No luck for now with D.C. funding request for Cedar Rapids flood control project

CEDAR RAPIDS - In early December, Mayor Ron Corbett and City Manager Jeff Pomeranz went to Washington, D.C., seeking to get mention of the city's flood control project into either the Army Corps of Engineers current budget or President Barack Obama's next budget.

Cedar Rapids got a place in neither.

The city is not in the Corps current year 'work plan,” nor is the city in Obama's just-published budget for the federal fiscal year that starts Oct. 1, 2015, said Ron Fournier, spokesman at the Corps' district office in Rock Island, Ill.

Corbett and Pomeranz both said the news drives home one point: Securing construction dollars for the federally-funded portion of the city's $570-million flood control system will take patience, optimism and years of lobbying.

'We'll keep plugging away and working with the Corps, and eventually we'll get funded,” the mayor said.

Corbett said the city has made repeated trips to the nation's capital to talk to Iowa's Congressional delegation, the Corps and executive branch officials with success.

Congress authorized and President Barack Obama signed a 2014 version of the Water Resources Reform and Development Act (WRRDA), with $73 million for construction of the Cedar Rapids project specifically mentioned in the legislation.

However, Congress has yet to appropriate money for the projects, and Cedar Rapids city officials will be meeting with Iowa's Congressional delegation throughout this year to try to get money in Congress' next budget. The Obama administration has not included the Cedar Rapids project in its budget proposal.

Corbett said the city has an uphill battle because other flood control projects have a better benefit-cost ratio than Cedar Rapids' project. The ratio compares the value of property protected to the cost of the flood control.

A few years ago, Congress authorized the spending of $12.4 million for pre-construction engineering and design work on the Cedar Rapids project, but Congress has funded only part of the work. The Corps' work has stopped $6 million short of its goal, the Corps' Fournier said this week - and this is after city contributed its share of the cost, $3.1 million.

Fournier said the Corps now has set aside its effort to seek separate financing from Congress for engineering and design work and has incorporated that work into the construction piece of the project. The Corps now will seek a total of $65.4 million for the Cedar Rapids project, he said.

Cedar Rapids has secured $264 million for its $570 million project from the state of Iowa, which will be coming in over as much as 20 years. The city also counts $117 million in earlier federal flood recovery funds, which the city used to buy out and demolish property to make way for flood control. The rest of the project will be paid with city funds or other non-federal funds.

'It's going to be an effort to get dollars out of the federal government,” the city's Pomeranz said. 'But we're optimistic. We are in the WRRDA bill. That was a major accomplishment.

'We've got to keep working our senators and working with the administration. But it's not easy. It's very hard.”

Work on the project has begun. The McGrath Amphitheatre along the river is designed as part of the flood control system, and a flood wall is going up in front of the new CRST Center building downtown. Work to elevate the wall at the Quaker plant will start this year, and engineering and design work continues on both sides of the river with non-federal funds.