Two miles south of Belle Plaine, State Highway 21 serves 2500 vehicles each day, connecting the town to nearby Marengo and Interstate 80. This road is crucial to the surrounding communities which makes the pain even worse when the highway is flooded over.
To fix this officials plan to completely rebuild the highway near the Iowa River. The project includes three overflow bridges, reconstructing the pavement, and increasing the road height to the 100 year floodplain.
The road condition is degraded over the years as roads do and when we came time to look to doing some repaving on this particular road we also know that it has a tendency to flood. Said Sam Shea, The District Transportation Planner for Benton and Iowa Counties. “We expected it to flood every 2 to 5 years…