(Estherville)– The Estherville City Council earlier this week voted in favor of the city putting up $36,000 as the city’s share of a matching grant through the Iowa Department of Natural Resources for a project to mitigate a low head dam on the West Fork of the Des Moines River. The city would only have to pay the money in the event the grant is awarded. The remaining half would come from the state. City Administrator Penny Clayton says it would cover engineering costs for installing two cross vein weirs…
“It creates these scour ponds which is where your fish and your habitat will live. The proposal would be to do two of these, I believe, one up by the swinging bridge area, re-working that a little bit, and then one down where the low head dam is.”
Clayton says stakeholder meetings would be held prior to any of the work getting underway…
“Because we do need to talk to all of the fishermen and all of the kayakers and all of the city utilities, we’ve done that, and all of the players so we can make sure that we’re designing the right change to our river and still make it usable for all of the people who like to use it.”
Clayton adds the city would also benefit from a recreational standpoint…
“I for one would like to see some additional recreational opportunities coming from that. That’s part of the idea, you know, why you look at a campground along the river; it’s part of, you know, why we have the kayak rentals. I’m focused a lot, I think, on recreation because of my park and recreation hat, but I do think that it’s very important to manage the fish and keep good fishing holes because that is super popular.”
Clayton says the city’s portion of the funds needed for the matching grant would come out of local option sales tax proceeds.
