IOWA CITY - Brad Kaldahl and Sonia Ryang are moving up, not out.

Their home at 701 Normandy Dr. in Iowa City took on more than 5 feet of water last June when the Iowa River, which runs past their backyard, jumped its banks.

They are eligible for a buyout and would have taken one but their flood insurance made it unattractive financially. So the married couple and their two children have been renting elsewhere while their home is raised 8 feet and set on a wooden structure similar in concept to stilts.

“This house is definitely solid, safe and secure,” Kaldahl said.

The family hopes to return by the end of this month.

Much like Kaldahl and his family, many residents and the cities of Iowa City and Coralville and Johnson County continue to recover from the record Iowa River flooding that hit a year ago, while planning for future floods.

Nearly 800 homes and more than 260 businesses were damaged in the flood, according to city and county officials. Damages approached $100 million, they said.

Many more people were affected indirectly, like drivers stuck in the traffic jams caused by so many major roads being closed and businesses that saw sales drop because it was difficult to reach them.

A primary goal of the cities and the county is to get people out of the way of future flooding. Iowa City may acquire up to 39 homes, Johnson County has 17 on its buyout list and Coralville plans to demolish about 45 flood-hit structures.

In most cases, the land will become open space to minimize damage in future flooding. In addition to homes, Iowa City is looking to buy vacant land along the river.

“We’re basically just looking at the map and going up and down the river because we don’t want anything to ever be built on there so we don’t have to go through this again,” said Steve Long, Iowa City’s community development director.

Iowa City also has three big projects it would like to undertake: the elevation of Dubuque Street and Park Road bridge and the relocation of the north wastewater treatment plant. All were affected by the flood, and the work would cost an estimated $95 million.

The city hopes the federal government covers most of the cost, with the city picking up its share with the proceeds of the local-option sales tax voters approved in May.

Coralville has identified $54 million in flood-related projects, including raising the railroad behind Highway 6 and installing new storm water pump stations, berms and flood walls.

But voters there rejected the sales tax. The city will seek federal and state funding, but many programs require local matches ranging up to 50 percent of a project’s cost. City officials have said they may raise property taxes to get the money.

“We’ve got great plans, and we think that they will really work,” City Administrator Kelly Hayworth said. “But the question is now, how do we pay for those?”

The damage would have been worse in rural areas if the county hadn’t bought out a number of homes in the floodway after the 1993 flood, Board of Supervisors Chairman Terrence Neuzil said. More buyouts, coupled with the new joint emergency communications center, will help during future flooding, he said.

And Neuzil, like many others, believes it’s only a matter of time before another major flood hits.

“If we’ve learned anything from this, it’s (that) 1993 was really not that unique,” he said, “and 2008 probably wasn’t either.”