The Minnesota River will be above flood stage this spring. That much we know. What we don’t know is how high the river and its tributaries will get and when this will all happen.
Two very large variables are at play: How much additional precipitation we get during March and early April and how fast spring warm up and resulting thaw will be.
That was the message the Weather Service had last Thursday during a conference call to local officials. According to their information, the Minnesota River basin contains anywhere from four-to six-inchs of moisture on top of the ground, waiting to run off toward the river once the spring melt begins.
Complicating that is the fact the soil conditions nearly everywhere in the basin are still very moist from all the rain we received last October. The high river flow conditions, especially for this time of the year, are evidence of that. There is a lot of moisture that has to go downstream and it will do that by ramming its way down our local rivers.
By the time you read this we will have had, on Wednesday afternoon, a planning meeting, with the Weather Service, the Corps of Engineers and the National Guard as well as folks from the city and county staffs.
We’ll share information on forecasts, emergency assistance programs, equipment and supplies needed to hold back what may be some fairly high water.
Following that we will schedule a meeting with affected residents and business owners and anyone else who is interested. More information about that meeting will be in next week’s newspaper. We will contact affected property owners, as well.
Most of us have been through a lot of this before and we are well prepared for high water events. The many flood mitigation projects that we have undertaken in the past several years will help us avoid a lot of work that we had to do in the past. While we still have a lot of additional mitigation work ahead of us, we should see a very big improvement in the amount of work needed to protect people and property if we get high water this spring.
We’ll do whatever we can to keep everyone informed about what is happening, what is needed and what is available.
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Last Tuesday, my morning trip to the bakery got delayed a few minutes. When I did get there, Holly Larson, who works behind the counter, informed me that I had just missed Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak. He stopped in for a doughnut while traveling to Marshall for U. S. Rep. Collin Peterson’s Local Food Conference at SMSU.
Now, I’m not sure that I ever mentioned anything about Carl’s Bakery to him in the past but somehow Rybak got some word of Tom and Laurie Aus’ wonderful place on Prentice St. It must have made him curious enough to explore the town in search of the place. He told me at a meeting a few weeks ago that he was impressed with the scenic river valley when he drove through here early last fall. He said that the Meander brochures at Cenex caught his wife’s eye and made them wonder about what all was happening in our part of the state. That’s probably a good thing if you are running for governor.
I was disappointed when I looked through our current governor’s proposed budget last week. It seems to be pretty easy to take money away from communities all around the state. The glaring hole in that plan is the fact that certain suburbs don’t give up anything. Granted, they don’t receive Local Government Aid but to not require Edina or Bloomington to help shoulder the state’s financial burden seems awfully unfair. Maybe the plan should look for money where the impact would be felt by everyone, even those who live in the highest valued communities.
Granite Falls would lose $176,762 in LGA under the governor’s proposed budget and Clarkfield will lose $52,616. I noticed that Eagan, where the governor lives, and where he was once a member of the city council, is losing $53,523. Eagan’s population is 65,847. Meanwhile the City of Minneapolis, which has nearly 400,000 residents, will lose more than $28.9 million in LGA. That doesn’t seem fair either.
It would have been interesting to visit with the Minneapolis mayor about that. Maybe he’ll stop at Carl’s Bakery again.
