Governor Tim Walz takes stock of flood damage in southern Minnesota – InForum

SF. PAUL — As southern Minnesota received a reprieve from significant rain on Tuesday, June 25, Gov. Tim Walz and U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar took to the skies to survey the damage caused by widespread flooding in the region.

What National Weather Service forecasters described as “spectacular” rains triggered severe flooding across the state this month — more than 40 of Minnesota’s 87 counties were affected.

Last week’s flooding in southern Minnesota inundated homes and businesses, turned farm fields into lakes, closed roads, triggered evacuations and pushed an aging dam to breaking point.

To assess the situation, Walz, Klobuchar and state cabinet leaders took a 90-minute ride aboard a Minnesota Army National Guard Black Hawk helicopter from Holman Field in downtown St. Paul, about 70 miles southeast to the Mankato area, who saw what Walz saw. called “unprecedented flooding”.

“The magnitude of it hits you a lot more,” Walz told reporters after returning to St. Paul. “You can listen to the acre count and hear these things, but I think every one of us was talking about the amount of standing water that’s out there.”

Since June 18, rising waters have damaged infrastructure and property, ruined crops and led to evacuations in the town of Waterville and surrounding areas in Le Sueur County.

Walz already visited northern Minnesota to survey the damage last week and over the weekend declared a peacetime emergency, activating the National Guard to help with disaster relief.

On Tuesday, Maj. Gen. Shawn Manke said about 40 soldiers are deployed to Waterville to help sandbagging and pumping water to contain the city’s twin lakes, and the Guard is opening its armory in nearby Faribault as a shelter emergency for those. displaced by floods. Faribault is also dealing with flooding on the Cannon River.

Minnesota is getting a break from the rain this week, but the wet weather is likely to continue, according to Daniel Hawblitzel, National Weather Service meteorologist in charge in the Twin Cities.

At a briefing Monday, Hawblitzel said many areas saw 8 to 9 inches of rain above normal in June alone, and parts of southern Minnesota saw as much as 10 to 12 inches of rain in the past week .

That led to major flooding on parts of the Cannon, Cottonwood, Crow, Des Moines and Minnesota rivers, with some continuing to rise, according to the weather service. In Windom, the Des Moines River on Monday eclipsed the record level set in April 1969, but forecasts for an even higher crest on Wednesday were scaled back. The river is now expected to hold steady before it begins to gradually recede.

Minnesota will likely seek federal disaster aid to help repair damage across wide areas of the state, and Klobuchar said from Tuesday’s aerial survey, the state will qualify.

“I’m not an engineer, but looking at that dam and seeing the severe damage there and the washed-out roads in Minnesota, I think we could very well enjoy $10.5 million — that’s the level at which federal aid would have received for public infrastructure,” she said.

The state also has its own disaster relief fund with about $26 million, and about $50 million will be added to the fund in September.

Damage assessments are already underway in northern Minnesota, said Minnesota Public Safety Commissioner Bob Jacobson, who said his agency is already working with officials with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

In St. Paul, the Mississippi River was at 17 feet Tuesday. It is expected to rise to nearly 21 feet Saturday, about 4 feet above the major flood stage and the highest crest since 2001. However, little public or private damage is expected in the flood-protected city.

In Stillwater, the St. Croix was 685.7 feet above sea level on Tuesday. That river is scheduled to crest Saturday at 688 feet, just below moderate flood stage, according to the National Weather Service.

South of Mankato on the Blue Earth River, the flow rate around the Rapidan Dam has dropped slightly, and an embankment near a riverfront store and restaurant appears to have stopped eroding for now, but officials are still concerned if dam sandstone. on which it is built is washed away, which could endanger the structure.

Downstream at the confluence with the Minnesota River in Mankato, Minnesota was close to its predicted crest at 29.5 feet. City of Mankato crews continue to patrol the levee and flood control system on a 24-hour basis. The levee system is built to handle a river level of 39.5 feet.

When an electrical substation at the dam was washed away early Monday morning, about 600 people in the area lost power. Xcel Energy brought in an army of workers and all power was restored by early Tuesday morning.

Blue Earth County Engineer Ryan Thilges said at a news conference Tuesday morning that the dam event was “a partial failure of the west embankment,” not an actual breach of the 1910 concrete dam, which did not produce power hydroelectric in five years. following flood damage at the time.

County and city officials had to spend a good amount of time Tuesday fighting false claims made on Facebook and other social media that said the dam had collapsed and a wall of water was heading toward Mankato.

Thilges said they have no way of immediately knowing if the highly erodible sandstone bedrock on which the dam is built is scoured, which could still cause the dam itself to fail.

But Thilges said even if the dam did fail, there was no concern about the water causing serious flooding downstream or at Mankato-North Mankato. He noted that all the water reaching the dam always moved downstream anyway, and that not much more volume would be added if the dam broke.

This report includes information from the Free Press of Mankato.