Top view of my flood.

Went for a plane ride to check out the flooding.

My land in front of the tree line is higher than the the reservoir land (all the land behind that tree line) but still went under.

I hope not much more goes under.

Gary

Here is the spillway and dam.

The flow on the right is the normal release pipe.

It is running full bore.

On the left is the over flow spillway.

Second picture is my building site on the bottom and my daughters on the top. You can see the bin I emptied yesterday on the south side of the north building site.

What is this reservoir used for???
City drinking water.

WOW Gary thanks for the pics! I have not been anywhere or seen anything other than whats been on tv or Internet . Don't want to add to the hords of @#$$@%% looky loo's . People are still stopping on 380 bridge to take pictures . I think it 's time to issue tickets or get the cattle prod out . I have to head over to the airport sun am for work and am dreading it . Average time to get across town ,,3-4 hours .
We are under water conserve order . People are still using it like no problem , est we have 2-3 days before reserve runs out ,,then it will be shut off . Getting supplys and pumps line up to help out with clean up once the water drops, started falling off last night finally. Iowa city , coralville has more to come yet .

Coralville res is fedral Fedral Flood control ..lol or supposed to be .

You might have to explain that a little better.
How does a dam prevent flooding???

Well the idea is ,,it is supposed to a holding area for water to be released in a controled flow ,,to ease flooding down stream . But ,when overwhelmed and the input exceeds outflow, the result is uncontroled flooding

Remember you saying the farm building areas are on higher ground, but the view from the air really puts some perspective on things, looks like a giant water stain towards the bottom of the 2nd photo, and to the right looks like a natural path for water to run by that row of bins, assuming the one you emptied is at the top by that group of buildings close to being surrounded by water.

Hope you guys hold up through this one !

Dams for flood control are pretty common in some areas. I couldn't find a map on a quick Google for Iowa, but the link has the New England system built to deal with floods like '35, '38, and '55. They just hold water until rivers downstream recede.

There are some levees, notably along the Connecticut River. They straightened the river south of Putnam near me after the '55 flood so water can exit the town faster (as well as a big dam upstream to hold more water back).

Most of the smaller rivers present the problem of the towns having been built around a water-powered mill right on the river. Can't build a 30' high levee through the middle of town. So where the Army Corps figured it was cheaper to buy open land and build a dam instead of relocating small cities, they did so.

They sure don't prevent all flooding, but they do protect the infrastructure like bridges, wells, and sewage treatment plants downstream as well as protecting the businesses and residences in the mill villages / small cities from catastrophic floods.

In most if not all of these situations, the people weren't stupid when they built the town. The places they built buildings had no known history of flooding by the farmers who had cleared the land a century or more earlier by the time most of the mills started being built from 1830 onwards.

But as more land was cleared in the hills for sheep, and there was less forest to absorb water...more water ran off. Over generations, silt carried into the rivers raised their river bed height, so water got closer and closer to the banks all the time. These actions where recognized by the 1860s, and have largely continued till today.

As we've paved more land and put in more and more drainage, water flows faster and raises the rivers higher sooner. One of the posters here was complaining he can't get permission to tile off a bit of his land -- it's all interconnected, the more land that is tiled, the less the ground acts like a sponge to slowly drain the water and worse these floods get. It's a cost of improving agricultural output that we have to protect or relocate towns getting flooded worse and more often because of it.
New England

The "how" I should say is they only normally have fairly shallow pools of water behind the dams (and some in New England are completely dry normally except for the river winding it's natural course). They only maintain a pool in any of them as a "perk" and provide recreational opportunities.

The dam nearest me, West Thompson, normally has 15' of water behind it at the dam, with a 200 acre pool of water. It's held up to 41', it's spillway is at 50' at which point it's holding back over 25,000 acre-feet of water over 1,250 acres the Corps owns or has a flood water easement on.

seem to me like most places the dam is built for flood control is suposed to be draind down so as to be able to hold a big run off , then some one come along and say well we could ues that for boating fishing, recation, but to do that, it takes more water. so there is the problem rettaing more water for recation. happens here at land between the lakes evey year. they start lowering the water and then the people with houes boats start calling the congressman. want then to keep the lake at a hight depth. so floor control goes out the door becaues no one rembers most of the time last time it flooded. hope you all are safe

thats because they have restrictions on residential but business are free to use as much as they want,which is causing the problem.

Thats how this works here also.

But we have had several rains this spring and they could never get it drained out before the next rain event filled it again.

They were letting it out as fast as they could between rains without flooding Iowa City. As it was designed to do.

They just kept getting farther behind every rain till it wentover the top.

Hey Matt,My wife was born and raised in Winsted (the town that lost nearly all of its buildings along main street in the Mad River flood of '55.) Probably the best thing that ever happened to Winsted as most of those buildings had open sewers feeding right into the river. The army Corp. of Engineers built a large flood control dam upriver of Winsted shortly after that. I don't think the dam has ever been needed to date but I believe it would alleviate a big problem if ever again there was a flood like that in '55.

In reading some of the news releases the Corps already knew there was a problem but there are no funds to complete the project much like New Orleans but like everything else it's all about the money and even if it was OK'd tomorrow your 40 to 50 years away from completion by the time land is purchased cleared and a dam built most of us will be gone they did the same thing like Ct. ours in Ohio came about from the 1913 flood and was completed in the early 70's and of course was delayed by things like what person to name it after and we had to move all the natural habitats of things like the flat nose bat and the midwestern quail. Better put your place on stilts or move to high ground for your lifetime.

There also was a post a couple weeks ago dealing with a landowner wanting to clear trees and other growth from a creek on his property and someone was complaining about ruining the beauty of growth in a creek. Here's what a Corp official told me a long time ago. "Sometimes we have to strike a balance between nature and realtime needs rivers, steams (creeks) and lakes actually serve as a protection from serious flooding serving as aquaducts (giant pipes if you will) to move vast amounts of water from an area quickly so trees and undergrowth slow down the flow and can become giant blockers for flood gates because they are no match for fast moving water" IMHO part of the problem and maybe only a small part is there are a lot of people down stream that aren't keeping their waterways cleaned out and the other is the crops weren't big enough to absorb and slow down the runoff.

Yep, other side of the state from me but same idea. Their terrain is a bit more rugged...huge dam just above Winsted with a dry bed resevoir. Parts of Old Route 44 where it went up the valley that's now the reservoir you can still drive on.

Putnam really did a nice redevelopment job, that's now on the "2nd generation" since the '55 flood. New main road into town, almost a continous park along the river, the old mill housing that was devestated was replaced by a couple shopping plazas so at least if hit by some megaflood at least it won't be people taking the brunt of the hit.

Gary...Certainly devastating for all concerned. Hope and pray that it soon subsides. Is there a lot of erosion on the cropland, or did the terraces and grass waterways prevent big gullies from being cut? What is your take on the extant of crop damage in your area?