Dennis Anderson: Money will help fix damaged park

Whitewater State Park, which is the second-most-popular destination for campers among Minnesota state parks, has been closed since floods swept through the southeast last month. In this week's special legislative session, the DNR was allotted millions of dollars to help pay for repairs. In the interview below, Courtland Nelson, director of the DNR Division of Parks and Recreation, discusses the legislative allocation and forecasts when camping will again be allowed in the park.

Q: How much money did the Legislature give the DNR for flood damage, and how will it be spent?

A: The DNR will get $6.7 million. Flood-hazard mitigation grants will total $2 million. Another $4.2 million is for rebuilding state facilities and restoring natural resources. Most of this will be for Whitewater State Park, where we had a lot of damage. Between $2.5 and $3 million will go to the park. Trails in the area that were destroyed also will be repaired, and there's $500,000 included in the package for removal of debris and so forth. I should add the federal government will help pay for much of the flood damage.

Q: It's amazing no campers were killed at the park the night of the flood.

A: Obviously, we're disappointed about what happened to the park. But we're happy we were able to evacuate 395 campers in the dead of night. There is an emergency mechanism (an alarm) that did go off, signaling the coming flood. But just prior to that, two of our night watchmen were monitoring flood data on their computer. They knew from their experience we needed to get people out. About 12 trailers and assorted camping gear had to be left behind. But no lives were lost. That was the important thing.

Q: What, if any, damage did the park's visitor center sustain?

A: We were lucky, in that the visitor center and our maintenance center weren't damaged. We did have some damage to campsites that are near the river. The park's group campsite received most of the damage, and we've had a crew in there this week working on cleanup.

Still, the park will be closed for a while. We want to open as soon as we can. Though we have trails and bridges washed out, my thinking is that we have fall colors and fall fishing coming up, and it's easier to let people in for the day than to try to keep them out. So we probably will open soon for day visitors. And the deer hunt scheduled in the park for November will occur.

Q: When will the park open for campers?

A: Our target month is May, or certainly by Memorial Day. We have a lot to do before then. Sewer and electrical lines are out. Asphalt has to be replaced. We had a couple of buildings damaged to the point where we have to bring in engineers to see whether they're worth fixing, or whether they have to be replaced.

The biggest deal is the bridges. We have lots of streams and rivers down there, and at many key junctures, bridges are either damaged or lost.

Q: What about the Whitewater River itself, and other natural resources?

A: The floodplain was really scoured out. We're concerned about that. Obviously, fishing is popular in the park, and we lost a lot of invertebrates that fish feed on. The chain of plants and invertebrates that fish need to survive needs to be re-established in many areas.

There also is a lot of timber down. We'll remove it where we have to. But most of it we'll leave. It'll create some habitat and help produce natural succession.

We also have two areas of rare or threatened species that are of concern. In some of the steep canyons, we have micro-environments, or talus slopes, that can have unique plant and animal communities. Some of these sloughed into the streambed. Also, park employees found a couple of dead timber rattlesnakes, which is a threatened species in Minnesota.

Finally, there is a possibility of invasive species coming in, or growing in the area, and we might have to spend a lot of time fighting those.

Q: The $6.5 million from the special session to the DNR wasn't a net amount to the agency, in that it included $2.5 million the DNR essentially "gave back," so it could be reallocated as part of the $6.5 million.

A: That's right. The $2.5 million was in 2006 bonding dollars. We had that money set aside for different parks -- Glendalough, Lake Shetek, Great River Bluffs and Camden. We had planned to do various repair and other work at those parks with the $2.5 million. But that will have to be postponed.

Q: Was there flood damage to any other state park in the southeast?

A: Amazingly, no, not much. I can't imagine how Beaver Creek State Park got through the flooding unscathed. The pitch and slope there are very steep. And they had 15 inches of rain. But aside from some debris that needed to be cleaned away, there was no serious damage.

Additionally, the Root River State Trail remains closed due to washouts. It's unclear at this time when it will reopen. And there's damage to area hatcheries that is still being assessed as part of the overall repair process.