Friday, February 7, 2014

February 2014 Update

The project continues to move forward but at a slower pace than we would like, so it goes with design and land acquisition.  Several things are happening, behind the scenes if you will, here is a quick update on what is occurring.

The project engineer, Bolton & Menk, continues to work on developing the plans and specifications for the project and dealing with the changes that we throw at them.  The plan is still based on the preliminary concept for the most part but with some minor changes.  

Staff is busy trying to put together the pieces on the land and easement acquisition parts of the puzzle in anticipation of a quick determination from the State of Iowa Historical Office who is conducting a historical and environmental review.  Their review time is up in the next few days and we are hopefully that we can then get notice to proceed with a 30 day public comment period at the end of which (provided we don't have any findings) we can proceed with finalizing the land and easement acquisitions.  Getting those completed will allow us to finalize the plans and specifications as we will know exactly where things need to be located.

Some good news as well, yesterday in the mail the signed copies of the State of Iowa Homeland Security funding program (Flood Mitigation Funds) agreement showed up!  We are excited to be one of the first communities in the State of Iowa to participate in this program and we look forward to having a couple of great projects as representative projects for the program (the North Central Project being one and the Expansion Blvd. Project and East Central Project being the others).

Finally this morning I uploaded the preliminary project concept map to the project web page and a map showing the drainage area for the project.  Take a minute to check those out.

Sunday, January 12, 2014

Welcome to the City of Storm Lake North Central Storm Water Project Blog

Welcome to the City of Storm Lake's project blog for the North Central Storm Water Project.  We are pleased to provide you with this resource of project updates and details as we move forward with a key project in providing quality of life benefits to our residents and property owners.  We encourage you to check back often to receive project updates as the project moves forward.  You can also learn when a new project blog entry is made by following the City of Storm Lake on Facebook or following us on Twitter (@Storm_Lake).

Street Flooding at 10th and Russell St. Memorial Day 2013
The project is currently in the design phase with a goal of being ready for the bid process sometime in late spring early summer 2014.  City staff along with project engineers are also working with property owners in the neighborhood of the project to obtain the necessary easement and land acquisitions that will be needed to complete the project.  Formal land acquisition can not occur until the State of Iowa has done a historical review and approved the project from a perspective of damaging historical and cultural assets, this is underway currently and we hope that this will be completed by April 1, 2014.

Stay tuned to the blog and project web page for more information as the project moves forward.