Iowa City Today

The Coralville City Council discussed several infrastructure projects in the city, focusing on two planned on green infrastructure contracts with state agencies, during the council's meeting on March 14.

The council discussed a proposed contract with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and another with the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship to add green infrastructure to low-income or minority populations within the city. The city has identified some areas that have significantly less green infrastructure and more issues with flash flooding, and the council has been working to find solutions and funding, to handle both.

"These practices would be by retention cells of rain gardens, permeable pavers, soil quality restoration, all of those components that kind of make up our green infrastructure, stormwater practices," Stormwater Coordinator Amy Foster explained. "When we are looking at it on a map and where all these GIS locations where there is very obvious areas of town that had no green infrastructure or very little green infrastructure, and these areas also correlated with areas that historically are maybe underserved populations or lower income residents. These areas also have some intersection with areas of localized flash flooding that was determined on during future or past studies that were done. So we knew we had an issue that we needed to address."

The grant from the DNR would be $30,000, and the grant from the Department of Agriculture would be $15,000. Foster explained that one of the biggest issues in the area was education for residents who might not know certain water quality issues exist in their community, or why certain measures are being taken for stormwater control. She also explained that although the city does a 50% cost-sharing program for stormwater infrastructure, and some areas might not have the disposable income to handle their share.

Council members agreed that often that 50% is not an insignificant amount of money for residents and were glad that the city was able to secure some grant funding to help relieve residents of that burden to provide them with green infrastructure to improve water quality. The city will use the grant funds for a targeted education campaign for the neighborhoods in question, and the rest will cover the new infrastructure in residential areas. The council approved both contracts and decided to move the projects forward.