Quaker Oats floodwall gets expected HUD disaster funding

The City Council this week will make it official: They will accept a previously announced award of $9.085 million in federal disaster funds that will allow the city to help build a new flood-protection wall at Quaker Oats just north of downtown to the standard required by the Army Corps of Engineers.

Quaker already has begun the work, but its plans had been to build a wall that provides less protection than called for in the Corps' plan or the city's own, more-comprehensive flood-protection plan.

However, an agreement with the city and the Corps is allowing the city to use federal disaster funds, which were awarded to the state of Iowa and now the city by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Community Development Block Grant Program, to build the 2,500-foot-long wall at Quaker consistent with the Corps' plan and the city's plan. Quaker is paying some of the cost.

The city says that it appears that the federal government will allow the HUD grant to count as part of the city's 35-percent local match that is required of any project that the Corps builds.

The Corps' plan, now estimated to cost $104 million, will protect much of the east side of Cedar Rapids from the Cedar River with a no-frills flood-protection system. The city is pushing to build a $375-million system that incorporates the Corps' plan and adds to it, including protection for the west side of the city.

Of note in the city-Corps agreement on the Quaker project, the city states it will take on an estimated $200,000 expense to cover the increase cost of wages for those working with Quaker's contractor. With the federal funds involved in the project, the contractor now must pay prevailing wages as dictated by the Davis Bacon Act of 1931.

Also of note, the city initially had intended to use the $9.085-million HUD disaster grant to raise flood-prone Otis Road SE. The city says it will continue to pursue other funding for that project.