Flood wall construction starts at Quaker

CEDAR RAPIDS - The thaw is on, the water up in Iowa's rivers and creeks and City Hall is paddling hard  to secure federal, state and local-option sales tax dollars to finance the preferred flood protection plan.

The plan is designed to keep both sides of the city safe from the Cedar River and costs $375-million.

At the same time, the start of construction already has begun quietly on the first .4-mile piece of the city's proposed 7.75-mile flood-protection system.  The first piece will protect the Quaker Oats plant, just above downtown, which along with downtown was inundated by the June 2008 flood.

Quaker Oats decided it couldn't wait for all the government entities to fund an entire project, says Dave Elgin, the city's public works director and city engineer.

As a result, the city, the Army Corps of Engineers and Quaker have huddled, and the city and the Corps have reached an agreement on how Quaker can proceed to protect itself and how the city can add to the project so that the flood wall at the plant is built to the standards and to the height called for in both the city's flood-protection plan and the Corps' plan.

It's unclear how much Quaker will invest in the project, but Elgin says at minimum it will be a million dollars and likely more.

At the same time, the city has secured permission from the Iowa Department of Economic Development to use $9 million in federal disaster funds earlier appropriated to the state of Iowa for infrastructure improvements so that the city can make the protection at the Quaker plant consistent with the city's and Corps' plans.

The city initially had intended to use the $9-million grant to raise flood-prone Otis Road SE, but Tim Waddell, an administrator with the state economic development agency, said on Friday that his office now has approved the use of the money for the Quaker project.

The city's Elgin says Quaker has begun to drive sheet piling into the ground along the river at its plant, which will prevent rising river water from seeping through the ground and flooding the plant. Quaker will end up with a flood wall that is two to six feet higher than its protection now in place, depending on where on the plant's grounds the wall is, Elgin estimates.

He says the city will use the $9 million in federal disaster funds to add another seven to 10 feet of concrete wall above what Quaker intends to put in place so that the segment meets the quality and height standards called for in the city's and the Corps' plans.

However, Elgin notes that Quaker will complete the portion of the protection it has decided it needs much sooner than the city will be able to complete its part of the project. First, the Corps' engineers must complete design before the city can proceed, which likely will take a year or two, Elgin says.

Tom Heinold, project design engineer at the Army Corps of Engineers' Rock Island District office, says the Corps' engineers have reviewed Quaker's plans and have concluded that they can be incorporated into the Corps' plan. Heinold adds that the Corps likewise will work with the city to make sure that the city's portion of the project is designed and built in accord with the Corps' standards and plan.

The city's Elgin says the city's second task is to try to win approval to count the $9-million in federal money to be used on the Quaker project as part of the local matching dollars required in the Corps' $104-million plan. Sometimes federal disaster can be counted, sometimes not, depending on strings attached by Congress, Elgin says. Quaker's spending likely will count as part of the local match.

The Corps' plan, which must follow strict federal rules related to benefits and cost, calls for protecting only a portion of the east side of the river with local matching dollars to pay 35 percent of the $104-million cost.

The city's two-sides-of-the-river plan - which calls for more extensive use of more expensive removable flood walls than the Corps' plan - also calls for the flood-protection system on the east side of the river to extend north of Quaker to protect the Pillsbury plant, Cedar Lake and low-lying areas around Coe College. However, work now under way at Quaker will stop just at the north side of the Quaker property, with Quaker extending the wall on its property to the east to provide some backdoor protection until the city's entire plan is put in place to the north, Elgin says.

In truth, the Quaker project caused a bit of apprehension at City Hall as the city and the Corps' Rock Island District office prepared to present the Corps' Cedar Rapids plan to the Corps' Civil Works Review Board, which approved the plan in January in Washington, D.C. City officials had worried that Quaker's desire to build quickly and to a different standard might remove the significant value of the Quaker property from the Corps' crucial benefit-cost ratio, disqualifying even the Corps' partial plan for the city from being approved. But a city-Corps agreement to make sure the Quaker work could be incorporated into the Corps' plan solved the problem.

Quaker spokeswoman Candace Mueller Medina says Quaker needed to invest to protect its Cedar Rapids plant - what she called “the world's largest cereal milling facilities” - from future flooding. At the same time, she says the company is working closely with the city and the Corps and fully supports the city's goal “of providing flood protection for the entire city.”

The city's Elgin points out that the work at Quaker does not mean that the city now will need less than the $375 million it is seeking for its comprehensive, 7.75-mile flood-protection plan. He notes that the dollar estimate is already a year old with the project at least a few years from construction. Additionally, city officials have said they also want to protect the May's Island structures - the Linn County Courthouse and jail and the city's Veterans Memorial Building - with removable flood walls. The addition likely will add as much to the cost of the project as the work around Quaker, using existing public funds and Quaker's funds, will subtract from the cost.

The Corps has approved its $104-million partial protection plan for the city, and it is on the precipice of being sent to Congress for possible funding. Meanwhile, the City Council is asking the Iowa Legislature to contribute money toward the city's more comprehensive plan while the council has called for a May 3 vote to see if residents are willing to extend the city's 1-percent local-option sales tax for 20 years to provide local funds to help pay a part of the bill.