© 2024 WVIK
Listen at 90.3 FM and 98.3 FM in the Quad Cities, 95.9 FM in Dubuque, or on the WVIK app!
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Government

This Year's Davenport Public Works Projects

soon be protected from future floods - Davenport's Water Pollution Control Plant
City of Davenport
soon be protected from future floods - Davenport's Water Pollution Control Plant

Davenport plans to spend up to 40 million dollars this year on a variety of street and infrastructure projects.

Assistant Public Works Director Clay Merritt says one of the most noticeable will be phase two of the reconstruction of 53rd Street. It will begin next week between Elmore and Eastern Avenue.

"So full reconstruction for us is removing the surface, removing the base and the sub-base, and putting in brand new. Putting in storm sewer detention areas to try to improve some of the storm sewer quality we have there, and take some of that runoff so it doesn't continue to go downhill, south of there. In addition to that, we are widening it."

This two-year project will cost 9 million dollars, and copy the same work done previously on 53rd, from Brady Street to Eastern.

Preliminary work has also started to build a berm around the water pollution control plant to protect it from future flooding by the Mississippi River. Merritt says it will be nearly six feet higher than the record flood.

"So we are going far and above anything we've experienced just to make sure. That's one of our two to three most critical facilities we have in our entire region because it serves not only Davenport, but Bettendorf, Panorama Park, and Riverdale."

The city is also planning storm sewer repairs downtown to improve flood protection, and will spend 10 million dollars to build a new Fire Station Number 3, north of Kimberly Road.

Government
A native of Detroit, Herb Trix began his radio career as a country-western disc jockey in Roswell, New Mexico (“KRSY, your superkicker in the Pecos Valley”), in 1978. After a stint at an oldies station in Topeka, Kansas (imagine getting paid to play “Louie Louie” and “Great Balls of Fire”), he wormed his way into news, first in Topeka, and then in Freeport Illinois. While a graduate student in the Public Affairs Reporting Program at the University of Illinois at Springfield (then known as Sangamon State University), he got his first taste of public radio, covering Illinois state government for WUIS. Here in the Quad Cities, Herb worked for WHBF Radio before coming to WVIK in 1987. Herb also produces the weekly public affairs feature Midwest Week – covering the news behind the news by interviewing reporters about the stories they cover.