Key flood-predictor tool threatened by budget cuts

IOWA CITY – As the Missouri River was rising in western Iowa, word came Tuesday in Eastern Iowa that sophisticated instruments that help predict flooding may be shut down because of federal budget cuts.

That could mean the loss of data that help forecast water levels and combat flooding.

“Adequate river modeling would be impossible at some locations and that would put lives and property at risk,” said Maren Stoflet with the National Weather Service's Quad Cities office.

She spoke at a meeting in Iowa City where representatives from the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers told about 50 people, many of them from local governments, that budget woes are threatening their ability to operate gauges that are used to monitor rivers and streams.

The stream gauges measure things like water level and discharge rate. The data is used by the National Weather Service for flood predictions and by the corps in dam and reservoir operations.

“You lose a stream gauge, you lose knowledge,” said Chris Trefry, a hydrologic engineer with the corps.

There are 173 stream gauges in Iowa, said Greg Nalley, chief of the USGS hydrologic surveillance section in Iowa City. The USGS operates them on a contract basis for the Army Corps of Engineers.

Some of those could be lost because USGS and corps budgets have been flat in recent years and they are looking at possible budget cuts in upcoming years, Nalley.

The most advanced stream gauges cost about $14,900 a year to operate. The federal government typically pays 40 percent of that and what is known as a cooperator covers the rest. Cooperators are often state agencies or local governments.

A few gauges have been discontinued in recent years because a cooperator couldn't come up with the money and a new funding partner could not be found, Nalley said. Several more gauges, not yet identified, could be shut down in coming years unless cooperators step up to save them, he said.

Most of the people at the meeting were city, county and emergency management officials from central and Eastern Iowa.

Dave Wilson, coordinator of the Johnson County Emergency Management Agency, said he was there to get more information should the county need to consider putting money toward gauges. The county monitors several gauges to prepare for possible flooding, he said.

“We stand to have huge losses if we don't know what's coming at us,” he said.

A similar meeting was held in Council Bluffs a couple of months ago and a few towns and utility companies have expressed interest in funding gauges, Nalley said. Now, record-breaking flooding is being forecast in western Iowa communities along the Missouri River, which was a topic of conversation at the Iowa City meeting.

The University of Iowa-based

Iowa Flood Center has developed a cheaper sensor that provides real-time data on water height. But agencies like the National Weather Service need more information, like the discharge rate, to run their flood models, Nalley said.