More than 6 years of talk about flood control in Cedar Rapids nearing end

CEDAR RAPIDS - City officials and their engineering consultants have been talking about the possible alignment and look of a coming flood-control system for more than six years.

Time has come for Cedar Rapids residents to pay attention.

City officials and consultants held their third open house in three months on Monday at the downtown library once again to elicit public comments as the city finalizes plans for a flood-control system in the months ahead.

Sandy Pumphrey, the city's project engineer for flood control, on Monday said the city is getting a lot of quality comments from the public as it decides a final alignment for the system. It then has to decide what part of that alignment will be earthen levee, solid flood wall, removable flood wall, or a combination wall that is part removable.

Jim Halverson, vice president of HR Green Co. of Cedar Rapids, said cost will play a role in what the city can build. Removable flood walls, for example, are more expensive than levees and permanent flood walls, and more gradually climbing levees are more expensive than those that climb more abruptly.

The biggest questions about alignment center around the north end of the proposed system on both the west and east sides of the river, Halverson said.

On the west side of the river, the issue is how many existing properties to leave unprotected by a levee. On the east side, the issue is whether to protect Cedar Lake north of the Quaker Co. plant and businesses to the east of the lake.

HR Green Co. is the city's consultant on the west side of the river, and Stanley Consultants is the city's consultant on east-side flood control, where the Army Corps of Engineers already has done considerable pre-construction engineering and design work.

Dan Miller, project manager for Stanley, on Monday said there are crucial issues to resolve before the City Council approves a final plan in June.

A map of the proposed east-side alignment shows much of the protection through the downtown as a solid flood wall, which Miller said is what the Corps of Engineers' no-frills east-side system preliminarily has called for.

But Miller said the city has received plenty of suggestions about providing something different - so many that he said the likelihood is there won't be a solid, permanent flood wall any place downtown where an office worker now can look out a first-floor window to see the river.

'I might be sticking my neck out too far, but that's the feedback we're getting,” Miller said.

Doug Neumann, executive vice president of the Cedar Rapids Metro Economic Alliance, on Monday said the emerging alignment and design of the flood control system has 'a lot of great things.” But he said it 'certainly has some things we're hoping can be improved or changed in the final design.”

'This is really a critical time in the design phase,” Neumann said. 'If you care about this stuff, come to these meetings and see what there is to be seen. Make sure that your input and feedback is heard.”

Neumann said the Metro Economic Alliance generally wants to see more removable or 'demountable” flood walls in the downtown and fewer solid flood walls.

Property owners in the downtown and Kingston Village will be meeting with the city and its consultants in the days ahead, he said.

The city's Pumphrey said some sections of the downtown may feature combination walls where a permanent flood wall is built to protect against a 100-year flood plus three feet - which is a height that protects the downtown to the standards required by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Above the flood wall will be a system in which planks can be inserted into columns at the time of a flood warning. The removable piece of the wall will protect to the height of the city's historic 2008 flood, he said.

One place that will have removable flood walls for sure is between City Hall - the former federal courthouse - and the river, which is required because the building has historic status, Pumphrey said.

Among questions yet to be resolved, Pumphrey said, is whether the east-side flood protection will include a flood wall to protect the African American Museum of Iowa, 55 12th Ave. SE, or if the museum might choose to move.

HR Green's Halverson said his company will meet with Penford Co. to see how a flood wall and river-side trail system will work between the Penford plant and the river.

The city estimates that its flood-control system will cost $570 million in today's dollars. The city's McGrath Amphitheatre on the west side of the river has been designed and built to be part of the flood-control system. A flood wall is being built along the 200 block of First Street SE as part of the construction of the CRST building.