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Walnut Creek watershed coordinators present five-year plan, say E. coli testing will be expanded
Summary
Polk County Public Works coordinators presented a five-year Walnut Creek Watershed implementation plan to Windsor Heights council, outlining storage, floodplain restoration, water-quality monitoring and regional outreach; presenters said E. coli hotspots are under investigation with expanded rapid testing planned.
Cassie Drool and Rob Austin of Polk County Public Works, who also serve as coordinators for the Central Iowa Watershed Management Authority, told the Windsor Heights City Council on Feb. 2 that the authority completed a five-year implementation plan in 2025 to guide projects across the Walnut Creek watershed.
The plan sets five goals: hold water on the landscape to reduce flooding, preserve and reconnect floodplains, improve surface-water quality, increase regional collaboration and sustain implementation through monitoring and reporting. “We developed a five-year implementation plan,” Cassie Drool said, explaining the document is action-oriented and informed by stakeholder meetings across the watershed.
Rob Austin described technical and monitoring priorities and gave specific local targets: across the watershed the authority aims to add roughly 250 acre-feet of storage annually; Windsor Heights was allocated about 2 percent of that target, roughly a half acre-foot per year, and about 3.5 acres per year of floodplain improvements. Austin said, “there was a decent amount of E. coli found in the Walnut Creek,” and that the authority is narrowing sampling to a few locations and planning concentrated rapid testing to try to identify likely sources.
Council members asked for examples of projects; presenters cited native prairie restoration and bioswale/streambank stabilization at Colby Park (part of the 74th Street outfall work) as the kinds of projects that capture and hold runoff while improving habitat. Presenters said they had contracted consultants (McClure and CBEC EcoEngineering) and had engaged communities within the watershed in plan development.
On outreach, the authority said it will hold a watershed festival May 7 in partnership with the Urbandale Sustainability Fair at the Arboretum to raise awareness and involve residents; staff left annual reports with the council for review. Austin cautioned that short-term sampling can be affected by weather and seasonality and said the team will not issue public-health advisories until Drake University’s testing and the authority’s rapid sampling produce clearer results.
The presentation closed with an offer to return to provide updates as projects advance and monitoring results come in. Next procedural steps include quarterly reporting to member municipalities and follow-up council briefings as specific projects are programmed.
