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DNR: Mitigating Future Shoreline Collapses Is A Priority

July 22, 2024 Steve Schwaller

(Okoboji)– Work to repair the 70-some shoreline collapses in the Iowa Great Lakes will include an examination to see if there’s any particular factors that are in common with the failures. Mike Hawkins of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources says the investigation into that will play a critical role into any mitigation efforts in the future…

“There’s some ongoing analysis to look at that. That, of course, would be looking at future hazard mitigations, how do you avoid this from happening in the first place. So are there things that homeowners could have been doing, maybe municipalities could have been doing, to deal with drainage above the bank collapse to help make these less likely. Is there vegetation choices that should be made on these shorelines? Are there some engineering solutions to that to make sure that the shoreline is stable? So that will all be part of this analysis. I don’t think we just want to look at repair but we also want to look at long term stability on all of the other shorelines that did not collapse that are potentially very vulnerable.”

As we reported previously the state of Iowa is working with a firm that has expertise in shoreline repair to help come up with recommendations.

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