Welcome to the story of Davenport, Iowa.

Here we talked with Kathy Wine of River Action Inc, a non-profit group that deals with riverside issues such as beautification and flood control. Paraphrased text from a slide presentation plus question and answer from our meeting are presented here.

The city of Davenport, Iowa has 100,000 people and is the largest city without flood protection.
FEMA came to Davenport to give a workshop that was sponsored by the Farm and Flood Plain Management groups of Davenport, Iowa. Several items discussed were:

Davenport was not the only city that was affected by the flood of 1993. In fact, all cities up and down the Mississippi river with and without flood protection encured some problems (some severe) as a result of the flooding.

We believe that if some of the cities had not seperated themselves from the floodplain so much and contributed as much as did to the record flooding we may not have had the kind of flooding that was experienced along the Mississippi River.


On 9 July the Mississippi River was 22.63 feet deep at the crest, this was seven feet above normal level at Lock and Dam 15. This lasted 43 days, with river velocities of up to 12 mph. It was the worst flooding ever in Davenport history. Business in the city were flooded but less than 25 homes were affected.


The gamling development on the waterfront of Davenport was out of commission for the summer. They decided to take the boats upstream and do painting and general maintainance. This industry brings a lot of tax dollars to Davenport and it is essential that they have waterfront access.


Picture of the Centenial Brigde over to Rock Island.


Baseball stadium on the water front, home of the River Bandits Baseball Team. This was the focus of much humor during the flood. Phrases like "50 cent carp night" and "jet-ski competitions between innings" kept the humor up during the hard times. One of the favorite jokes was "What is the difference between Minnesota and Iowa lakes? Iowa lakes have cities in them".

The cost to Davenport for total flood damage was 3.1 million dollars. One million was to city employees for overtime pay. The Federal government picked up 90% of the total bill so all Davenport paid was $310,000. The flooding was severe, but the damage was minimal because it was mostly park and industrial areas. Most homes were on higher ground.

It was proposed in 1984 to build a levee or flood wall around Davenport's eleven miles of riverfront property at a cost of $50 million. The losses for all of Scott County (including the city Davenport) was $7.3 million for public and personal loss, of that only $4.2 million was personal loss. Losses here were far below the cost of building a flood structure.

Davenport's share in the proposed levee building was $36 million, think of the savings to citizen (tax payers) for not building this structure! The city is only out $310,000 for flood, which almost equal to the yearly maintainance of $250,000 for the $50 million levee. Instead of building the expensive wall, we could have put the maintainance fee into a flood contingency program. If they would have done that starting in 1984 they would have had 2.6 million dollars to clean up the flood in 1993.


Here is a boat on River Drive, where 45,000 cars drive every day. Most of what is flooded in this picture parking lots, parks and city streets. The next street up it was business as usual. For map of city see Rock Island/Davenport Street Map.



All the bridges were in operation. Hardest hit industry was tourism which extensively use River Drive and Harry's Street. For map of city see Rock Island/Davenport Street Map.


Picture taken from Second Street. For map of city see Rock Island/Davenport Street Map.
We need a regional approach to flood control. We (all cities) are very connected on the river, what one city does the other cities feel. We feel that with the construction of Rock Island's high wall the waters were pushed over towards our side (Davenport) more and made the flooding worse for us. A structure in an opposing city will affect the city on the other side.

We also think that there needs to be federal incentives to encourage development away from the flood prone areas, further flood proof the buildings, and get affordable flood insurance for business that are water related and need to be along the water front. Pressure is on again to build a flood wall, the mayor of Davenport has contacted the Corps to look into constructing a flood wall, like in 1984. But the decision will be the public's who like the water front and would rather live in harmony with the river.

Several building along the water front that were built correctly with the floors above the flood plain had no damage. Davenport's 11 miles of water front property is owned by the city, so it is publicly controlled and used as parks, marinas, and city projects. This makes it easy to have control over what happens along the water front and is a rare case. Most large cities have water front property controlled by private citizens.

One example along the Blackhawk Creek (tributary along the Mississippi River) had a dike contructed after the 1965 flood to protect the Garden Addition of 200 people. In 1993, the dike had deteriorated enough that the residents were forced to evacuate for 43 days and they were furious. But it did bring to light that they were in the flood plain and now were willing to sell. The city started setting aside $175,000 a year for 6 years for relocation and FEMA was able to leverage this to $900,000 a year so the residents could be moved out of the flood plain. When they made this offer public, 12 people imediately wanted out. MPEG of area around the Garden Addition. Standing on top of the levee, scan from upstream to downstream looking at the residences, then back upstream via the Blackhawk River. The Mississippi River is just beyond the overpass.

One of the problems we have is when Davenport buys out homes and turns the land into parks, where is the funding going to come from to maintain that many more acres of land?

A new approach to building in the flood plain in downtown Davenport is put parking on the ground level and move the offices and stores to higher levels. One example it the North Bank, which did not miss one day of service although their drive through and parking facilities were underwater.

The city adapted to the flood. Several business temporarily moved upslope and continued and others stayed and boated the goods and services to their destinations. During the height of the flood, Davenport had the annual Big Seven Road Race where 17,000 runners come to town and have a marathon. For the most part, even though the flood was bad, people tried to keep business as usual.

We think that each city should be allowed to decide what it can do about its flood control problem and that it would be scary if an organization like the Corps was allowed to come up with a national policy on what all cities should do with floods. We think each city knows what to do with the floods and what works best. There are engineering firms that have found ways to work around the flood problem and they should be able to make these presentations to cities as alternatives.

The Mississippi River does not just affect one place but many places at once. What are the long term solutions? We think its comprehensive basin wide solutions that do not emphasize flood walls. The river is our number one asset and we want to live along it, play along it, work, rest, eat... live in harmony with it. That is our goal, that is where we think the money should be spent.