Flooding runs through it

As soon as this week, spring snowmelt will escape rivers and begin creeping into Minnesotans' lives. By the end, two-thirds of the state's residents will feel its impact.

For many, it will mean a slowed commute, a flooded park or postponed pea-planting in the community garden. But for those who live close to Minnesota's major rivers, spring is when the river they love turns against them. It's when the city's centerpiece demands a flurry of sandbag-filling, dike-building and road closing, often cutting off neighbor from neighbor.

The Star Tribune visited towns along the rising waters of the Mississippi, Minnesota and Red rivers, where officials and residents have been planning and worrying as they await a possibly historic flood. This one will have unique effects on each community but be a shared experience from border to border.

A trip through "Flood Country" finds people still devoted to their river views but ever more wary of this time of year.

StillwaterUntil 2010, it had been nearly a decade since visitors and residents saw any sandbags along Stillwater's popular St. Croix River frontage. Last year the city needed 40,000. This year it's called on volunteers to fill 100,000. "I think this is going to be part of our regular routine," said public works director Shawn Sanders. "This is a tight-knit community. People love the downtown and don't want to see it damaged by any flooding."

St. PaulEntire riverside neighborhoods have been cleared away, and millions have been spent on floodwalls and road-raising since the devastating record flood of 1965. But emergency operations manager Rick Larkin said the city will still plan for water 2 feet higher than the best predictions. The city is notifying nearly 2,000 residents in Lowertown and at the Upper Landing -- a raised development where a neighborhood was destroyed in 1965 -- that they might need to consider evacuating. But Larkin expressed some confidence that the city can avoid a disaster. "I hope that never translates to the public as we are casual about this. We're not," Larkin said. "And if we're wrong, it's a good day for everyone else."

DelanoHigh school students filled sandbags last week, and city administrator Phil Kern said workers would be building clay dikes to improve the protection offered by a 42-year-old "temporary" levee along the South Fork of the Crow River. "I think everybody in the community is proud of the work our forefathers did in building the temporary levee system," Kern said. "But I don't think anybody is sure what it can hold.

Shakopee/ Belle Plaine/JordanMinnesota River crossings in Jordan, Belle Plaine and Shakopee will probably all close in coming weeks, sending thousands of commuters scurrying to crowded detours. Bridge closings also mean lost business and slower response times for emergency responders, noted Chris Weldon, director of emergency management for Scott County. "We've done a pretty good job of mitigating the damage," Weldon said. "But I worry maybe people will try to drive across water that they shouldn't, or that we'll have ice jams that cause significant [water] backups. Or that people will go out on those ice jams and think it's fun to climb around on them. And what else is going to happen that you don't plan for. Those are the things I worry about."

MankatoA levee built after the 1965 floods, which inundated the city, protected the city with 5 feet to spare in 1993, the highest flood on record.

"I don't know if we're really afraid of anything," public works director Mark Knoff said. But 90-year-old Deloris Guenther, who has lived in low-lying west Mankato for 37 years and never been flooded, bought flood insurance in December for the first time. "There's so much snow, I just don't trust it," she said while out for a walk several blocks from the levee one recent morning.

New UlmA 3,000-foot permanent dike would cost $2 million but protect 24 homes the city would have to pay $4.8 million to remove, city manager Brian Gramentz said. While the dike is in the plans, this year a temporary clay berm will have to do.

"I think we're seeing a resurgence in people seeing the river as an asset," Gramentz said. "Unfortunately, rivers are one of those assets that will let you know they're present, in the floods we see."

The city is in the midst of major flood improvements, including making the temporary dike permanent, raising Hwy. 212 and removing several dozen vulnerable homes. But with another flood fresh upon them, citizens will be raising the temporary dike with sandbags this year.

"Nothing's ever perfect," Debra Lee Fader said. "We'll have to drag everything out of the basement and put it upstairs. It's just something we do every year. We know our spring cleaning is going to happen definitely after the flooding season. "

Fargo/MoorheadMoorhead has spent $37 million since 1997 protecting public operations and buying out flood-prone homes. This year the city needed only about half the sandbags it did during the record 2009 flood.

"The river is a natural amenity. It defines the community," city manager Michael Redlinger said. "But it's also been this shadow hanging over residents the last three years in particular."

Flooding "forces you to take inventory of that relationship to the river," he said. "It really has a lot of nuance. But I think people acknowledge that what we've been doing is the right thing."

While noting the Red River's central role in the region's history, Mayor Dennis Walaker is also combative when talking about it.

"We've never lost a flood fight in the history of Fargo. OK? Never," he said. "And we don't want this to be the first year, either.

"People don't understand fully how many things can go wrong. But one of the unique things about a flood is that it provides everybody with a focus. If you can get people focused and they trust you, you can do tremendous things."

"There's a huge group of people that want to live along the river. They really do," Walaker added. "Myself, having fought these floods since forever, I don't want to be living next to the river. I'd like to live next to a lake."

GeorgetownGeorgetown is a city of 125 people 13 miles north of Moorhead on the Red. It's surrounded by a small dike that in flood times makes it a walled city surrounded by a shallow moat. Like other cities, Georgetown is trying to buy out residents whose homes are on the wrong side of the dike. There are other homes for sale in town, too, "But who's going to buy them?" said Don Culp, a City Council member who also drives a plow and grader for Clay County.

Grand Forks/ East Grand ForksAfter the catastrophic flood of 1997, the border cities are now protected by more than $400 million worth of levees and walls. Nearly 1,000 homes have been cleared away. The new flood protection is good to a level nearly 5 feet higher than the record flood of 1997. "Instead of it being a flood fight for the citizens, it's more of a spectacle now," East Grand Forks emergency operations manager Randy Gust said. "The day of the sandbag has pretty much gone by the wayside."