In a wetter world, Minnesota is spending millions to flood-proof its communities

Veronica Robinette watched with astonishment as a foot of water emerged seemingly out of nowhere and transformed her street into a raging river.

“The cars were floating in the parking lot,” Robinette recalled of the flash flood in her east St. Paul neighborhood in August 2022. “I’m just standing there, and then a river came. It wasn’t just a little at a time.”

Floodwaters pooled halfway up the car doors, inundated the maintenance garage at the community center and washed out a good portion of the adjacent playground, said John Urbanski, the maintenance manager for Roosevelt Homes, the townhouse development where Robinette lives.

This week, Roosevelt’s owner, the St. Paul Public Housing Agency, finished construction intended to prevent that flooding from happening again. New retention ponds will help drain stormwater more quickly and channel the flows away from properties, and larger drain pipes will help to prevent the drain system from being overwhelmed like in 2022.

The project is one of dozens all across the state that aim to make communities more resilient to extreme rainfall. From Albert Lea to Duluth, cities, counties and other municipalities are installing new flood basins, replacing outdated sewer lines and taking other steps to reduce flood risks.

While flooding in Minnesota tends to be milder than in places like Texas or New York, both of which experienced major deluges this month, climate change has made flooding an increasingly common problem here. Minnesota, like much of the Midwest, has become hotter and wetter over the decades, and climate scientists say that trend will continue.

In response, Minnesota agencies are providing tens of millions of dollars to communities for flood prevention. The Minnesota Legislature appropriated $9 million this year and more than $61 million in 2023 — a surplus budget year. Last year, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency awarded more than $34 million to cities, counties and watershed districts for flood mitigation projects. Several of those projects will start construction this summer.

The projects come as the Trump administration makes sweeping cuts to federal agencies, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which provides disaster aid to states. Earlier this year, FEMA terminated one of its grant programs that helps states build more flood-resistant roads and bridges, as well as update their emergency response planning.

Since 2021, Minnesota projects have received $2.5 million from that federal program, said Allison Farole, director of the Minnesota Department of Public Safety’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management.

“Without it, our ability to protect lives and property is at risk,” Farole said in an email.

The St. Paul Public Housing Agency, in partnership with the Ramsey-Washington Metro Watershed District, received more than $340,000 from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency for the project at Roosevelt Homes. Brent Feller, construction program manager for the housing agency, said the property now seems to receive heavy rainfall “a couple times a year.”

The city of Minneapolis will use $5 million from the MPCA to replace one of its storm sewer lines in the Cleveland neighborhood. Summer storms in 2023 and 2024 overwhelmed that sewer line, inundating streets and damaging homes, said Matt Allie, an engineer for the Minneapolis Department of Public Works.

That work, which will also include installing flood reduction infrastructure such as rain gardens, is expected to begin next spring.

Duluth will get more than $7 million from the MPCA, which it will use to construct a new flood basin, install new storm drains and expand the diameter of a key storm sewer that runs under the city’s downtown. Ryan Granlund, Duluth’s utility programs coordinator, said the city hopes to begin that work later this year or early next year.

Duluth experienced record rainfall in 2012. Summer floods that year washed out several roads and drowned more than a dozen animals at the Lake Superior Zoo. The new mitigation work is expected to reduce the flood risk for hundreds of homes and several major businesses along the city’s business corridor, Granlund said.

“It’s just a lot of work to replace infrastructure that’s not sized for today’s storms or future storms,” he said. “Because, as we know, with climate change, we’re getting warmer and wetter.”

Albert Lea’s stormwater systems have also been overwhelmed by recent storms, including one last June that brought more than 10 inches of rain over two days. That storm caused a city sewage line to rupture, spilling wastewater onto nearby farmland that took weeks to clean up, said John Ryther, a civil engineer for the city.

The city of Marshall, which was inundated with 5 to 8 inches of rain last Friday, will use its $860,000 grant to build a new flood pond and install a larger 42-inch stormwater sewer line. Construction could begin as soon as this year, said city Public Works Director Jason Anderson. “These projects are expensive for smaller cities and the funding helps to ensure that we are able to get these projects constructed,” he said.

Back at Roosevelt Homes on Monday afternoon, construction crews filed onto the site to make final adjustments. The ground was still wet from a fast-moving storm that drenched the area all morning. Urbanski said the new infrastructure held up fine — no flooding to report.

All that’s left to do, Urbanski said, is to build the new playground, which should only take about a week to complete.