This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Deskan independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri in partnership with Report for Americawith major funding from the Walton Family Foundation.
Cities and towns across the Mississippi River basin have always had to endure the environmental disasters associated with living along a river.
The past few years have seen wild swings between floods and droughts, adding more stress to the communities located along the Mississippi’s 2,350 miles.
In the last five years alone they have seen spring floods, flash floods, significant droughtand low river levelswith opposite ends of this spectrum sometimes occurring in the same calendar year.
“When these rivers have disasters, the disaster doesn’t stay in the river,” says Colin Wellenkamp, executive director of the Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative. “It damages many businesses, homes, sidewalks and streets; even broadband pipes and all kinds of utilities, mains and water return systems.”
The cost of that damage could run into the millions, if not billions.
Eric Schmid / St. Louis Public Radio
One possible solution that Wellenkamp is encouraging the 105 individual communities in his organization to consider is working with, rather than against, the river.
“Just about all of them have some kind of inlet into the Mississippi River that they’re built around,” he said. “Some of them are big and some of them are really small. But all of them need attention.”
This is not a new idea, and many cities are already investing in nature-based solutions, such as removing pavement, building marshes and making room for the river to flow. Now St. Louis learns from Missouri’s neighbors in Dubuque, Iowa, about what the city can do with its River Des Peres.
‘It’s just an eyesore’
“It’s just an eyesore,” said Beatrice Chatfield, 15, who was walking along the River Des Peres pedestrian and bicycle path with her mother Jen. “There is rubbish and rubbish and mud in it. It’s just completely mean.”
It is less of a river and more of a large concrete and stone-lined drainage channel that meanders from the Mississippi through the urban landscape before passing under St. Louis’ largest park, Forest Park, disappears. It then reappears further west in the suburb of University City.
“It’s basically the small version of the LA River, which is just a well,” said Sam Rein, 29. “During the summer it smells – we don’t particularly like living next to it, but it’s a neat piece of engineering that’s for sure.”
City of Dubuque
It can also be dangerous, Wellenkamp said.
“As the Mississippi River rises, the Des Peres River then begins to flow back into people’s basements and yards and small businesses in the city,” he said.
Some 300 houses flooded alone in University City when the St. Louis region was hit record rainfall in July 2022. Wellenkamp performs at St. Louis should look to other cities in the Mississippi River basin that have learned to work with water, instead of against it.
Dubuque’s hidden crack
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Dubuque, Iowa had a major flash flood problem. Over the course of 12 years, the city of nearly 60,000 has received six presidential disaster declarations for flooding and severe storms.
When heavy rains drenched the city, the water would rush down the cliff and overwhelm the stormwater infrastructure, Dubuque Mayor Brad Cavanagh said.
Manhole covers burst from the water pressure, turning streets into creeks and damaging thousands of properties.
“Somewhere along the line, about 100 years ago, someone buried a natural creek and turned it into a storm sewer and it stopped holding up,” Cavanagh said. “Many of the residents (in these neighborhoods) are low to moderate income and those least able to really recover from damage like this.”
Around 2001 the city started looking for solutions.
Dubuque faced a decision: expand the existing underground storm sewer or bring the Bee Branch Creek back into the daylight, widening the floodplain and giving the water somewhere to go. The city opted for the latter option.
City of Dubuque
The city established a citizen advisory committee early in the process, which played a central role in determining the final design for the restored Bee Branch Creek.
Residents wanted more than concrete drainage ditch, Cavanagh said. They wanted trails, grasses and greenery that both wildlife and people could enjoy, and, importantly, access to the water, he added.
The Bee Branch Creek has turned into a 20-year project that has become much more than just an engineering solution to excess stormwater, Cavanagh said.
“It’s one of the nicest parks we have in the city, a place where people go to see the ducks and the birds,” he said.
Most importantly, it solved the city’s flash flooding issues, said Deron Muehring, Dubuque’s Water and Resource Recovery Center director, who before that role was an engineer involved in the Bee Branch restoration from start to finish.
“2011 is the last presidential disaster declaration we had,” he said. “Now we haven’t had that kind of rain, but we’ve had significant rainstorms where we would have expected to have flooding and flood damage without these improvements.”
Learn at Dubuque
Other river cities are seeing Dubuque’s success and want to know how they can apply it to their own flooding challenges, Cavanagh said.
“As mayor, I talked about this project more than anything else,” he said. “People want to know, ‘How did you do it? Why did you do that? What worked and what didn’t?’”
Cavanagh covered those details during A presentation on the Bee Branch to St. Louis aldermen in December, looking for ways to apply those lessons to the River Des Peres.
Ward 1 Alderman Anne Schweitzer was inspired by the ideas.
“I could have wished all day that things like this had started earlier,” Schweitzer said. “But we are here now and we have a responsibility. The time something will take always feels very long, but it takes longer if we don’t start.”
Time is not the only constraint, neither is money. The Bee branch in Dubuque had a price tag close to $250 million. The city found a mix of state and federal grant dollars A total of $163 million related to disaster resilience, the environment, transportation, and recreation and tourism, leaving the city to cover about $87 million, Cavanagh said.
Midwest Climate Collaborative Director Heather Navarro said floodplain restoration projects like Bee Branch are worth the investment.
“We’ve done a lot to pave over our floodplains and wetlands, but we know there’s a lot of inherent natural value in that,” she said. “Whether it absorbs flood water, helps filter pollution, reduces soil erosion. When you start adding up those numbers, it really starts to change the economics. “
She adds that when cities improve existing infrastructure such as roads, bridges and wastewater management, they should consider how to use nature-based solutions and reduce flood and other climate risks.
“It’s not like we’re trading old infrastructure for new infrastructure,” Navarro said. For example, rain gardens can reduce pressure on wastewater drainage by absorbing excess water. Trees can reduce heat. “We’re really taking a whole new approach to how this infrastructure interconnects with other systems that we’re trying to provide for our community.”
And there is billions of dollars on the table of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act and Inflation Reduction Act for communities to undertake projects that build resilience.
The way forward
As it stands now, St. Louis at the beginning to even consider what a project to bring more nature to the River Des Peres might even look like. So is the US Army Corps of Engineers explore projects, specifically in University Citywhich can help store rainwater during heavy rains.
The next big step will be a feasibility study of the entire River Des Peres watershed, which includes a handful of municipalities, Schweitzer said.
“There are so many people that would have to be at the table to move something like this forward, which I don’t think is a bad thing,” she said.
Navarro said if cities like St. Louis want to use natural infrastructure to reduce their flood risk, there is no better time than now.
“We know that climate change affects our communities,” she said. “We know that the way we have done things in the past has partly contributed to where we are when it comes to the climate crisis.”
Wellenkamp agrees.
“Nature attracts business,” he said. “It stabilizes property value. It reduces crime. It creates resilience against disasters and extreme events. And it gives your place a better quality of life.”
