If there one thing that was apparent after last Thursday’s public meeting it was that if there is a flood, the City of Granite Falls is all in this together.
Approximately 125 citizens attended the flood meeting held at the Kilowatt Community Center to discuss issues and concerns but mainly just listen.
Mayor Dave Smiglewksi did his best hydrologist imitation after Diane Cooper of the National Weather Service (NWS) informed city officials that she would not be present for the meeting.
Equipped with Cooper’s notes, Smiglewski summarized the situation as such,
“The snow is soaking wet on top of soaking wet ground. That’s a bad thing,” he said. “We’re set up for a pretty big event, but that depends on the weather.”
Since Thursday’s meeting warmer weather and a little rain has removed much of the snow cover from the ground. And by Tuesday afternoon the river from the hydro plant up unto Memorial Park had been cleared of ice.
The water is coming downstream faster and the river has is rising. A plethora of factors such as the amount of ice cover on up stream tributaries help encourage or limit the flow, in response the NWS is updating the river crest forecasts daily.
On Monday evening the NWS forecasted an initial river crest of 889.7 feet on March 22, which is one foot below the 2009 river crest of 890.7 that occurred on March 30. By Tuesday afternoon, however, the forecast was that the river would reach 891 feet by March 23 and would continue to rise by some degree. Cooper stated that individuals should not pay too much attention to the river crest because there was a possibility that the river could crest, drop, then crest again.
In 2001 the river peaked at 895.3 ft. and in 1997, 899.3 feet, so the overall feeling currently is that as long as there is not a big rain event, the city should be well under either of those levels.
Even if the river should reach the historic highs, Mayor Smiglewksi pointed out that, because of flood mitigation projects, “We’re not in [the same] situation any more.”
The City has spent roughly $14 million in mostly state funds removing and protecting homes, business and civic structures, and there aren’t nearly as many facilities in harms way as there once was. (See page 8A for a detailed map of past, present and future flood mitigation projects.)
Once again, the prudent approach seems to be ‘wait and see.’
Like the mayor said, “You want to error on the side of caution, but you don’t want to put out any more sandbags than we need to.”
For the time being, that appears to be none.
Granite Falls, Minn. —
