FEMA commits $1.4 million to pump station

CEDAR RAPIDS - No word has arrived yet from the Federal Emergency Management Agency on two appeals that the city has filed in an effort to get $62.44 million in disaster payments it once thought the federal agency had promised.

However, officials here have partially won another appeal with FEMA. The agency has agreed to pay the city $1.4 million to build a pump station at the Water Pollution Control facility to pump rainwater into the Cedar River and over a new flood protection system to be built at the plant.

Flood Recovery and Reinvestment Director Joe O'Hern said Cedar Rapids had sought $4.1 million from FEMA for work related to the pump station, but it succeeded in securing only some of the funding. The city is looking for money elsewhere for the related work, O'Hern said.

The city's large disagreement with FEMA involves two matters: $51.92 million to repair the incinerator at the Water Pollution Control facility and to replace it with a new one, and $10.52 million to bury demolition debris in the landfill from the site of the former Sinclair meatpacking site. Both are second appeals and will be decided at the agency's headquarters in Washington, D.C.

The city has put $16.4 million into the two projects so far.