Utilities in the Corridor emerge from floods with stronger systems

CEDAR RAPIDS -- When Alliant Energy evacuated its downtown building on June 12, 2008, because of floodwater lapping at the door, officials intentionally lit the sign at the top of the 18-story tower.

“We sent a signal that we wanted to be one of the first businesses back downtown,” said Tom Aller, president of Alliant subsidiary Interstate Power & Light Company.

Alliant was one of several entities – both public and private – that dealt with their own flood recovery while helping customers. Of 30,000 Alliant customers who lost power because of the flood, about 2,000 were still in the dark weeks after the disaster.

The company that serves 1.4 million customers in Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota has restored several key facilities, improving energy generation and delivery in the Cedar Rapids area, Aller said.

“After five years, we've done a lot to improve our facilities and spent a lot of money,” he said. “Both the railroad and the utilities are better equipped and located. It's been a long process.”

At $152 million, the most expensive project Alliant undertook after the 2008 flood was restoration of the Prairie Creek Generating Station in southwest Cedar Rapids. The flood damaged control systems, transformers, generators, motors and switch gear for the plant that serves as a base load facility for the whole state.

The phased return of the plant started in February 2009 and ended that summer with enough power to serve 200,000 households.

Restoring two downtown substations – RiverRun and Downtown Industrial – cost a combined $25 million. The rehab of Alliant's operating center at 1001 Shaver Rd. NE, which included relocating a nearby distribution center to higher ground, cost the company about $5 million.

Many people forget Alliant also owns the Cedar Rapids and Iowa City Railway Company (CRANDIC), which lost a rail bridge to the Cedar River on June 12, 2008. Two days before, railroad officials parked 18 train cars full of rock on the bridge near Penford Products, to hold down the deck during the flood. This strategy worked in the 1993 floods, but not in 2008.

Rebuilding that bridge cost $8 million, with nearly $7 million coming from government grants. As a utility, Alliant was not eligible for government disaster aid on any other projects, Aller said.

The most controversial of Alliant's decisions following the 2008 floods was closure of the water-damaged Sixth Street Generating Station, which supplied steam to many downtown customers. The decommissioning of that plant is ongoing.

Another facility coming down is the Cedar Temporary substation built within weeks of the 2008 floods to replace power lost by damaged facilities. The demolition, estimated at $1.8 million, will likely happen by the end of the year.

Customer rate increases paid for most of Alliant's post-flood projects, Aller said.

MidAmerican Energy, which serves 125,400 customers in Linn and Johnson counties, relocated its Cedar Rapids call center from downtown to 2000 Wiley Blvd. SW following the flood. The utility also installed facilities in downtown Cedar Rapids to provide natural gas to companies previously served by Alliant's Sixth Street Generating Station, Spokeswoman Abby Bottenfield said.

MidAmerican replaced 15 miles of low-pressure gas mains and 900 services in Cedar Rapids with an intermediate-pressure system.

In June 2008, sandbaggers saved several of MidAmerican's Coralville facilities from flooding, which preserved electricity for Coralville customers. Other MidAmerican buildings were damaged, but those will be protected from future floods by city-built levees.

Bottenfield would not say how much flood-related projects cost or describe the sources of funding.