UI engineers model Dubuque pumping station to ‘make sure that it’s going to work’

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CORALVILLE — With more than half of Dubuque’s population working or living in the Bee Branch Watershed — covering 6.5 miles and encompassing six schools, four parks, and affordable housing — the city’s $28 million Bee Branch Stormwater Pumping Station Project is just as much money saved as it is money spent.

“Imagine a big 500-year flood happens — which we have had many of in the state — and this thing doesn't work,” said Larry Weber, director of the University of Iowa-based IIHR-Hydroscience and Engineering and interim director of the Iowa Flood Center. “Heads are going to roll. People's lives are going to get lost. People's homes will get destroyed.”

Given the stakes, the City of Dubuque mo