Middle Cedar Watershed group asks Linn County for about $4,000 to leverage larger grants

Mary Beth Stevenson, watershed and source-water program manager with the City of Cedar Rapids, told the Linn County Board of Supervisors on March 10 that the Middle Cedar Watershed Management Authority (WMA) is seeking county support to resume project implementation and to help leverage larger state and federal grants.

Stevenson said the WMA, an intergovernmental partnership formed under chapter 28E-style agreements among cities, counties and soil-and-water districts, officially launched in February 2016 and now has 26 members. "Our overall overarching goals are to improve water quality and reduce flood risk," Stevenson said, describing past work and the group’s priorities.

The WMA highlighted a history of grant-supported projects, including participation in the Iowa Watershed Approach project (2015–2020), which Stevenson said brought about $9,000,000 in federal funding and led to 84 installed practices across the watershed. She cited local implementation in Linn County in 2023: "we just wrapped up our first batch and build project in Linn County in 2023, which installed 36 bioreactors in saturated buffers in Linn County, with a construction investment of over $400,000" funded through the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship.

Stevenson said the Middle Cedar WMA recently applied to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for $1,300,000 with Morgan Creek listed as a high priority for implementation. She described a funding target for the WMA of $50,000 annually, split roughly $25,000 toward a watershed coordinator and $25,000 toward locally led water-quality projects, but acknowledged members do not always meet that target. "What we're trying to show is, you know, with our 26 members, they're each contributing what they can at a meaningful level, to kind of show that regional cooperation so that we're then able to kind of turn that into a high return on investment for some of those bigger project dollars," Stevenson said.

For fiscal 2026, Stevenson said the WMA’s specific request to Linn County is "just over $4,000," and that the county contribution would be used as match money for grant applications and to help hire a watershed coordinator if grant funding can be secured. She described the coordinator position as the "boots on the ground" needed to line up projects and funding: "the funding for construction is out there, but the staff is what we find challenging to hire."

Supervisors asked about state funding sources; Stevenson said many construction dollars come through the Iowa Department of Agriculture’s Water Quality Initiative (WQI) and that the Middle Cedar WMA is trying to help communities access those and other funds. The WMA also described ongoing water monitoring at more than 50 locations and recent local partnerships to support projects in Morgan Creek watershed.

Stevenson left informational materials with the board and offered to answer follow-up questions by phone or email.

The presentation was informational; the board did not take formal action on the request at this meeting. Stevenson and other WMA proponents asked supervisors to consider the FY26 contribution when the county reviews its budget.