a $100,000 loss,

Monticello residents wonder “whether the dam had a role in our flooding problems,” City Administrator Doug Herman said.

Hopkinton Mayor Pro Tem, D.J. Hucker sounded a similar concern and hoped the panel could develop a flood management plan “better than what we have.”

However, Culver's representative on the task force, James Larew, said restoration of the lake presents opportunities for Iowans “to do their own thinking” about issues that have been under discussion since 2008 flooding.

The Maquoketa River and the dam are not controlled by the Army Corps of Engineers, he said, so Iowans will have to make their own decisions on how to move forward.

Restoration “is not simply a local issue,” said Larew, the governor's legal counsel. Culver would like to see 21

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Century standards for clean water and renewable energy considered in developing strategies for the Lake Delhi community.