The Columbus Junction city council voted 5-0 in favor of a Geographic Information System (GIS) contract with South East Iowa Regional Planning Commission (SEIRPC) at Tuesday night’s regular meeting. The purpose of the GIS project is to assist the city in mapping the water and sewer infrastructure.

Councilmember Harold Prior details GIS, “It would allow us to go in electronically and be able to determine the location of our water lines, main valves, and hydrants. For our sewers it would be the same thing, where our manhole covers are, water tanks, et cetera.”

This project was identified as a priority in the Columbus Community Comprehensive Plan, whose goal is to provide and maintain adequate infrastructure including water, sewer, electricity, gas, transportation, and telecommunications. SEIRPC will map the city using previously given paper maps and GPS, as Prior explains “We are going to go out with a GPS system, we’re going to measure the location of all the particular items we need to be able to know, and they’ll put this data into the county system. We’ll be able to look at the data electronically and it will have a photo base, and on that photo base it will have a layer that will show you a location of all the particular items on that database.”

The GIS update is expected to begin in late May and take six to twelve months to complete.