SIOUX CITY, Iowa (KTIV) -
Officials say protecting the water supply was key to keeping companies in business, and residents in their homes.
Our Prospect Hill skycam captured how badly the system was threatened by the flood.
Crews built a rock wall around Sioux City's riverfront wells, which collect the majority of the region's raw drinking water.
The main collector takes in 10 million gallons of water every day.
That's drinking water used by our businesses, in our homes, and even by our neighbors in other communities.
"We knew that we were going to reach flow numbers we had never seen before, we knew we were going to have to protect our assets," explained Sioux City City Engineer Chris Payer.
The city has moved from recovery to restoration mode.
However, they're leaving those rocks near the wells, in case they have to act quickly again.
It's just one of the many lessons learned in the flood of 2011.
"The biggest thing that I learned wasn't necessarily a new lesson, but it gets demonstrated when we have an event like this, and that's the community will pull together to be able to protect our resources. It was demonstrated everyday with the wide variety of people that came out to fill sandbags," Payer explained.
According to Payer, volunteers worked 36,000 hours making 250,000 sandbags in Sioux City last summer.
Much of that sand is being stored for use in local road projects.
