Texas firm works to sell Cedar Rapids on floodgate technology

CEDAR RAPIDS - A Texas firm with a traveling demonstration exhibit says there is new development for flood protection.

On Tuesday, a representative for FloodBreak Automatic Floodgates of Houston, Texas, showed off its floodgate invention. The system uses the hydrology of rising flood water to raise a flood protection gate.

No Power, no manpower needed, Vic Althoff, FloodBreak representative, told city officials and engineers with area firms during a demonstration at Cedar Rapids' City Services Center.

Althoff said the company's floodgate technology can provide flood protection to individual properties, streets and bridges and to long stretches of property. He said the company developed its floodgate technology in the wake of Tropical Storm Allison that caused significant damage in southeast Texas in 2001.

The University of Houston, the University of Colorado and hospitals in Houston, Galveston, Texas, and Binghamton, N.Y., are among FloodBreak customers.

Sandy Pumphrey, Cedar Rapids' project engineer for flood protection, was among those looking on at the FloodBreak demonstration on Tuesday.

Pumphrey said he wasn't 'skeptical” of the floodgate system. But he said the city needed to be'cautious” to make sure that the various elements that become part of the city's flood-protection system, such as flood walls, earthen levees and removable flood walls, work effectively.

'We want to do our homework,” Pumphrey said.

Pumphrey said the City Council has hired engineering firms HR Green Co. of Cedar Rapids and Stanley Consultants Inc. of Muscatine to complete pre-construction design work on the flood-protection system. The job includes an analysis of the technologies and products to put into the system, he said.