The 2008 flooding in Cedar Rapids inundated several neighborhoods with water.

A decade after flood waters ravaged Cedar Rapids, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has awarded the city $117 million for structures to prevent future flooding.

Iowa’s congressional delegation has been complaining for years that the Army Corps of Engineering was bypassing Cedar Rapids as it handed out grant money for flood prevention and control measures around the country. The City of Cedar Rapids has a plan to protect homes and businesses with a series of levees, flood walls, gates and pumping stations along seven-and-a-half miles of the Cedar River corridor.

Senator Joni Ernst announced the Army Corps’ 117 million dollars award for that project. She said: “Hundreds of millions of state and local dollars have already been committed, but what has been missing is this critical federal share of the project.”

The cost for the envisioned flood control system is three-quarters of a billion dollars — and Cedar Rapids officials still need to raise another 350 million for the project. Congressman Rod Blum of Dubuque represents the Cedar Rapids. He says the flood-control project will not only protects personal property and lives, “it also gives business owners peace of mind that their economic investments….will be protected.”