Larry Weber discusses the Iowa Watershed Approach in this radio interview.

6:09 now on your morning show clock. It's 80 degrees in Davenport, feels like 84. 75 and clear skies in Cedar Rapids and Iowa City. Talking with Larry Weber. He is with the University of Iowa's IWA, Iowa Watershed Approach. And Larry, good morning to you. I appreciate you joining me on the show. We were talking before we got you on the air here. I said 14 years to the day yesterday from the 2008 floods, and I didn't recognize it until last night. It's kind of like when somebody you love passes away, and it's that first time that you don't recognize the anniversary of their death. You kind of feel melancholy about it, but it's really neat that we're talking about this. So what you're going to be doing today, a bus tour to visit some built structures like wetlands that talk about the success that you have at the Iowa watershed approach to make Iowa more resilient to floods. Good morning, Larry. What are we going to be looking at today?

Well, good morning, Doug. We are going to be touring farm ponds and wetlands and a number of conservation projects that we've built on private lands to hold water back during heavy rainfall and reduce flooding downstream, and to help to process water quality pollutants throughout the year. So it's a flood-first and flood-focused project, but also has a secondary benefit of improving water quality and subsequent benefits for water resources and natural systems and the enjoyment of the outdoors. So it really serves many purposes.

It's interesting because you're going to be joined by somebody from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that helped to fund the IWA activities and that urban development and flooding. Talk to me about how those two met.

Well, when when we have these major floods, oftentimes we think about our urban areas. Those are the most kind of visually devastating and impacted. Housing stock and businesses that are impacted during floods. But sometimes we lose sight of the impact on rural America as well. And throughout Iowa we have our floods are kind of slow evolving usually. They're not flash floods. Most of the time they come from rainfall that happens over a several day period, and they impact people across the rural landscape as well as in the urban areas.

Yeah, and it comes from a large watershed in a lot of cases. I remember there was a flood back in 2000, it was 2002 to 2006 that happened in Cedar Rapids where you had just this like nine inches over a 24-hour period in the northern Cedar River watershed, and then everything just started collapsing down into Cedar Rapids, and I remember that on Indian Creek and how it affected the Cedar River as well. 

Larry Weber joining us from the Iowa Watershed Approach. It's a 97 million dollar initiative to reduce flooding and improve water quality throughout the state. You say that you completed 800 flood mitigation practices to Iowa's landscape. This is all across the state of Iowa?

Well it is across the state. We worked in eight different rural watersheds from the Upper Iowa, far up in northeast Iowa, all the way over to the east and west Nishnabotna in far southwest Iowa. So we had eight targeted watersheds that we implemented those 800 practices in. 

Such a neat opportunity for people to take a look at this and obviously this thing today that's going to be going on at Casino Farms. Is it open to the public? Can people still come to this today or did they need to pre-register?

Well, they needed to pre-register because we are going to be doing a bus tour and we wanted to accommodate everybody on the tour buses. So unfortunately, if folks have a last minute interest, it'll be a little hard for us to accommodate more than just a couple.

No, understood. Understood completely. But I would imagine you're going to be facing forward into the public again sometime in the future. What's the website where people can take a look at what you're doing at the Iowa Watershed Approach?

Well, the easiest way to get to us is go to the Iowa Flood Center's website. So anybody that can Google Iowa Flood Center, they'll come to the Flood Center website, and then the Iowa Watershed Approach Project is displayed prominently there. 

Hey, Larry Weber, thank you for joining me here on The Morning Show. All this impacts the Mississippi River here on the eastern side of the state, so we appreciate all the hard work that you and IWA, and the Iowa Flood Center are doing to take care of these watersheds.