The primary runway at St. Paul Downtown Airport closed temporarily Tuesday as crews extended a floodwall along the airfield's south end ahead of the Mississippi River reaching major flood stage.
According to the Metropolitan Airports Commission, the river was expected reach major flood stage on Wednesday, rising above 18 feet by the end of the week.
"The flood protection system at St. Paul allows the airport to remain open during high water situations," said Joe Harris, director of reliever airports for the MAC. "The wall was online in 2008. Previously the airport flooded a number of times and we had to close the airport as well as a number of days after the waters would recede due to clean-up."
The airport's deployed the floodwall seven times since 2008. STP's primary runway stretches 6,491 feet and the floodwall shortens it by approximately 1,150 feet.
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The final stage of the wall's construction on Tuesday meant crews had to shutdown the primary runway for around 10 to 12 hours primarily due to electrical work and painting new surface markings on the runway.
"We're actually anticipating flooding to be a little less than what it was the last time we deployed the floodwall in 2019," Harris said. "The projected river crest near the airport is 18.5 feet and in 2019 it got to 20.5 feet. We're seeing very normal behaviors in river pattern behavior now."
Harris said they started to take water onto the airport in a shallow section of the airport on Monday, which modeling had forecasted.
"Most importantly there's a high degree of confidence that the wall is able to perform as advertised and keep the airport dry during high water situations. We'll continue to monitor when the river starts to recede because a lot of times it's a very dynamic situations with all the snow that remains up north and the rain in the forecast. We don't want to deconstruct early only to have to put it back up."