Officials pledge to make flood recovery less painful

Gov. Chet Culver held a press conference in Cedar Rapids Wednesday that featured (from left) Rebuild Iowa Office Executive Director Maj. Gen. Ron Dardis, U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan, U.S. Rep. Dave Loebsack and U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

CEDAR RAPIDS — State and federal officials held a joint press conference Wednesday and pledged both to cut government red tape tangling flood recovery funding and to promote a new climate of natural disaster prevention.

Although the event was attended primarily by reporters and local elected officials, U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan, who visited flood-impacted areas of Iowa for the first time since accepting his post earlier this year, said he both felt and understood the frustration of local residents.

“That’s exactly why I’m here today, doing this press conference and spending many hours walking the streets of these communities and hearing from local leaders and residents about the barriers to moving more swiftly,” Donovan said.

“We have a system that’s been built through the Community Development Block Grant that wasn’t designed for disaster assistance. We need, in addition to this help that President Obama and I are delivering today, to go the next step and reform the way that disaster assistance is provided.”

Donovan said that largely because of the conversations he’s had with Iowa officials —conversations that were compounded today when he spoke directly with flood victims while touring the area — discussions on how such reform should look have already begun in Washington, D.C.

“[My department] has tried to work during these first few months to speed things up,” he said. “We are evaluating waivers that I’m allowed to grant that could help the state move forward, but there are some things that have to be changed in the law. We are in the process of doing that and, over this summer, we will be working with the Congress to try to get fundamental changes so that we can rebuild more quickly. That’s exactly the message I heard in Cedar Rapids today, and that’s exactly the message I’ll carry back to President Obama.”

Of the $3.7 billion in block grant monies that will be distributed by the federal government to 11 states hit by natural disaster during 2008, Iowa will receive $516.7 million. Cedar Rapids, the hardest hit of Iowa’s cities, had more than 10-square miles including the city’s downtown and cultural district devoured by flood waters. The latest figures show nearly $6 billion in total damage for the city — well over half the damage estimates for the entire state.

“This announcement is great as far as us taking the next step of rebuilding,” said Shannon Meyer, president and chief executive of the Cedar Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce. “Everyone needs to keep that in mind: This is just another step in the rebuilding process. We’re grateful for the announcement coming from HUD, but realizing that we’ve got $5.7 billion of damage in Cedar Rapids alone, we know we need to push for additional funding.”

Meyer and the Chamber of Commerce are especially concerned about the local economy, and the ability of many of the city’s re-opened businesses to remain solvent.

“Most small businesses have leveraged everything they possibly can to reopen their doors,” she said, noting that 78 percent of the city’s businesses have reopened since being devastated in last June’s floods. “While that statistic may be true at this moment in time, none of the circumstances surrounding those businesses are the same as they were before the flood. … They probably don’t employ the 35 people they employed before the flood. Their debt load is high, and many have no cash flow. The overall economic impact is not good.”

Maj. Gen. Ron Dardis, executive director of the Rebuild Iowa Office, indicated that distribution of the newly available government funds should be announced within a week. Although it took state agencies about a month to plan the distribution of $125 million in federal recovery plans last fall, Dardis said that state officials have had months to plan while they waited for the exact figure that would be granted to Iowa.

Donovan added that Iowans shouldn’t just think of what’s happening as flood recovery, but as overall recovery that can be directly addressed by the federal stimulus.

“The measure of our success will not be whether we help Iowa communities rebuild and recover. We will. It is whether we have the courage and the wisdom to do things differently, and to take steps today that ensure our successors do not have to be here rebuilding from the next storm 10, 15 or 20 years from now,” he said.

To that end, Donovan announced the creation of a $312 million Disaster Recovery Enhancement Fund aimed at helping communities prevent or mitigate future natural disasters. Localities will need to compete for funds from this new program, which would provide up to a 1-to-1 match.