Cedar Rapids city sewers present hazards beneath the streets

Decades before "The Goonies" brought prepubescent, subterranean adventure to the big screen, Cedar Rapids council member Don Karr - then just a kid - was having adventures of his own beneath the city streets.

Like so many of his peers, Karr occasionally ventured down a storm sewer tunnel that runs under E Avenue. Armed with flashlights and big sticks - to fight off the sewer rats they never saw - Karr and his friends explored the tunnel in search of pirates and treasure.

They didn't find either, but for Karr the exploration was never a total loss.

"I got my first kiss in one of those (tunnels)," Karr recalled with a laugh.

A tradition that Karr suspects began with his own father and likely continued with his son is alive and well today, city officials said. That doesn't mean they recommend it, though.

Craig Hanson, the city's public works maintenance manager, said kids have been entering the city's larger storm sewers "forever." He said the tunnel explored by Karr as a youth - and a large limestone tunnel under First Avenue - are two of the largest and more popular exploration areas in the city.

But exploring those tunnels also is dangerous, Hanson cautioned. Aside from the water, which is several inches high a day after a heavy rain such as the one that hit Cedar Rapids on Tuesday, other potential dangers include tripping and head hazards, hard rains, raccoons, mice and rats.

"We highly do not recommend it," Hanson said. "There are wild animals down there - raccoons, primarily, feral cats. You can find opossums occasionally, rats in a couple of them.

"Depending on the time of the year and rate of flow of water, if there hasn't been a lot of flow of water, the organic matter can and will decay, which causes an oxygen-deprivation zone."

Aside from its entrance - a scenic, tree-lined creek - the First Avenue tunnel is not what you would describe as welcoming. After this week's rain, the level of water ranges from two to six inches.

Inside the tunnel, once the entrance is out of view, the only light comes from the occasional manhole or overhead intake. Graffiti - including swear words and references to 1980s horror movies - occasionally mark up the walls.

Water drips down from overhead.

Cedar Rapids Police Department Sgt. Cristy Hamblin said it's probably been a few years since the department took any calls on children wandering the sewers. She does remember a foot chase a few years back when the suspect hopped into the Cedar River by a roller dam and was spotted coming out of a drainage way.

Hamblin said there are no signs warning people not to enter the storm sewers, and the city doesn't put any guardrails across the entrances because they could present a risk to someone who did venture into the tunnels.

That doesn't mean someone couldn't get into legal trouble for going into the tunnels, however.

"Ultimately they could be charged with criminal trespass," Hamblin said.

The city hasn't installed grates to prevent people from entering the sewers for fear trespassers getting in somewhere else could be trapped inside during a flood and drown, Hanson said.

“It was the adventure,” Karr recalled. “You were discovering new worlds. It was dark. It was scary ... . It's challenging going down into a sewer.

"We never saw no alligators and no rats," he said, "but, by God, we looked for them."