Work continues on Kettle Creek

Officials hope to finish ag structure soon

BY CINDY TOOPES COURIER STAFF WRITER

OTTUMWA — Drop by drop, the rainfall rushes to the lowest level and picks up silt along the way in the Kettle Creek Watershed.

Those raindrops have flowed along Kettle Creek and left so much silt in the Oxbow Lagoon that it looks like land.

During the past few years, local and state officials have been working on Kettle Creek Watershed projects.

Jennifer Steffen works for the Wapello County Soil & Water Conservation District and is the watershed coordinator for Kettle and Competine creeks. She said they’re still working on the engineering for the largest structure that will slow down the raindrops before they enter Kettle Creek and flow into the city.

The agriculture land structure will be on Gene Carlson’s property and they’re still working on the details, Steffen said Tuesday.

“We hope to have construction this summer,” she said. “It’s a grade stabilization structure that will slow down the water and provide detention before it goes into the urban portion of Kettle Creek.”

A grade stabilization structure could be called a big pond. The structure slows down the water as it goes through a tube before it leaves.

“It’s a method to slow the water and make it drop its sediment before it flows into the creek and into the lagoons,” Steffen said.

The county soil and conservation district has also been working with Wayne Petersen, the urban conservationist with the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship.

Steffen said Petersen was in Ottumwa recently and visited the sites of several businesses and “other entities” in Kettle Creek’s urban area including the new Fareway Store, Good Samaritan Center, Wildwood Park, Wildwood School and Bethany Baptist Church.

Petersen is preparing concept plans to take to landowners, according to Steffen. Those plans include conservation practices that “will cause water to infiltrate and percolate down through the soil for bioretention,” she added.

“We’re working on those plans and hope to present them in the next few weeks,” Steffen said.

“Impervious areas” have had an impact on the city. Ottumwa Public Works Director Larry Seals dealt with those in computing fees for the storm-water utility plans rejected by the Ottumwa City Council in recent months. Impervious areas don’t allow water to soak in so it runs off those surfaces, which include parking lots.

Seals presented a grant agreement to the council on March 3. The agreement involves the Iowa Watershed Improvement Review Board and the city concerning the Kettle Creek Watershed improvements.

In March 2008 the city was approved for a $387,996 WIRB grant for Kettle Creek improvements. The purpose of the agreement is to note the responsibilities of the board and the city in implementing the project.

The contract will allow up to three years to complete the project. Seals said the city will build two of the structures with city staff, as part of in-kind services.

“The goal of the project is to reduce the urban sediment load contributed to Kettle Creek from bank sloughing and stream downcutting,” he added.

Total estimated cost of the project is $595,412.

Cindy Toopes can be reached at (641) 683-5376 or via e-mail at cindy@ottumwacourier.com.