Streams deserve as much effort as river

| Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Jim Hoepner
Davenport

Congratulations to the city of Davenport for its excellent work in dealing with the recent river flooding. Work was effective and timely, and it seems that no costs were spared.

Now, a reminder for city leaders: Don’t continue to ignore the other bodies of water you need to deal with but always seem to put on the back burner. These are your creek and stream systems.

Years of neglect have left these waterways in a disastrous condition. Trees have fallen into the creeks, others lie across the creeks just waiting to fall, banks have suffered significant erosion and debris clutters and clogs many sections of Duck Creek and its tributaries.

Just take a walk along our wonderful bike path and make several stops to go over to the bank of Duck Creek, and you can easily spot problem areas.

Failure to address these situations will eventually result in severe flooding as has occurred in the past. It is not a matter of if it will occur but when it will occur.

Capital improvement projects in excess of $20 million involving storm water issues are not being addressed. I can already hear city answers to these problems: lack of manpower, lack of funding, higher priorities. It seems easy to shove things to the back of the list until they pop up and bite you on the backside.