In recent weeks, Iowa has been hit by intense storms and extreme weather, resulting in record flooding. The damages from these storms have cost Iowa an estimated $130 million in damages.

Extreme weather and the damages caused by such events has caused Iowa’s focus to shift to flood protection and prevention services and have highlighted faults in Iowa flood prevention techniques and the Iowan levee system.

According to the US Army Corps of Engineers, 48 percent of Iowan levees are classified as operationally deficient.

In 2022, the Iowa Department of Homeland Security conducted a statewide levee districts study, which found many rural communities in Iowa will be unable to fund their levee repairs. They concluded the current approach of managing and financing levee districts in Iowa is unsustainable.

Larry Weber is a University of Iowa professor of civil and environmental engineering, director of the IIHR, and director of the Iowa Flood Center. Weber’s expertise covers topics from river restoration to flood and drought.

Over the past several decades, Weber said the Iowa Flood Center had seen average annual rainfall in Iowa trend slightly upward. Weber acknowledges this may not sound profound, but the concern lies in the way that this rain is falling.

“We’re seeing the same amount of rainfall, roughly, over the year, but it’s coming in fewer events with more intensity,” said Weber.

The increase of these intense rainfall events has led to increased runoff and, therefore, increased and more severe flooding, which Weber said can have devastating effects.

The cause of this, according to Weber, is clear.

“It’s climate change. There’s no argument about it,” said Weber.

Weber said levees protect communities, but when an extreme weather event places too much pressure on a levee or overtops it, the damages to the community living beyond the levee can be catastrophic.

Levees can become damaged over time, hence why the U.S. Army Corps was able to categorize 48 percent of Iowan levees as “operationally deficient.” Weber believes the largest reason behind this categorization is the difference between Iowan weather when the levees were built and Iowan weather now.

Many of the levees were built up to 100 years ago, Weber said, and they were designed to a standard set at that time. This standard is no longer meeting the changes in climate in Iowa, and the levees aren’t equipped to handle the increased intensification of rainfall and greater flood events.

“They might have been designed for floods that were thought of as extreme 25 years ago,” said Weber. “But those floods are becoming more and more repetitive.”

Weber said many of Iowa’s levees are in agricultural districts and that over time, as there are fewer farmers but larger farming operations, there are not enough people to maintain the levees. Rural communities also face this problem, says Weber, as fewer people live there.

This population problem is exacerbated by the cost of repairing levees. Many levees, Weber said, were built under the assumption that they would be able to protect their communities for a long time, but as more extreme weather places pressure on these levees, this has become less and less the case, and more levees now require repairs.

Weber said some communities aren’t able to pay for these repairs and are thus placed in a financial gridlock between what repairs need to happen and what repairs feasibly can happen. For some communities, Weber said, this means putting off repairs until it’s too late.

To ease these issues, Weber said the Iowa Flood Center is contributing to a Homeland Security study that will be assessing levees, identifying vulnerable communities, and getting cost estimates for levee repairs.

This study will be completed in three years, and in the meantime ,Weber says that communities are continually working to maintain and update their flood protection services.

Jim Schwab is an expert in natural hazards and disaster recovery. Schwab has spent 30 years working in disaster issues of urban planning, teaches disaster recovery courses for FEMA and a graduate seminar on planning for disaster mitigation and recovery at the UI, and works as an independent contractor.

Schwab recommends a multilateral pre-disaster approach to disaster mitigation and recovery. First, communities or the state ought to establish their policy goals for a post-disaster situation, then establish an inventory of potential sources of funding that can be turned to to fund post-disaster recovery projects when needed, and ultimately establish what kind of governance structure the community or state wants to have during disaster recovery and how quickly they will want to activate this government structure.

“A community and a state do not need to wait for a disaster to start thinking about disaster recovery,” said Schwab.

To set up a robust disaster recovery framework, Schwab said resources and commitment are necessary. Schwab acknowledges this places smaller communities at a disadvantage. Small or rural communities oftentimes have less infrastructure, less people, and a smaller economic base. These challenges leave smaller communities with more hurdles to overcome during the disaster recovery process.

Schwab believes one way to resolve these issues would be to take an approach similar to what the levee districts around the New Orleans area did in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. These communities, according to Schwab, consolidated their many levee districts into just two districts.

Schwab said consolidating levee districts, or providing resources and training on a regional level as opposed to local, could benefit smaller communities. These two approaches would allow a larger levee district or a multi-county regional community to assess the local communities affected by extreme weather and use their resources to assist these communities. Schwab said that this can be particularly effective as it is rare that an entire region or levee district is affected by extreme weather at once.

Ultimately, Schwab said, disaster recovery planning is a long process, sometimes taking many years. While the length of this process can be disheartening, Schwab emphasizes that progress is being made within the public planning industry to better address community needs in post-disaster situations.

Schwab said the largest factor behind the intensity of extreme weather in Iowa today is climate change but does not believe that this is cause for despair.

“I don’t think hope is naive,” said Schwab, “If we bring the amount of talent and brain power available to talk and build public support that is necessary for understanding what we’re up against, it [the outcome] could be very different.”