By Michael Schaffer - Managing Editor
Bill Duey, 58, will retire April 2 after 36 years with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. For the last 24 years Duey has been the operations project manager for Rathbun Lake.
Interestingly, his wife, Sherri, holds the same job as he does but at Lake Red Rock near Pella in the Rock Island District. She plans to work another three years before retiring.
Duey's job involves overseeing 34,000 acres of land and water and nine employees in the Corps’ Kansas City District. Part of his job as operations project manager is to maintain the Rathbun Lake dam and outflow works, making water release adjustments, managing the flora and fauna and managing six of the nine parks at the lake: The Outlet, Island View, Rolling Cove, Bridge View, Prairie Ridge and Buck Creek.
A lot of land in the project area is leased to the state government and private entities.
"We lease Honey Creek State Park and the majority of Honey Creek Resort State Park is Corp lands that we lease to the state of Iowa," Duey said. "And then we also have Southfork, which is a park that we lease to the marina operator."
Duey talked about some of the events he witnessed that remain very memorable. Most involved flooding of Rathbun Lake.
• In 1982 as assistant manager Rathbun Lake reached a record flood pool level at the time.
"That was a major flood event in southern Iowa and it had a lot of impacts on the project," Duey said. "And we had to manage through that flood event."
• In 1992 on Sept. 16 the water level at Rathbun Lake raised 15 feet in 48 hours.
"I don't know of any other lake in the midwest that's had any kind of a lake raise in that short amount of a time," Duey said. "That was a phenominal rain event. And it was strickly at Rathbun Lake and our 560 square mile drainage basin watershed. It wasn't even anywhere else in Iowa."
• In August 2008 Rathbun Lake peaked at its second-highest flood level, closing many park facilities for half the summer. Duey said that flood event would start in motion major rehabilitation of park facilities from 2008 through 2010 using American Reinvestment and Recovery Act funds. Those fund would, among other things, allow for the construction of five new restrooms, an attendant station, handicap-accessible picnic tables, fire rings, accessible sidewalks and road and parking lot resurfacing.
"So we've been very, very fast track since August 2008," Duey said. "It's been a whirlwind in fact. The staff has done a great job with it."
• Then in September 2008 Honey Creek Resort State Park opened.
"Out of everything I've been involved with, everywhere with the Corp., the Honey Creek Resort State Park project has been the most challenging and the most rewarding both," Duey said. "I spent nine years working with Rathbun Lake Resort Inc., the local group that was working towards landing the resort here, and also with the Department of Natural Resources staff and contractors that were involved with the planning, design construction and then going operational with that."
Duey called Honey Creek Resort State Park an 'one-of-a-kind" project in this era that required local and state groups working together to get the resort to Appanoose County.
"It's an outstanding facility," Duey said. "It's going to have long, far-reaching positive benefits to the area."
Duey called all the Corp employees at the Rathbun Lake project experts in their fields with experience who were put to the test with the flood of 2008.
"They've done an outstanding job," Duey said."I would like to sincerely thank my Rathbun Lake staff, the Kansas City District staff that I work with, the Rathbun Lake Association, the Centerville and Albia Chambers of Commerce, Rathbun Lake Resort Inc., Appanoose County Trails and all of the many Iowa DNR staff I have worked very closely with over the years."
Support from the local community has made getting projects started and funded that much easier, Duey said.
"I appreciate their positive support for the Rathbun Lake project being here in their backyard," Duey said. And they have stepped up time and time again to help support the programs or funding that's needed to help make improvements out here at the lake. There's truly a special support from the local community for Rathbun Lake project."
Duey attended high school in Fall City, Neb. and in 1974 he graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with a bachelor of science degree in natural resources management specializing in wildlife management.
While in college, Duey worked for one year as a park aid at Harlan County Lake in south central Nebraska during the summer of 1972 and because of that experience he began to think about a career with the Corp. After graduation from college, Duey applied and was selected for the Corps park ranger training program.
"It was being instituted all over the country," he said. "To really raise the natural resource professionalism of the Corp. Because we had all these resources at these lake projects around the country."
Duey started his first Corp job in May of 1974 as the park ranger at Kanopolis Lake near Salina, Kan. And he has been with them ever since.
From there Duey would go on to work three years as the Melvern Lake, Kan. park ranger, work four years as park ranger and then chief ranger at Harlan Lake, Neb., work a two-year stint from 1982-1984 as the assistant manager at Rathbun Lake, work a two-year stint as operations manager at Wilson Lake in central Kansas and then back to Rathbun Lake in April 1986 as operations project manager where he would finish out his career.
After April 2 don't expect Duey to sleep in and sit around drinking coffee until noon. He and his wife have a long list of personal interests, hobbies and business ventures they will devote time to.
"We have a farm and have a lot of activities that we'll be doing with it. We raise Alpacas and have for 10 years. And I'll be doing a lot more with that business," he said. "And one thing I am going to continue doing that's related to the lake is to continue to work with Rathbun Lake Resort Incorporated. It's the local non-profit organization that helped get the resort park to Rathbun Lake."
Duey said he expected his replacement to be named near the end of March.
Duey met his wife Sherri when he worked at Wilson Lake in Kansas. The Duey's have four children: Mark, Karen, Brent and Jenny and two grandchildren.
