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Flood Resilience

Flood Resilience

Within "water rich" Storm Lake, the City's industrial park has been witnessing frequent and severe flooding. The automatic response of simply providing more drainage was given pause, but with the same urgency a resilient solution to reduce flooding, while providing additional stacked functions was derived.

The design is based on a green infrastructure backbone, which achieves superior flood reduction while matching and reducing runoff rates. In addition, over 3.50 acre-feet of storage is proposed for water quality treatment. This green infrastructure design includes stormwater wetlands, biofiltration basins, grassed waterways and vegetated swales, all of which are centered around the concept of using a 2-stage agricultural ditch that allows higher flows to be captured and treated in floodplain BMPs.

Client Benefits

  • Resilient approach garnered a Clean Water SRF Construction Loan for the funding (~$1.7 million total cost).
  • Future amenities, such as connective trail system are planned into the design.
  • Provides treatment of adjacent existing agricultural landscape as well as future development.
  • 15 acres of wetland and wildlife habitat will be added to the City.

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