Of the 7,200 earmarks in the mammoth federal omnibus budget, one in particular interested me.
Buried in the 4,100-page, $1.7 trillion spending plan is $1,265,625 for a flood mitigation project in Davenport, Iowa.
Few people probably noticed it, but some folks in Davenport did.
When paired with another flood project, this little earmark will be a step forward for Davenport’s barely year-old flood mitigation plan.
Yes, the earmark is a flyspeck in the overall federal spending bill. And, comparatively speaking, it’s also a pretty small piece of the $165 million flood resiliency and mitigation plan the city council voted to approve late last year.
Still, the project at Marquette Street and West River Drive – and other work at East River Drive where 3rd and 4th streets meet – promise to keep two widely used downtown intersections open longer in the event of Mississippi River flooding.
For those of you who don’t live in the Quad-Cities, River Drive is a main artery through our downtown. And during floods, even at moderate levels, River Drive lives up to its name as water fills the street and traffic has to be diverted elsewhere.
This is among the many disruptions that happen along the 9-mile riverfront when the Mississippi River decides to leave its banks.
Mississippi River flooding is a mainstay in Davenport. But it was never worse than in 2019, when the river hit record levels and, worse, when temporary barriers the city relied on successfully for years to keep floodwaters mostly at bay collapsed.
The failure sent a bloated river flowing into downtown, stranding people who had to be rescued by boat and causing millions of dollars in damages.
I remember running from the newsroom along with several other journalists that day to cover the event.
At the time, the disaster prompted an outcry – and a call that, once and for all, the city should do something substantive about stopping the flooding. Davenport’s downtown had begun to see growth, with fresh new businesses opening, providing vitality to an area that community leaders had been trying for years to bring to life.
All that seemed threatened by the prospect of more flooding, especially with climate change intensifying storms and flooding around the world.
As a result, a lengthy planning process began in Davenport – and last year, it resulted in a 336-page flood resiliency and mitigation plan being presented to the city council.
A compromise of sorts, the multiphase plan, broken into three parts, isn’t aimed so much at permanently stopping all of our flooding but at mitigating the impact, reducing risk and disruption and preserving the desire that many in this city have of maintaining contact with a river unmarred by permanent berms and barriers that cut off access. And it would do so at a lower cost than other, more intensive structural approaches.
The plan didn’t go as far as some people wanted. Some in this town wanted to protect to a higher level, even if it cost more money.
This plan, when it is built out, is aimed at providing protection up to a river stage of 22 feet.
That still is below the record 22.7 feet set in 2019 – and it’s also below the levels set in 1965 and 1993 – so it carries some risk.
The city has other means to fight higher water levels, like the use of those temporary barriers, but again, this plan is a compromise.
I thought it was a decent compromise. According to the flood study, there were 142 days between 2000 to 2020 when flood stage exceeded 18 feet; 68 days when it was above 20 feet and just 7 days when it was above 22 feet. (When you go back to the beginning of record-keeping in 1878, the river exceeded 22 feet on 18 days, the study says.)
Hurdles remain
Even so, at a cost of $165 million (in 2021 dollars), there remain challenges to doing even this much. Chief among them: Where is the city going to get all that money. This $1.2 million earmark, secured by Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa, is only a small step toward this plan’s overall goals, and it’s even a fairly small step forward in the $27.5 million Phase One piece of the plan.
The rest of the plan, the more transformational pieces, cost even more and take longer to put in place.
Still, as someone who has worked downtown for more than 30 years and covered my share of flooding, I am eager to see whether these two projects make a difference when the river inevitably floods again. I’m also interested to see whether these steps provide any kind of momentum toward securing funding for other projects that are in the plan.
These two projects are somewhat similar. They will put in place underground storm sewer improvements among other changes aimed at preventing backups that send water into the roadway during relatively low-level river flooding events. What many people don’t realize about the flooding here is that it’s not just overland water that fills our streets.
Once the improvements at River Drive and Marquette Street are completed at a cost of about $1.7 million overall, instead of being flooded at a river stage of 14.5 feet, it won’t happen until 18 feet.
If this fix had been in place 20 years ago, according to the flood study, there would have been 446 fewer days that necessitated a city response.
That seems to me like a noticeable impact to city resources, not to mention traffic flow.
The work at River Drive and 3rd and 4th Streets, which will cost about $4 million, would keep the road open until river stage reaches 22 feet. Currently, it closes at about 17.5 feet, according to the flood study. The study says this would have provided 160 to 180 days of benefit between 2000 and 2020.
The city set has aside federal American Rescue Plan Act money to pay for this project.
Davenport Mayor Mike Matson told me last week he believes people will notice the difference when the work is done.
“Our goal is to keep River Drive open as long as we can,” he said.
Completion of these two projects is still a year or more away.
Clay Merritt, the assistant public works director at the city, says the Marquette Street work will likely be completed late this year or in early 2024, while the job at River Drive and 3rd and 4th streets will probably be completed a few months later.
Matson said the city is in talks with potential funding sources for other projects in Phase One, but it’s not clear when those might come to fruition, if at all.
Among the other Phase One projects are raising River Drive around Mound Street near the Village of East Davenport, which is estimated to cost about $2.4 million in 2021 dollars, as well as a series of sewer, berm and floodwall projects around the Garden Addition in the west end. Those projects, which include improving existing protection, are more expensive, coming in at more than $16 million, according to the plan.
Phases Two and Three, the more transformational parts of the plan that involve structural approaches like the construction of floodwalls and berms, as well as permanent pumping stations, total roughly $140 million.
In other words, the city’s flood plan still has a very long way to go before it provides the protection that many in this city want. Phase Two, after all, includes the city’s core downtown area, which is affected at even low- to moderate-flooding levels.
However, among all those 7,200 earmarks is one line item that helps Davenport take a small step toward that goal.
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