Delhi, Ia. - Gov. Chet Culver vowed Sunday to restore Lake Delhi, a treasured summer retreat that drained away in less than a day this weekend.

The nine-mile-long lake all but disappeared after sudden floodwaters breached its 92-year-old dam Saturday morning. Residents fear millions of dollars in property values also washed away, because about 900 vacation homes and cottages lost their lakefront status.

"It just makes your jaw drop," said Irv Janey, a Marion resident who owns a condominium there. "The lake's gone."

The dam is owned by the local homeowners association, and state officials said the lake's sole purpose was recreation. The Department of Natural Resources said if the homeowners decide to rebuild the dam, it would have to meet modern design requirements.

"We would hold them to a higher standard so this couldn't happen again," said Jon Garton, a dam safety engineer for the department.

Garton said that despite the dam's age, it had been well-maintained. A 2009 state inspection found a few minor problems, but nothing that could have caused its failure, he said.

On Saturday, "there was just more water than it was designed for," he said.

Culver traveled here Sunday to reassure residents that he would do what he could to help restore what they'd lost.

"This is a real landmark, and I think it's in Iowans' best interests to save this lake," Culver said, standing in muddy work boots.

Members of the Lake Delhi Recreation Association, which owns the dam and pays for upkeep of the lake, pleaded with Culver for assistance.

"This is beyond our capacity to take care of ourselves," said association President Jim Willey.

The lake has several public boat landings and two public beaches.

Culver said the 900 area homeowners would not be on their own.

"We're going to throw everything we have at it, in terms of federal and state resources," he said.

Culver said the areas that broke were earthen portions of the dam, next to the main concrete structure. A 300-foot section was breached. Culver said the restoration could include reinstallation of hydroelectric turbines, which could generate power for a quarter of Delaware County.

Maggie Burger, a cabin owner and executive director of the homeowners association, said the Federal Emergency Management Agency agreed to help finance a dredging project to clear silt left by 2008 flooding. She said she hoped FEMA would agree to help again.

U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley, a Democrat who represents the area, said he also would work to obtain government money to help rebuild the dam. Braley said that the lake was the area's top tourist attraction, and that vacation homes there provided 10 percent of the county's tax revenue. FEMA spokesman Bob Josephson said it was too early to speculate about whether a dam rebuilding project could qualify for money from his agency. However, he said, vacation homes damaged by flooding generally are ineligible for such assistance. FEMA often helps people repair or replace their primary homes, he said, but not their second homes.

Several area homeowners said they lacked flood insurance. State officials said they didn't yet have accurate estimates of property damage. Homes along Lake Delhi range from modest cottages worth about $50,000 to large houses worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Property owners pay $4 extra per $1,000 of valuation each year to cover the upkeep of the dam and related costs. But the special lake district has no savings account. Instead, it has debt on a $3.5 million dredging project from 2004-05 that won't be paid off for another 15 or 16 years.

Homeowners expressed amazement at how fast the weekend's events unfolded. On Friday, vacationers floated on inflated tubes, played on beach sand and swam in quiet waters. By Friday night, floodwaters were surging through homes like never before. Then, on Saturday morning, the dam broke and the lake drained away.

"Now, my dock is 20 feet above where it should be," said Jim Kouba, a dentist from Bloomfield.

Several boats were forced ashore near his vacation home in the Hickory Hollow neighborhood, along with wooden docks and a yellow swimming slide. Foundations of nearby cabins blew apart when lake water outside drained away, leaving floodwater trapped inside basements. "Houses just exploded because the water couldn't escape fast enough," Kouba said.

Jamie Ashby's cabin was one of them.

"We heard them going down - boom, boom, boom - along the shore," said Ashby, an engineering manager at Heinz Co. in Cedar Rapids. Windows shattered and interior walls collapsed with the rapid change in water pressure. By Sunday afternoon, the shore of the lake was a steep cliff leading down to mud flats, then a thin channel of running river water. The air reeked of rotting fish. Lawns were muddy messes, laden with soaked furniture, carpet, drywall, insulation, mattresses and other household goods.

Relatives of Cheryl Schatzle were lucky enough to get one of the last available Dumpsters for rent in the area. They lighted a bonfire to get rid of paneling, 2-by-4s and other waterlogged wood from a cedar-sided cabin the family has owned for 40 years. Schatzle, a social worker, was heartsick, but she was keeping perspective. She noted that her family didn't lose its primary home, as so many people did in Cedar Rapids in 2008.

Still, seeing Lake Delhi as a puddle of its former self was troubling, Schatzle said. "What's going to happen to the lake? That's a concern I have. Maybe it'll never be the same," she said.

Garton, the DNR dam safety expert, said Iowa has dozens of dams similar in design to the one at Lake Delhi, though most are smaller. He said most are about 10 feet tall. The one at Lake Delhi was about 50 feet tall. The dam didn't have an emergency spillway to divert water before it could go over the top, he said. The dam had three gates to regulate outflows, and they reportedly were wide open.

But after storms dumped up to a foot of water on areas upstream, the gates apparently couldn't let water out fast enough to keep the lake from pouring over the top of the dam and to keep the breach from happening, he said.

Garton said a few smaller Iowa dams have failed in past years. "This is probably the most significant one we've had in recent history," he said.

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Last Update: October 30, 2007