Clayton Stoering is no stranger to coming home to a flooded crawlspace. Living in the city of Waterville for 34 years, occasional water damage has become an unfortunate hazard of residing in a community between the shores of the Sakatah and Tetonka Lakes and the flood-prone Cannon River that joins them.
But this year was different. After being battered with a torrential downpour of 10-14 inches of rain over the month of June, the waters of the Cannon River rose to uncontrollable levels on Friday, June 21, swamping hundreds of Waterville homes in knee-deep waters.
Stoering’s property wasn’t immune to the surging tide of the Canon River. Though he had built 20-inch stilts in his garage to protect his valuables from future flooding incidents, his preparations were no match for the deluge of unprecedented proportions that completely soaked the main floor of his home.
“I built the garage so that I could put things on stilts and keep most things dry,” said Stoering. “My refrigerator, my bench, all this stuff is 20 inches off the ground so that I wouldn’t get wet, but this time it went above that.”
There was little residents could do to prepare for the Cannon River reaching historic highs during the week’s flooding event. Downstream of Waterville in Morristown, the Cannon River was recorded rising nearly two feet in just four days, cresting at a record-breaking 16.91 feet on Monday, June 24. It marks the highest crest of the Cannon River ever recorded by the NOAA since 2016.
“This is the new benchmark,” said Waterville City Administrator Teresa Hill. “ It has surpassed anything I have seen and I have been here since the early part of 1991.”
More than a week from the beginning of the flood, Stoering’s property remains surrounded by waters over two feet deep, accessible only by boat. He still hasn’t assessed the damages himself and is waiting for the waters to recede before inspecting the property.
Though the flood has forced Stoering to evacuate from his home, he considers himself one of the lucky ones. While he has a second home in Minnetonka to wait out the disaster in, many others in Waterville don’t have another place to escape to. According to Le Sueur County Emergency Management, around 20 families have been displaced by the flood.
That’s where community organizations like The Village in Waterville have stepped in. Operating out of a former Good Samaritan nursing home which now acts as a community event center, The Village typically offers space for public and private events and bi-monthly Food Shelf distributions. Following the advent of the flood, The Village has focused their efforts on collecting {span} donated clothes, personal care items, water, dry goods, and more to people who are displaced and/or in need of assistance.
“The Village, they’re Chamber members so we’ve just kind of been doing whatever we can with logistics, so they really started the donations,” said Waterville Chamber President Patty Salmon. “Right now we’re managing a lot of donations from the area and it’s a good problem to have, but we’re focused on getting it to the right people that need it.”
The Village was just one of around half a dozen community organizations connecting Le Sueur County residents with resources at the Waterville Senior Center on Monday. Coordinated by Waterville City Administrator Teresa Hill, the event served as a hub for residents to link with organizations like FEMA, Le Sueur County, and nonprofits offering cleanup kits and disaster relief, like the Red Cross, Salvation Army and the Tzu Chi Foundation of Minnesota. Praying Pelican Missions and Samaritan’s Purse were also offering residents assistance in mucking out their homes and controlling mold.
The need for flood assistance is widespread, said Hill. Even among residents that haven’t had their homes surrounded by water, many have had to confront groundwater seeping into their basements. With many city streets still submerged in the Cannon River, many residents have yet to return to their homes until the waters recede.
“A flood is a disaster that just keeps giving. We had the tornados come through here in 2018, the recovery is much quicker. You’re getting that debris out of there in a matter of a week and things go somewhat back to normal. This doesn’t,” said Hill. “These people are still wading through clean up and working through insurances and dealing with that over and over.”
The city of Waterville has been responding to the flooding in close coordination with Le Sueur County.
Together, the local governments recruited over 1,000 volunteers to fill over 100,000 bags of sand for the protection of local homes. Now, as the local governments transition toward the long road to recovery, Waterville and Le Sueur County set up a debris drop-off site at the Waterville city garage starting Saturday, June 29.
{p dir=”ltr”}Le Sueur impact
Le Sueur County Emergency Management Director Tami Skinner noted the debris drop-off site, which will be run by volunteers off-and-on through July 21, is available to not just Waterville residents, but those impacted by the flooding from across Le Sueur County.
“The city of Le Sueur has had a couple of homes affected that reached out to us. There’s people around the lakes, like German Lake and Cordova, they’ve been getting assistance also, whether it’s for sandbags or volunteers coming to help them sandbag,” said Skinner. “We’re in it for the long haul.”
Like in Waterville, the floodwaters impacting the city of Le Sueur reached historic levels. At the NOAA’s closest Minnesota River forecast point in Henderson, the agency observed the river c{span}rest at 741.79 feet on June 26, surpassing the previous all-time highest crest back in 2010 at 740.08 feet.
Within city limits, flooding damages were largely limited to a few homes, but the impact on traffic to Le Sueur was a different story. For the first time in recent memory, the Highway 93 entrance to Le Sueur was completely submerged in water as the heights of the Minnesota River reached unprecedented levels. The road leading into town has been closed for 10 days starting June 22 and as of Tuesday, July 2 the entrance remains shut down.
Drivers attempting to make their way to Le Sueur from the north and south have also faced detours and slow downs. On June 25, the high waters led to {span}Highway 169 from Le Sueur to Dodd Road in St. Peter to be closed off to traffic while lanes on northbound and southbound Highway 169/93 near Le Sueur were blocked off as MNDOT constructed a temporary levee.
For the city of Le Sueur, the most pressing challenge presented by the flood were the waters from the Minnesota River infiltrating the Mayo Park wastewater lift station. The station, which collects {span}wastewater from the city of Henderson, Cambria and Bimeda from a number of other service lines before it’s transported to the wastewater treatment facility, experienced a failure on Tuesday morning as it was overcome with floodwaters.
The city of Le Sueur declared a state of emergency the night before, allowing staff to contract a firm that day to assist in the construction of a bypass. At 9 a.m. on the morning of June June 25, {span}city crews took a boat out to the lift station and cut the power to minimize the long-term damage to the equipment. Within 10 hours, the bypass was in place and routing the wastewater around Mayo Park and directly to the city’s wastewater treatment facility.
City Administrator Joe Roby said the flooding was unique not just in its scale, but in its duration. Rather than immediately rise and fall, the Minnesota River’s water levels continued to swell over the course of a week.
“Highway 93 has been closed for over a week, coming on two weeks this Saturday. So just the duration itself is really extraordinary,” said Roby.
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