Officials Unveil $9.9 Million Plan to Rebuild Lake Delhi Dam By Summer 2011
By Steve Gravelle, Reporter
Water from the Maquoketa River flows through the breach in the dam at Lake Delhi on Sunday, July 25, 2010, in Delhi. (Jim Slosiarek/SourceMedia Group News)
By
Aaron Hepker
Story Created:
Sep 10, 2010 at 4:39 PM CDT
Story Updated:
Sep 10, 2010 at 11:24 PM CDT
LAKE DELHI, Iowa – For the first time, there’s a pricetag on restoring the Lake Delhi dam. But who pays?.
Jim Willey, president of the Lake Delhi Recreation Association, this morning unveiled a $9.9 million plan that would restore the lake by next summer.
“It is critical to move forward as soon as possible,” Willey told a mostly supportive crowd that packed the Maquoketa Valley High School auditorium for the meeting of the state’s Lake Delhi Recover & Rebuild Task Force.
Willey outlined a three-phase plan to restore the dam’s levee with an improved design that would include a spillway he said would prevent a repeat of its July 24 failure. The plan calls for restoring an electrical generating station that was shut down in 1970.
Willey’s plan assumes the dam, built in 1920, is still structurally sound. He said the dam has passed two preliminary inspections, but a more thorough engineering review is due within 30 days.
Financing remains an open question, complicated by the dam’s ownership. The dam is owned by the LDRA, a private nonprofit. But the LDRA is funded through a taxing district whose three-member board is elected by about 830 lakeside property owners.
It’s that structure that prompted the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to “de-obligate” previously approved funding for repairing damage caused by high water in 2008. Willey’s group is appealing that decision with state support, and the outcome on that challenge will likely determine whether the dam is eligible for FEMA aid for this summer’s damage.
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