The Red Lake River in Crookston crested over 20 feet last week with an ice jam momentarily pushing the gauge of 21 feet. Crookston Emergency Manager Tim Froeber said a separate ice jam upstream of the gauge had the river over 22 feet in some parts of Crookston. “On Thursday afternoon, we ended up with our first crest of the season, which ended up being a little over 21 feet at the gauge,” said Froeber. “But, due to an ice jam upstream of the gauge, we realized we were a little over 22 feet due to the fact we had a little bit of water come up through a storm drain, but the city crew took care of that quickly, so we didn’t have issues there. We did have the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) open and staffed for 20-some hours for that first event.
With a secondary crest forecasted to reach 22-feet due to the recent snowfall, Froeber said the EOC would open again later this week. “Of course, the snow came, so 8-12 inches of snow was the equivalent of about 1.5 inches of water, according to the National Weather Service,” said Froeber. “So, we will be expecting a second crest of right around the 22-foot mark Thursday or Friday. With that, we will have the EOC open again when it reaches the 20-foot mark. As of Sunday afternoon, all the ice has exited the city. Where we did have an ice jam along Riverside Ave that has all cleared out through the city, and the water should flow through nicely.”
Public Works Director Pat Kelly said his crews handled the first crest well despite having to scramble to deal with the snowstorm. “As far as the crest, things went relatively smoothly on our end,” said Kelly. “We had our pumps in place, and just as it was up near the top, we were closing valves as we do as the water rises. We were in good shape there and then the snow and storm on Friday was something we were hoping to avoid. With my crews split on 24-hour shifts we really had to scramble to get a plow crew going while still maintaining our pumps and our system and that. We had different people going on different routes and pulling together running a fair amount of overtime going on that.”
Kelly praised his staff for getting the roads cleared on Friday and for getting back out to open up parking in time for businesses to open on Monday. “I thought the guys did a really good job given the heavy wet snow in getting out there and getting things moving fairly early in the day on Friday,” said Kelly. “That went as well as could be expected, and now we were able to gather a few guys and couldn’t get a full snow removal crew going. But, we were able to run the edges downtown along the curb lines, get the street widened out and get it to where people can park, and hopefully, the next day or two, most of that can melt away, and we can get back to normal on that.”
According to Kelly, crews have been having to rake clear the filters at the lift station fairly frequently, and he asked that residents only flush toilet paper down the drain. “It appears it’s semi-bottoming out right now around 17.7 feet,” said Kelly. “It will probably go down to 17.5 or a little over 17 before they predict it starts going back up to 22 feet again on Thursday, Friday. We’ll see if it makes that or not. I hope not, but if it does, we’ll be ready. The one thing I might ask people is as far as using toilets and stuff like that only flush toilet paper down. All of these alleged disposable wipes and different things that are going down there, we have to rake our lift stations a lot more frequently right now. Of course, that gets to be problematic, so if we can keep ourselves to just flushing toilet paper down, that would certainly be a huge help for us.”
Public Works crews remain on 24-hour shifts, but Kelly said he expects a smooth second crest as the ice has already cleared Crookston. “We are still on 24-hour shifts given the number of valves and things that we have closed,” said Kelly. “Now, with this melting and run-off beside that, we’ll be going around keeping things pumped down and monitoring the river. The good thing if we do have this second crest is there isn’t going to be ice, so we’re not going to have any sudden fluctuations in river levels. But our river does go up and down relatively quickly compared to others. Hopefully, it won’t go up as high and start going down quicker.”
Kelly also addressed the drainage issues along Pirate Drive and said he hopes to have that road reopened within a day or two. “We closed down because the ditches weren’t taking it,” said Kelly. “Before this snow event, it was draining down. But we just closed Pirate Dr. and the frontage road as a precaution. Last fall, we made more an emergency all-purpose entrance and exit for the apartments there that can use our road that goes to our lift station on the west side there. This afternoon I have somebody clearing that road off down there, clearing it off, and then we’ll see what we’re looking at. I hope to open up that frontage road, Pirate Drive, in the next day or so. We’ll just see what the conditions are like up there.”
