(Radio Iowa) — The Iowa Department of Transportation has been trying some new things as it works to get flood-damaged roadways in southwest Iowa reopened. The efforts worked as they got Interstate 29 between U-S Highway 34 and the Missouri border open Wednesday morning. D-O-T transportation planner, Scott Suhr says they had less luck with a new system they tried on Highway 2. He says they set up barrier rails on both sides of the highway to serve as a dam and put down one foot of coarse aggregate, a lay of fabric and then another foot of road rock that would allow the water to flow through it and let cars travel over the roadway.

But this new method was thwarted by water that covered the highway in other areas. “We are going to continue to monitor the area, and once we are able to open up Iowa 2, we will do so,” Suhr says. Suhr says they’ve found constantly changing conditions that have made it tough to get the roads open and keep them open. “We had a situation two weeks ago where we were down at the interchange of Iowa 2 on the southbound exit ramp and it was completely dry — we hadn’t had any rain and the next week we go down there are we are diving through two or three inches of water, and a couple of days later there’s a foot under water. And here last we it went down and we thought there was a possibility we may be able to open this up,” Suhr says.

He says they will continue trying new things to get the roads open. “We’re certainly thinking out of the box and doing everything we can to open the roadways as quickly and safely as we can,” Suhr says. “We realize that it’s a lot of extra cost for people who are traveling, and people who are commuting and people who are hauling freight — we understand that — and so we are doing everything that we can to open it up as quickly as we can.”  He says there are some things that they just can’t do until the water goes away. “This method seemed like it was going to work, but unfortunately we had water going over other spots that aren’t treated for that type of activities,” Suhr says.

Suhr says they still hope to get most of the roadways back to carrying traffic by Memorial Day.