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University of Iowa eyeing $40M hydraulics facility in Coralville
‘The new facility would be the next step in an accomplished history of hydroscience research at Iowa’
Vanessa Miller
Apr. 17, 2024 11:17 am, Updated: Apr. 18, 2024 8:25 am
IOWA CITY — The University of Iowa’s world-renowned hydroscience and engineering center wants to build a new $40 million hydraulic modeling facility in Coralville — an endeavor aimed at maintaining the program’s leadership and innovation in an increasingly-relevant field.
“This new facility will help Iowa researchers remain at the forefront of research that will help us solve some of the world’s toughest challenges, from dramatic weather change, to flooding in areas plagued by poverty, and environmental pollution,” UI Senior Vice President for Finance and Operations Rod Lehnertz said in a statement.
Based in the C. Maxwell Stanley Hydraulics Laboratory — a 104-year-old five-story brick building on the banks of the Iowa River — IIHR-Hydroscience and Engineering is a UI College of Engineering unit known for its game-changing discoveries and resource innovation, including the Iowa Flood Center it founded in 2009 as the nation’s first university-based center committed to flood research.
The new facility proposed for the university’s Oakdale campus in Coralville would offer more space for hydraulic model studies of things like canals, rivers, dams and spillways. It would encourage and enhance global research partnerships, which require large physical models, and include capacity for future growth.
Should the Board of Regents at its meeting next week give the UI the nod to plan and build a new hydraulics facility, the program could consolidate office space for the Iowa Geological Survey, the Iowa Flood Center and IIHR’s engineering services group. The expectation, according to board documents, is it would improve the efficiency of applied research by “consolidating physical model studies and shop fabrication areas to the UI Oakdale Campus.”
UI hydroscience facilities already located on the Oakdale campus include the Hydraulics Wave Basin, Hydraulic Annex 2 and Iowa Geological Survey. Given the hydraulics research already housed there, this project could increase their support services.
And it would replace aging and off-campus infrastructure, with UI intentions to raze the Hydraulics Annex 1, built in 1979 on the Oakdale campus, and sell the James Street Laboratory facility, built in 2003 a mile south of the new facility.
“The new facility would be the next step in an accomplished history of hydroscience research at Iowa, which has spanned more than a century,” according to the UI Office of Strategic Communication.
UI hydroscience research started in 1920 in a small building along the Iowa River before moving into its larger, current space about a decade later. Since then, the university has added nine annexes, labs and shops committed to “the science and technology of water management.”
UI IIHR-Hydroscience & Engineering milestones
Since its inception, IIHR has broadened its scope and found success in developing and fostering multidisciplinary programs that provide opportunities for collaboration and innovation.
Some of its achievements include:
— The Iowa Geological Survey, dating to 1855, joined IIHR in 2014 to provide expertise in groundwater modeling, mapping of Iowa’s earth and mineral resources and other geophysical skills
— The addition of a UI Hydraulics Wave Basin Facility, one of the largest indoor wave basins in the country
— The debut of the Lucille A. Carver Mississippi Riverside Environmental Research Station, the first university-owned research facility on the Mississippi River
— And the 2009 founding of the Iowa Flood Center, after rains and rivers devastated communities and homes in 2008.
Source: UI News Services and the Board of Regents
Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.
Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com