St. Paul city leaders are prepping for any potential spring flooding impacts by declaring a local flood emergency.
According to the March 23 flood report by National Weather Service, there is a high probability of moderate to major flooding this spring due to the swelling Mississippi River. The moderate flood stage is 15 feet while the major flood stage is 17 feet.
"We're really good at dealing with high water on the Mississippi," said public works director Sean Kershaw. "This has happened before and don't believe this will be a record flood or anything like that."
The local flood emergency, according to Kershaw, is more of an administrative move to allocate resources for potential flooding.
"We don't budget for emergencies like this," Kershaw said. "This allows us to put procedures in place. We're having everything from maintaining our sanitary sewer and storm sewer infrastructure and notifying people who might be impacted because their property is into the river. It's really about making sure the public infrastructure is protected and that the city can be reimbursed for the cost of doing that."
As of Tuesday, Kershaw didn't believe flooding would close down streets, but that could change if there's more precipitation, or if incoming warm temperatures causes snow to melt more rapidly.
Needless to say, water has been an issue for St. Paul this year whether it's flooding, or those dreaded potholes.
"These is a connection between the potholes and the flood," Kershaw said. "Water is in most cases an enemy of public infrastructure. Whether that's the roads, or keeping the water where it's not supposed to be like roads or backed-up in the storm/sanitary sewers. A lot of what the public is experiencing on the streets relates to our need to protect public infrastructure from the floods in this case."