Despite a rainy start to the day, nearly 60 people gathered for a bus tour of the Otter Creek Watershed in Northeast Iowa on June 8. Participants saw rural and urban conservation practices designed and installed to reduce flooding in the watershed.

The tour began and ended in West Union, Iowa, where downtown infrastructure has been upgraded to enhance stormwater management.… Read more ›

In September 2016, the Iowa Watersheds Project ended with the completion of over 150 built structures including ponds, terraces, wetlands, water and sediment control basins, and on-road structures. The Iowa Flood Center received $4.5M from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for the five-year project aimed at mitigating flood risk in select Iowa watersheds.

The specific goals of the project aimed to:

  •     Maximize soil water holding capacity from precipitation;
  •     Minimize severe soil erosion and sand deposition during floods;
  •     Manage water runoff in uplands under saturated soil moisture conditions;
  •     Reduce and mitigate structural and nonstructural flood damage
Phase I – Hydrologic Assessment

Hydrologic assessments were completed to further understand the hydrology, assess risk, and prepare a plan to minimize future losses in watershed participating in this study.… Read more ›

The Iowa Flood Center has posted a new video that highlights the IFC’s service to Iowans and others in the areas of flood preparedness and mitigation. Brittany Borghi and Clarity Guerra of the UI Office of Strategic Communication produced the video for the Iowa Flood Center.

The TRWMA Flood Reduction Plan was released in June 2015 and has a price tag of approximately $32 million. In the plan, it was documented, based on reports from communities and counties, that floods had caused at least $20 million over the past 20 years. Since only a few of the communities and counties reported, it was deduced that this was a fraction of the actual cost.… Read more ›

The TRWMA Flood Reduction was in the news this week as a featured article in the Cedar Rapids Gazette. The flood reduction plan was finished at the end of may and released to the public in mid-June. The article, which ran in the June 29th edition of the Gazette, is already garnering statewide attention, especially as recent rains again threaten flooding in Iowa.… Read more ›

Tuesday April 7th 2015, staff from the Iowa Flood Center and IIHR in Iowa City put on a training for new flood forecasting tools available for the Turkey River Watershed. The web-based tool is called the Iowa Flood Information System or IFIS. Some of the tools available through IFIS, such as stream gauge information, have been available for a couple of years but the Iowa Flood Center has recently added some new tools to help people anticipate and prepare for flooding.… Read more ›

Wayne Fredericks says he isn’t a poster child for conservation.

But the 63-year-old farmer near Osage is willing to test ideas, gather data about the results, and see what works best in the field.

“Farmers have been real hungry for data,” said Fredericks, a farmer participating in the Rock Creek watershed improvement project in north-central Iowa. “They want to know what these practices are going to do and how they will affect yields and the bottom line.… Read more ›

Between Sunday May 11th and Monday May 12th, 2014, the Turkey River Watershed received on average 2.43 inches of rainfall. Two Iowa Flood Center rain gauges placed in  the watershed recorded the 2.55 and 2.31 inches of rainfall(rain gauge data can be accessed here).  Attached is a series of pictures that contrasts how agricultural lands in the Turkey River Watershed received and responded to the rain that fell over that 48 hour period.  … Read more ›