CORRECTION: The article has been updated to reflect that floodwaters only reached the parking lot of Neisen's Riverside Bar and Grill. The bar itself has not been damaged by the flood.
Tuesday was supposed to be a regular day of practice for the St. Peter Saints high school football program, but Mother Nature had other ideas in mind. After a week of torrential downpours caused the Minnesota River to flood into residents homes and yards on S. Front Street, the high school footballers put their muscles to work filling bags of sand to protect local homeowners from further flooding.
“It feels good helping out the community,” said soon-to-be high school senior Caleb Kruger, who spent Tuesday afternoon shoveling piles of sand into bags with his fellow teammates. “It really brings something out. I think it’s good to represent St. Peter football.”
By 3 p.m. on Tuesday, the team had already filled and tied up over 100 bags of sand, ready to be deployed should water levels on the Minnesota River continue to rise.
[The water] is just slowly rising and whatever we can do to help curb it … I’ve lived here for 24 years and I’ve never seen it like this,” said Assistant Football Coach Doug Boyer. “These guys are pretty civic-minded, so I decided it would be a good use of their time.”
As the Minnesota River rose over 3.5 feet on Monday alone, according to the city of St. Peter, community members came together over the past two days to help their neighbors and local institutions protect themselves from the encroaching flood.
On Monday afternoon, a group of 30 volunteers came together to construct a sandbag wall of defense around the Treaty Site History Center as high waters seeped into the site parking lot. Volunteers wheelbarrowed in piles of sand and packed a barricade of bags around the Treaty Site to help protect valuable artifacts from Nicollet County’s history from being destroyed.
“The problem is we’re a museum, and so many things are at risk if there is water damage inside,” said Nicollet County Historical Society President Kate Martens. “So people came out understanding the value of the history we have in that building and helped us protect it.”
Being close to the Minnesota River, this isn’t the first time the Treaty Site History Center has had to prepare for a potential flood, but Executive Director Jessica Becker said the high waters were the worst she’s seen since the spring-fall floods of 2010 and 2011. But where those past incidents were predictable, Becker said the severity of this flood had caught the History Center by surprise.
“This has just been so much more unpredictable and chaotic because of the weather we’ve had,” said Becker. “With all of the rain and it being such different amounts of rain. You’re getting four inches over her and an inch and a half over there that we had so many different variables along with aerial flooding that we were dealing with.”
As of Tuesday evening the Treaty Site History Center has remained dry, though the museum will continue to stay closed until the waters recede. But other organizations in town haven’t been as fortunate.
Neisen’s Riverside Sports Bar just outside St. Peter might be more accurately titled Neisen’s Island Sports Bar now that the Minnesota River has surrounded the drinking establsihment. The waters of the Minnesota River — which have taken on a dark shade of brown from the eroded dirt and debris — could be seen circling Neisen’s Bar from an aerial photograph. Neisen’s wrote on social media that they would “be selling that Mad Butcher again soon enough.”
It wasn’t just businesses near the river that were impacted by the flood. St. Peter ceramic artist collective Blue Valley Clay found their workspace in the basement of the old Nicollet Hotel swamped with several feet of groundwater. The flooding couldn’t have come at a worse time for the studio, which had just prepared an extensive inventory of pottery for Twin Cities Pride this weekend.
Fortunately, Blue Valley Clay member artist Juana Arias reported that the artists had managed to retrieve all of the Twin Cities Pride pieces from the workshop, alongside the studio’s more expensive equipment like its pottery wheels and kiln. At this point, Arias said the artists are focused on drying off and repackaging their works in time for Pride.
“The timing is terrible in that respect, but we’re definitely going to do pride,” said Arias.
Not everything could be saved, however. On Tuesday, the groundwater continued to rise and member artists eventually had to evacuate the space, leaving behind the studio’s inventory of clay and furniture.
Arias said Blue Valley Clay had six sump pumps working on Monday to get the water out and three larger industrial pumps on Tuesday. But the equipment wasn’t able to keep up with the rising waters as two of the three pumps failed on Tuesday.
“My understanding today is they’re still trying to pump water out and I don’t know if they’re having any success keeping it down because the flood waters are so high,” said Arias.
It will likely be at least a couple of days before the artists are able to return to the space and assess the damages. Without a studio to work with, Blue Valley Clay has also had to pause clay firings until they can return.
“We have this big sale upcoming, but we’re going to have to regroup and decide what’s next for us,” said Arias. “I think we’ll focus on being ready for Pride and then next week have some idea of what we need to do next.”
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