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Dickinson Co. Supervisors Ditch Drainage Project

August 23, 2022 Steve Schwaller

(Spirit Lake)– The Dickinson County Board of Supervisors voted 5-0 today (Tues.) to scrap a drainage project on the northeast side of Milford, in what’s known as branch 33 of Drainage District 50. A bid was awarded on the project almost a year ago, but it was delayed after technicalities arose. The cost has now more than doubled, soaring to $760,000 for a project that would serve about 40 acres.

Supervisor Steve Clark said drainage districts were originally intended for areas that are entirely agricultural, adding that is no longer the case in this area where commercial development has occurred…

“I think that if the affected landowners, whether it be individuals or the municipal sewer system, you know. If they’d get together and work something out I think that a majority of this problem could be taken care of for a substantially less sum of money.”

That didn’t sit well with a businessman who owns some storage units in that area…

“Do you have any idea how much taxes I pay on that property and everybody out there pays? Hundreds of thousands of dollars of property taxes. That’s commercial property. Yeah, it’s a development but it’s paying you guys a lot of money and the county a lot of money. It has to be taken care of.

Steve Anderson, Superintendent of the Iowa Great Lakes Sanitary District, said there’s a major sewer lift station in that area that’s also being threatened…

“Drainage districts are there to some extent to cover multi-jurisdictional areas like this and, but, we’ve got a serious issue with the lift station. In 2018 we had over a foot of water flowing over the lift station. Something needs to be done.”

The supervisors did authorize the engineer to proceed with a reclassification of that area as some bills for some work that’s already been done there will need to be paid.