City looks to state's pot of fed money for what Corps won't fund; latest Corps idea is an east-side one without removable flood walls downtown

CEDAR RAPIDS - City Hall is starting to look to the Governor's Office now for a chunk of funds to help build the flood-protection system that the city says it wants and needs to protect against a flood of similar force as the historic June 2008 flood.

The look to Des Moines is being prompted by a more clear picture that is emerging of the system of levees and flood walls that the Army Corps of Engineers is apt to recommend be built to protect Cedar Rapids from another major flood.

The Corps' recommendation will fall short of what the city is looking for.

The Corps' recommendation, for now, is bound by existing federal law, which says the Corps can't recommend a project that costs more than the value of the property it protects. However, federal rules have been under review, City Manager Jim Prosser and Mayor Ron Corbett noted in a discussion with The Gazette editorial board on Tuesday. Prosser added that the Corps' final report - a draft is expected this summer with the final report due by the end of the year - will give the city room to make its case for an “exception” to the Corps' recommendation.

Prosser noted that the state of Iowa gets 20 percent of the Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster funds coming into the state for use in flood mitigation, and Prosser and Corbett said the city will need to work to see that the state steers much of that money to Cedar Rapids to help pay what the Corps won't pay for the city's flood-protection system.

Corbett noted that Iowa has a governor's election race this year, and local residents, he said, need to make sure the gubernatorial candidates are asked if they intend to get behind Cedar Rapids' flood-protection needs.

Corps officials came to Cedar Rapids in recent weeks to explain the benefit-cost ratio it must use as it works to design a flood-protection system within the federal rules.

On Tuesday, Corbett said the Corps now believes it can satisfy its benefit-cost ratio by constructing a flood-protection option that would provide levees and flood walls on the east side of the river from the Quaker plant just above downtown to the Cargill plant below downtown. The option, which Corbett says has a benefit-to-cost ratio of 1.09, would leave the Cedar Lake area unprotected as well as the west side of the river.

The city's position hasn't changed: The city wants its “preferred” plan, which calls for protection from another June 2008 flood on both sides of the river, Corbett and Prosser emphasized.

Prosser said the city will first push to make sure that the west side of the river is protected, and then it will work to make sure that removable flood walls are part of the plan. The Corps is now proposing less-costly permanent flood walls through the downtown, he said.

Prosser noted that the price tag for flood protection will be less than the ballpark number of $1 billion, a figure which was tossed around 16 months ago when the city and its consultants put together the city's preferred plan.

The $1-billion figure included about half for flood walls and levees and property buyouts, and about half for the need to change streets and sewers and neighborhoods to accommodate the flood-protection system, Prosser noted.

For instance, the Corps' project price tag is dropping, in part, because they city is using other federal dollars to buy out homes and other property in the way of the flood-protection system.

Prosser termed any flood-protection plan that would not protect the west side of the river “ridiculous.”

Prosser and Corbett said property owners and investors in some instances are waiting to see what the final decision will be on future flood protection.

It took Grand Forks, N.D., about 10 years to get its protection in place after a 1997 flood there.

“We're going to break that record,” Prosser said.

Fargo, N.D., had serious flooding a year ago and a threat of serious flooding already this year, and Prosser said Cedar Rapids' push for flood protection at the same time that Fargo is pushing should help both cities make a case for federal funds.