After 13 years, Sun Valley neighborhood gets flash-flood fix

CEDAR RAPIDS — Persistent fear of flooding isn't limited here to those who still live or own property along the Cedar River nearly seven years after the city's historic 2008 flood.

Last summer made sure of that when flash flooding followed a deluge of rain in late June in an event that overwhelmed the city's sanitary and storm sewer systems in places, caused property damage in some 49 spots in the city, wrecked foundations on some 30 homes and swept two teenagers into a storm sewer, one of whom died.

Sun Valley neighborhood resident Dee Anderson called on City Council woman Ann Poe on the phone last summer to see what emergency city help she could steer to the flash-flood-prone neighborhood along Indian Creek.

When we think of flooding, oftentimes our mind goes right to 2008. But that doesn't mean that only those who live along the river can be flood-impacted. We had flood events all over our community last summer.

- Ann Poe

Cedar Rapids City Council

Last week, Poe, chairwoman of the council's Flood Control Committee, posed for a photo with three Sun Valley neighbors — Anderson, her husband, Neil, and Jim Sines — on the top of a brand-new flood control berm that the three neighbors and others have been pushing the city to build since the neighborhood's own flood disaster in 2002.

The neighborhood has been threatened by flooding several times since.

The berm is a testament to the persistence and research of neighbors as they worked to cajole and persuade the city about their flooding problem.

'When you're emotional, you're message gets lost,' said Sines, a lawyer with Ackley, Kopecky and Kingery. 'You need to do your homework, you need to understand the engineering, the process, and what's possible, what's doable.'

The new Sun Valley berm is proof, too, that solutions to flooding can be long in coming — it's been 13 years since the neighborhood's flood disaster of 2002 — and costly if they do come.

Rob Davis, the city's engineering operations manager, said the actual construction cost of the 1,450-foot-long berm protecting Sun Valley from Indian Creek — which at its highest point is about eight feet tall — is $756,593. The total project, which includes design, storm sewer and ditch work and some additional berm perpendicular to the creek, puts the price tag at about $1.5 million.

City funds, primarily from the local-option sales tax for flood recovery and control, paid for the project.

'When we think of flooding, oftentimes our mind goes right to 2008,' council member Poe said. 'But that doesn't mean that only those who live along the river can be flood-impacted. We had flood events all over our community last summer.

'And this one (in Sun Valley) is one that was recurring time and time and time and time again. And you can't expect our citizens to live like that. Something had to be done.'

Even so, she said fixing many of the other flash-flooding problems that showed up last summer won't be an easier matter. Overall, the city estimates that it may need to spend $25 million to remedy most of the problems, she said.

Sandy Pumphrey, the city's project engineer for flood control, last week said the city has talked to property owners in 49 different trouble spots across Cedar Rapids where there were problems of basement flooding, sewer backups and foundation collapses as a result of last June's flash flooding.

The city investigated each spot, tried to identify the causes of problems and then has begun to look at options of how problems can be addressed.

The purpose has not been to commit the city to any specific action but to understand 'the magnitude of what happened,' Pumphrey said.

He added that the city believes the intensity of the rain last summer in a short time was too great for the city's system of sewers and overland flow routes on streets and in ditches. The city's system is designed to handle the worst storm that occurs in five years — but the one last summer was one the city expects only every 100 years, he said.

Pumphrey said the city already has begun work on some remedies. But at some point, infrastructure issues become philosophical ones as the city decides if and where it might want to increase the size of sewer pipes to some new standard, he said.

Last week, the city sponsored a flood-prevention workshop, which was designed to give residents suggestions. But in one way was an admission that the city won't be able to fix everything in the short run.

The workshop was named ResilientCR, and is part of a larger effort in which the National Academy of Sciences is working with Linn County, Seattle and Charleston, S.C., to find ways to build resilient communities so they can be prepared for disasters.

Out at the Sun Valley neighborhood, off Cottage Grove Avenue SE by East Post Road SE, neighbors Neil and Dee Anderson said they are pleased the berm finally is in place — even if it blocks the view of the greenway along Indian Creek.

Neil Anderson said he still can recall the rising water and damage in 2002 and his determination not to leave his house.

'They took us out in a boat, and the sheriff said, 'You either get in the boat or I'll arrest you and put you in the boat,'' he said.

Dee Anderson said the new berm still needs to be tested by a heavy rain in the watershed. But even so, it has brought her great comfort.

'It's wonderfully freeing,' she said.

Jim Sines said public officials told the neighborhood back in 2002 that the volume and intensity of rain caused the damaging flood from Indian Creek and that there was not much that could be done about it.

Today, 13 years later, Sines said public officials may point to climate change or heavy-duty rains to explain flooding events yet to happen.

'That may or may not be,' he said. 'But you have to critically question.'

At Sun Valley, neighbors banded together and hired a noted University of Iowa hydrologist while Sines unearthed site plans that showed that the berm that has now just been put in place at Sun Valley was supposed to have been built back in the 1970s, when the first homes went up in the development.

In the intervening 40 years, the growing flood threat to Sun Valley came from the extensive development in the Indian Creek watershed above the neighborhood, as pavement and roofs replaced absorbent ground while inadequate steps were taken for much of the time to manage stormwater runoff, Sines explained.

'This (berm at Sun Valley) is a remedy for a development practice from another era,' he said. 'The cautionary tale here is that in the rush to develop and build — we all want development, we all want growth.

'But it has to be done in fashion that doesn't risk the welfare of others.'