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COLUMBUS JUNCTION, Iowa — The people of Columbus Junction will not soon forget about the floodwaters that ravaged their business district.

The organization, an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, has granted $1,910 to that city to assess the impact of the flood on the business community. Nitza Lopez Castillo, the city’s assistant marketing director, said the floodwaters wiped out about half of the city’s commercial strip.

The assessment will be an ethnography, which is an anthropologist’s term for a report on a community and its people. Mike Chibnik, a University of Iowa anthropology professor, will oversee a group of student interns who will interview business owners and gather information.

The money from the grant will allow students to be reimbursed for mileage to and from Columbus Junction, as well as help pay for clerical fees for tasks such as reformatting photographs and compiling presentations.

Among the 15 to 20 damaged businesses was the town’s largest grocery store, Economart. Only one of the businesses in the affected area — a veterinary clinic — has managed to reopen in its original building.

Columbus Junction, population 2,000, suffered record flooding in late June, where it sits downstream from the confluence of the Iowa and Cedars rivers. The medical center, pharmacy, day care, senior center, a hotel and a dozen other businesses were under about 10 feet of water after a levee broke.

Castillo said the community took a heavy blow when the levee ruptured. “We fought so hard in the days prior to that. People worked around the clock for days and days filling sandbags.

“It was disappointing, but it proved to us how strong this community is. Our efforts were not in vain,” she said.

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