Cedar Rapids flooding
- Thread starter Messi
- Start date
Wasn't it supposed to rain more over the weekend as well but that ended up missing the area?
Yeah thankfully the I-35 corridor got that and we didn't.
It looks like the barriers are holding back water down in the Newbo area. Tornadoes Bar is on the water side of the barriers and is all mad because they were not protected. So they had to sandbag themselves more but still only have 3 inches of water in the basement compared to the 3 feet outside the building.
Yep - Kickstand under water as well. As a Newbo area fanatic - I'm very happy to see it still dry!
ISU game watch in NewBo when/if we get through all this ?
It's great news that New Bo is (and hopefully will) stay dry. For as dead as downtown used to be the redevelopment of that area has made a huge impact on the city and especially the downtown as a whole.
Was there a reason why some buildings were left on the outside? Was their elevation too low to be adequately protected? From watching the flood videos, I wondered why some places were left on the other side of the walls.
Hopefully the flood coverage doesn't completely cover up the shooting this morning.
I don't know all of the answers but from the look of it the city put all of the barriers on streets to have a mostly level firm foundation and in the areas that have flooded that was either not possible or there is not much there anyway. When it comes down to it you have to draw the line somewhere.
Without sending this to the cave...The city has put to vote increasing taxes to fund permanent solutions twice but failed both times. There is also govt funding approved but not appropriated. My personal opinion is it is not worth the cost. This did a great job and was hardly tested why spend tens of millions of $.
- Jun 20, 2006
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I just finished with aerial video of the Quaker Oats, Vets Memorial, and NewBo areas. I was surprised at the 'lack' of water. yes many are impacted, and yes 6 feet is a big difference, and this isn't an attempt to minimize, but I was glad to see this won't be as big as thought.
Sounds like they caught the three suspects within 10 min of the call. 13 yr old girl killed. Sad.
I don't want to seem callous towards those on the west side, but the east side of the river needs permanent flood walls now. The city council stomping their feet that it's all or nothing is annoying. The people have already agreed to extra sales tax in order to compensate for the city not taking care of the roads, I don't blame people for not wanting to pay even more.
I think if the city would breakout the plan starting with the east side from Quaker to south of 16th, that would be a great start.
I agree that the roads need the most attention and are slowly getting it. I have not lived here during the votes but what are they proposing? Not that it is a pretty view to begin with but I am not a fan of an ugly wall and it would be damn hard to make a levy that looks good on the east side. Not to mention how often does this happen?
There's a reason the Army Corps says it's not worth it for the west side. There just isn't enough there to justify the expense.
I was just watching the news and picking up info off of here from those who lived through it last time. I'm not sure what the valued resources are. Didn't mean to ruffle any feathers man.
I'm not sure which version they are promoting now, but at one point, the walls would be a retractable type that would relatively fit in with the current landscaping. I'm not sure how they would cover the roads.
The current plan is for $630 million total cost (some work such as planning and pumps some levies and walls are already done)
The current plan does not include any protection for buildings on May's Island.
The plan includes mostly removable flood walls, but also includes some permanent ones as well as earthen levies in other areas. It also creates a river walk type area along the river with plazas and things of that nature.
For the most part property owners in the flood plains downtown have not been asked to shoulder any of the costs. (Quaker did fund part of their wall, CRST didn't but allowed some savings by constructing the wall during the building construction phase)
Several weeks before the flood when it became apparent that the city wasn't ever going to see any federal funding due to the poor cost metrics associated with the project. There were some suggestions made by council member Ralph Russel. One of those is the creation of a SSMD (Self Supporting Municipal District). Not to toot my own horn but I had Ralph visit my local group when he was running and I made that suggestion to him several years ago.
What a SSMD is a block of property owners that approve to assess themselves extra property taxes for use on public projections within the district. What I had originally proposed was creating 4 SSMD's 2 on each side of the river one for the 100 year flood plain and one for the 500 year. Somewhere around 75% of property owners would have to approve the SSMD to create it.
The thought behind it is that once protection is built these property owners would no longer be required to pay flood insurance premiums because the wall would effectively remove them from the flood plain. So the owners would commit those funds for lets say the next 20 years to help fund the system.
This plan would not cost those property owners anything additional over what they are currently paying.
Since I have no clue how much revenue this would generate I would assume there will still be a funding gap to get from the $280 million the state has committed over the next 15 years and the $630 million price. Once property owners have some funds in the wall I personally would support some kind of funding on the city level for the protection. The previous 2 tax votes failed because their plan was too extravagant and cost way to much compared to the possible damage that could occur from future events. The $5-6 million in temporary barriers proves that point I think.
