Middle Cedar Watershed group asks Linn County for roughly $4,000 to restart projects

Mary Beth Stevenson, watersheds and source water program manager for the City of Cedar Rapids, asked the Linn County Board of Supervisors on March 10 to include a funding contribution of just over $4,000 in the county’s FY 2026 budget for the Middle Cedar Watershed Management Authority (WMA).

The request is intended as local match funding to help the WMA leverage larger state and federal grants and to support regional coordination, Stevenson told the board. “Our overall overarching goals are to improve water quality and reduce flood risk,” she said.

The Middle Cedar WMA, an intergovernmental collaboration formed under Iowa’s Chapter 28E framework, now has 26 members across cities, counties and soil and water conservation districts and has focused on both urban and rural partnerships, Stevenson said. The WMA participated in the Iowa Watershed Approach, a federally funded initiative that provided about $9,000,000 to the region and supported installation of 84 conservation practices, she said.

Stevenson described on-the-ground projects in Linn County: a 2023 local “batch-and-build” effort installed 36 bioreactors and saturated buffers with a construction investment of more than $400,000, which she said was 100% funded through the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship’s Water Quality Initiative (WQI). She cited two wetlands built under earlier work: one she said produced an 81% flow reduction at that site and another that reduced flow by about 15% while markedly improving water quality.

Stevenson said the WMA has a $50,000 annual funding target: roughly $25,000 intended to support a watershed coordinator and $25,000 for locally led water-quality projects. The WMA’s specific ask to Linn County is “just over $4,000” for fiscal 2026, she said, and the money would be used as match in grant applications such as a pending U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grant application for about $1,300,000 she noted the WMA recently submitted.

Stevenson said the WMA hopes to hire a watershed coordinator to provide the “boots on the ground” staff needed to line up construction-ready projects and assemble multiple funding sources. She and supervisors discussed the difference between construction dollars and the staff time required to prepare and administer larger projects: “The funding for construction is out there, but the staff is what we find challenging to hire,” she said.

Supervisor Kirsten and Supervisor Ben (first names used in the meeting record) asked whether state programs already provided construction funds; Stevenson said construction funds are available competitively through the state’s Water Quality Initiative but that local match and coordinating staff improve the WMA’s ability to assemble and deploy larger, watershed-scale projects.

Stevenson said the Middle Cedar WMA has identified Morgan Creek as a high-priority subwatershed and that the authority recently provided a letter supporting a County Conservation Board wetland project in that same watershed.

The board did not vote on the WMA request during the presentation; Stevenson asked supervisors to consider the FY 2026 contribution and said WMA staff and members are available to answer follow-up questions.

Ending: The WMA presentation emphasized that modest local contributions are intended to leverage much larger state and federal grants and to fund coordination staff; supervisors asked clarifying questions about state versus local roles in funding and agreed to consider the request as the county’s budget process proceeds.