(Spirit Lake)– The Dickinson county board of supervisors today (Tues.) took no action to rescind a previous motion to install three additional culverts at the Lower Gar Outlet.
The supervisors said they would consider rescinding that motion after the Milford city council voted last month to proceed in having an engineering study done, preferably by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, into an option of installing additional box culverts six inches over the top of the dam at the outlet.
The supervisors’ decision to not rescind the original motion followed a closed meeting to discuss possible legal issues over the matter that went on for a little more than 20 minutes. It also followed the playback of a recording of a question and answer session last week between two supervisors and representatives of the Iowa DNR Flood Control Division.
Since it was not a posted meeting, only two supervisors could be present at any given time during the session to comply with the Open Meetings Law. The recorded session was played back today (Tues.) for those supervisors who could not be there and for the public.
In the recording, DNR officials say even though the road over the outlet is impeding water flow, the county isn’t being forced to remove it because it was there prior to administrative rules going into effect. However, any modifications made to the outlet must have a permit from the agency. They added a hydraulic analysis is usually part of the permit application.
The county hasn’t gotten to that point yet, as they’re still waiting for an engineer to draw up plans for the additional three culverts.
DNR officials also strongly urged the county to carefully quantify any affects the additional outflow would have on downstream residents during times of high water and flooding.
They added that due to a severe backlog from last summer’s flooding in eastern Iowa, it’s taking eight to nine months to get such permits processed.
After deciding not to make a motion to rescind the original motion for the additional culverts, the supervisors expressed a desire for the city of Milford to continue in its efforts with the Corps of Engineers for a study into the option of additional culverts six inches higher than the dam. City Administrator Brian Reed, who was at today’s (Tues.) meeting, said they are actively pursuing that and have had some preliminary contact with Corps officials.
