DAVENPORT, Iowa — The road leading into Credit Island Park in Davenport will be getting some much-needed repairs starting this week.
The road had received some temporary fixes since the historic flooding in 2019 that washed away parts of the road. Those fixes included adding gravel, which is the road's surface right now.
The repair project will start the week of June 28, 2021, pending any weather delays, according to the Davenport Public Works Department. The project should conclude by mid-August.
In March 2021, the Davenport Public Works Department announced FEMA would help cover about half of the cost of repairs, since the flooding was declared a disaster.
In a conversation with News 8 in March, Davenport Assistant Public Works Director Clay Merritt said those repairs will not include any flood mitigation steps. Instead, these repairs are only intended to repair the existing infrastructure.
"It needed to have some repair work anyway even before the flood, so this does a bunch of full depth patching on the issues that washed out and then a brand new surface along the whole thing," said Merritt.
Part of the project will include a process called "full-depth patching." That will be used in the areas of the road where large portions of the road were washed away in the 2019 flood.
"This project we're doing now fixes the causeway, makes some much needed repairs that need to happen, while we can use existing federal resources to help us with that, while we're taking a look at some of those long term costs," said Merritt in March 2021.
According to the Davenport Public Works Department, that process could cause some occasional road closures into the park during the summer months.
The project will remove the gravel surface and replace it with a continuous paved surface throughout the entire park, according to Merritt. The gravel surface was a temporary repair while City of Davenport leaders could request funding and reimbursement from FEMA, according to Merritt in the March 2021 interview.
This is a project the City of Davenport had already budgeted for, according to Merritt in the March 2021 interview with News 8.
The project will cost about $400,000 in total. About half of that will be reimbursed by FEMA.