Cedar Rapids flood control system reaches 42% completion with Czech Village project done

Cedar Rapids officials marked the completion of the Czech Village flood control project on August 11, 2025, bringing the city's permanent flood control system to 42% overall completion, according to city reports.

The Czech Village project includes a stormwater pump station with a capacity of 74,000 gallons per minute, expandable to 148,000 gpm, a detention basin, a concrete floodwall from 12th to 16th Avenue SW, and a flood gate across 16th Avenue SW, the city said.

The overall system is now 57% complete on the east side of the Cedar River and 22% complete on the west side, according to city data. Just a few weeks earlier, on August 1, the city had reported approximately 35% completion, KCRG reported.

The permanent system is designed to protect against a flood equivalent to the 2008 disaster, which crested at 31.12 feet, covered 10 square miles, flooded more than 1,300 city blocks and caused an estimated $2.4 billion in damages, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The total estimated cost of the system is $1.1 to $1.3 billion when accounting for inflation, up from an original projection of $750 million, the city said. The Army Corps has committed $306 million for construction on the east side; the west side was not eligible for federal funding under the Corps' cost-benefit formula, The Gazette reported.

Cedar Rapids budgeted approximately $90 million in local and federal spending for flood control in fiscal year 2024 and another approximately $90 million for fiscal year 2025, according to The Gazette. The funding gap to complete the full system is estimated at $300-$500 million, depending on inflation, the city said.

"After 17 years of building the city's flood control system, it's only about 35 percent complete. While that might not sound like a lot, some of the places that would flood first are now almost entirely protected," KCRG reported.

Rob Davis, the city's flood control system manager, said the permanent protection already in place reduces the amount of temporary HESCO barriers needed by more than half compared to a decade ago. "The work we would have to do to fight a flood is less than half of what it was a decade ago," Davis said.

The Army Corps of Engineers' east-side work is expected to wrap up by the end of 2026, at which point the overall system will be approximately 70% complete, according to The Gazette. The city's publicly stated completion target for the full system is 2035, officials said.

President Joe Biden signed the Water Resources Development Act of 2024 (WRDA 2024) into law in December 2024, including language to help accelerate progress on the Cedar Rapids flood system and make an updated feasibility study a higher priority for the Army Corps, The Gazette reported. The city signed a Letter of Intent for a General Reevaluation Study under WRDA 2022 on April 1, 2025, but funding was not received in fiscal year 2025 and the request has been accelerated into the fiscal year 2026 workplan, according to the Army Corps.

Cedar Rapids Mayor Tiffany O'Donnell said the legislation "demonstrates Cedar Rapids' continued success in securing support across all levels for this critical infrastructure project" and called it "another step toward a comprehensive flood protection system," according to The Gazette.

Continued schedule risk exists due to complexities in obtaining permanent easement real property interest in Union Pacific Railroad lands, the Army Corps said.

Davis noted that areas like Kingston and the Northwest neighborhood will likely not see permanent work for more than a decade. "We really want to get further protection in Kingston and the Northwest neighborhood before we go ahead and put those pumps in, so it'll probably be more than a decade before we would do that permanent work," Davis said. "But again, we've got good protection now and then we can supplement with temporary features while we're building permanent elsewhere."