Indian Creek watershed management effort begins

For local government officials and other stakeholders, Thursday was the first step toward the future of Indian Creek. It's also developing a model for tackling larger Iowa waterways.

"It's to listen to them, about what they want for their watershed and what they're thinking about," said Stacy Langsdale.

Langsdale, of the Army Corps of Engineers' Institute for Watershed Resources in Alexandria, Va., helped run the first in a series of workshops to create a vision for a sustainable future along the stream. The immediate priorities will guide the watershed management agency created in November.

About 60 people attended a daylong brainstorming session at Marion City Hall Thursday, which was followed by an open house. By the end of the day, the walls of the city council chambers were decorated with ideas jotted on large sheets of paper.

Lessons learned creating Indian Creek's management plan will be put to use on similar plans along the Cedar and Iowa rivers authorized by Congress after the region's June 2008 floods, Langsdale said.

"We wanted to do the whole basin, but it was too big too manage," said Langsdale. "So we decided to come at Indian Creek as a pilot study."

The Corps will host three more workshops by early summer, Langsdale said.

"We'll be happy if by the end of the workshops we'll have had a conversation about the trade-offs of the development alternatives," she said. "Enough to develop a plan to meet the goals" set during the workshops.

More immediately for Indian Creek, it's a collaborative approach that will cross city and township boundaries.

"Effective flood management is a shared responsibility," said Mary Beth Stevenson, Iowa Department of Natural Resources' watershed coordinator for the Iowa and Cedar Rivers. "You can't take a piecemeal approach. What we're emphasizing is the shared approach up and downstream."