The University of Iowa’s Department of Hydroscience and Engineering, or IIHR, and officials from the city of Dubuque gathered Monday to demonstrate a project years in the making — and with years left to completion.
The project: a $26 million flood mitigation system designed by UI hydroscience engineers in collaboration with a Dubuque design consulting firm, Origin Design. The $26 million asking price will fall on the city of Dubuque.
Dubuque project manager, Jim Bousley, said the new system will add new redundancies, or fail-safes, to their flood mitigation system, resulting in a 400,000 gallon per minute capacity, increasing from the current system’s 300,000 gallons per minute.
Officials expect the project to be constructed and installed on the bridge at the Bee Branch Creek watershed, one of Dubuque’s primary watersheds, by the end of 2027.
In terms of the UI’s involvement, the presentation exhibited a 1:7.5 scale, or 7.5 times smaller than actual size, model of the final flood system, constructed in the IIHR’s Hydraulic Annex 2 in Coralville.
The project and model, locked down by a contract agreement between Cascade Pump Company and the UI on behalf of the city of Dubuque and Origin Design, cost approximately $250,000, IIHR Associate Director Troy Lyons said. The UI negotiates contract amounts to cover supplies and labor costs on a case-by-case basis.
The project was designed independently of the UI and started two years ago, but the university began working on conceptual designs in the last year. By April, IIHR began to create the physical model and subsequently tested it over the summer.
The system is a “more robust” version of the city’s previous flood mitigation system, Lyons said. It features larger pumps and more of them — boosting the system’s reliability and capacity.
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Marc Ruden, Origin Design project engineer of record for the pump station project, said the model is an essential step in the planning and design process to allow enough time and analysis for corrections in the design.
“We’re able to really get a great model that mimics what we’re really going to see in the larger scale here,” he said. “And this is kind of a final testing, the proof testing, it allows us to make the minor corrective measures.”
Ruden also praised IIHR’s work, characterizing them as a strong partner in research and design over the project’s lifespan.
“It’s so exciting to be able to come and work with the hydraulics lab,” Ruden said. “This lab does more than just serve Iowa. It really serves the world, and they’re one of the foremost expert labs that there is around for these sorts of studies.”
Bousley said Dubuque and the UI have maintained a long-standing relationship for researching and consulting on such projects. He added, like Ruden, that having a working model is a crucial step they are glad to have available from the UI.
“It is a very interesting project, and the fact that the model is here really irons out any issues you may have in the field while you’re building or when you build it and start it up,” he said.
Lyons said, with the IIHR’s work spanning the country and beyond, he is happy to see major progress on a project completely within the state and one that will benefit the lives of Iowans.
“We’ve been involved in other projects around the world as well, including the Thames Tideway Tunnel Project and some others,” he said. “So it’s fun to work here in Iowa and really see the value in being able to help Iowans.”