The City of Kalona discussed plans to make improvements on Salverson Creek at their recent meeting.

The council put preliminary plans out for contract bids with a bid opening scheduled for September 5 at 11 a.m. City Administrator Ryan Schlabaugh talks about the project, “We’ve had a couple different versions of it, and really the version that we’re working off of right now is to go in and still do a two-tier repairing and buffer of roughly 1,100 linear feet north of Highway 22 on Salverson Creek. And that will hopefully stabilize and maintain the streambanks on both east and west sides of the creek as well as provide a mechanism to kind of slow that fast-moving water down through the ripples. And those are located kind of in the creek bank so it’d be a complete restoration of that creek.”

Once a contractor has been selected the city in collaboration with HBK Engineering expect to begin work in September or October. Schlabaugh talks about slumping problems the Salverson Creek has caused, “We’ve had homeowners that have lost part of their west yard in there, so we’re starting to see some bank loss and erosion. This will allow us to be able to maintain it more properly, as well as it will actually kind of clean that water that comes off of the field and property owners’ yards. And a little bit of flood mitigation too, so it’s a good project in the sense that it touches a lot of different things that are important to the community.”

Schlabaugh and HBK Engineering will present bids to the council on September 5 at 7 p.m. The estimated cost of the improvements is $250,000. The city received a State Revolving Fund (SRF) grant of $108,000 for the project.