DES MOINES – It has been 30 years since the catastrophic flood of 1993 and since then the Des Moines and Raccoon rivers have raged many times. What’s different now is the amount of flood infrastructure the city of Des Moines has built.

Patrick Beane, the Clean Water Program Administrator, said that stormwater infrastructure has been a top priority for the city for many years.

“Stormwater management and floodwater management has been a big priority for the city the past several years and even well beyond that the last decade or more,” Beane said.

There have been many major projects the city has undertaken like reinforcing the Birdland levees after they broke in the flood of 2008. Others include the Greys Station Constructive Wetland which serves as a basin to stop the water before it gets to Downtown Des Moines.

However, there is still lots of work to be done especially in older neighborhoods in Des Moines.

“There’s hundreds of millions of dollars of work that still needs to be done. Upsize, repair, rehabilitate those old and undersized storm sewers, especially in those older neighborhoods in town,” Beane said. “The Closes Creek up in the northwest side we got about a $30 million program were working on up there Hamilton drain is about a $20 million program.”

This spring and summer seasons are expected to be wetter than average, but with all the infrastructure improvements Des Moines is better prepared to manage flood waters than ever before.

“We are in a much better place than we were definitely back in ’93 and even back in 2010 we’ve done significant upgrades to the levees around Birdland through downtown we’re actually working on those right now there’s been a lot of focus on stormwater management throughout the city,” Beane said.