Bettendorf Mayor Robert Gallagher wasn't on the agenda, but he was invited to the podium Wednesday at the start of a river conference in Moline to explain how mayors along the Mississippi are addressing the threat of increased flooding in light of climate change.
The scheduled speaker for the second keynote address at the Upper Mississippi River Conference was Colin Wellenkamp, executive director of the Mississippi Rivers Cities and Towns Initiative, a group organized in 2012 and consisting of 95 mayors from up and down the river.
But Wellenkamp deferred to Gallagher, saying "mayors are on the front line" of finding solutions to flooding challenges. Gallagher also is co-chair of the initiative and spoke in New York during the United Nations Climate Week in September about efforts in the nation's heartland.
People are also reading…
Gallagher began by reciting a bullet-point list of reasons why the Mississippi River basin is so important — providing food, water, jobs and commerce — but cautioned that "all that is at risk" with natural and human-built infrastructure decay and more frequent and damaging natural disasters.
He stressed that solutions to flooding must entail new methods and approaches that incorporate both natural and human-built infrastructure, not just a repetition of what has been done in the past.
And for those flood resiliency efforts to work, they must be undertaken on a "corridor scale." That is, not each community for itself, but every community working together. "We believe that is critical in order to be successful," Gallagher said.
He noted that his town is protected by a flood wall, while Davenport is not. "Davenport's riverfront park saved communities by taking water on-site instead of sending it downriver to more vulnerable areas," he said.
Gallagher said the mayors' initiative is working on:
• Pushing Congress to pass a Resilience Revolving Loan Fund Act to provide money to develop innovative flood-fighting solutions and a Water Resources Development Act that would start a pilot program of interest-subsidized disaster recovery bonds for cities.
• Getting an assessment of the lower stem of the Mississippi River "where we can rehabilitate habitat to achieve the most impact absorption to save the most property and lives."
"We will accomplish this through reconnecting backwater areas, reconnecting flood plain and restoring wetlands, marshes and forests," Gallagher said.
The assessment is being done in cooperation with The Nature Conservancy, an international conservation organization.
• Getting more buy-in among the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) and state governmental groups in support of resilience-building efforts.
As is, Gallagher said, there is money to rebuild but not to make communities more resilient in the first place. "We need to change our thinking from clean-up costs to resiliency."
• Linking investment groups to new infrastructure projects.
On a slightly different topic, Gallagher alluded to a backlog in the repair, maintenance and building of infrastructure projects that provide clean drinking water and that treat wastewater in communities along the river.
Drinking water infrastructure needs in the 10-state Mississippi River corridor amounts to $49.7 billion, and the wastewater backlog is $42.33 billion, he said, citing information from the American Society of Civil Engineers.
"The problem is severe and real; we arrived here after a century of building that now has untenable maintenance cost; the solutions are not conventional and involve decidedly unconventional approaches/partnerships and all of you have a role."
The two-day conference, sponsored by River Action Inc., Davenport, annually brings together about 200 people from all lines of work — agriculture, manufacturing, navigation, tourism, the environment and flood control — to discuss river issues. This year's event will continue Thursday at Stoney Creek Hotel & Conference Center.