Storm Lake expected to drop disputed drainage plan near Tyson feedmill
Storm Lake is poised to scrap a drainage plan near the Tyson feedmill, sparing landowners a multimillion-dollar assessment. The move would end a seven-month standoff.
Storm Lake is set to walk away from a disputed drainage project near the Tyson feedmill, leaving the ponding and tile-line questions around Richland Street unresolved while sparing Buena Vista County landowners from a steep assessment fight. Tyson Foods has asked to withdraw its petition to repair or improve the line in the Storm Lake Industrial Park, and city officials expected the council to approve that move.
The retreat would effectively close a dispute that had lingered for seven months after the council tabled Beck Engineering’s recommended improvements to Drainage District 13. Since then, no action had been taken, and the project sat in limbo as landowners and county officials pushed back over what the work was meant to accomplish and who would pay for it.
City spokesman Dana Larsen said Tyson wanted to pull back its request. Earlier, city drainage attorney Ryan Buske had told Tyson that the council was unclear whether the company wanted a basic repair or a larger improvement that would eliminate ponding near the feedmill altogether. That distinction drove the fight, because it changed the scope, the cost and the size of the assessments that could land on nearby property owners.
The numbers at stake were wide apart. The council had considered project totals ranging from $655,000 to $2.4 million, while Buena Vista County in-house drainage engineer Brian Blomme said he would have budgeted about $300,000. Blomme also warned that a $2.4 million assessment could push the cost to as much as $8,000 an acre, a figure he said would be more than half the market price for Buena Vista County farmland.
The county and at least eight landowners had already said they would protest if the improvements moved forward. If Tyson’s withdrawal is approved, those owners avoid a fight over whether rural property should help pay for an industrial drainage fix, and the county avoids a potential multimillion-dollar bill. The trade-off is that the disputed drainage problem near the Tyson feedmill would remain without the larger fix city leaders had been weighing.
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