Crime & Safety

Minnesota River in Burnsville Expected to Crest Near Record Levels

The city and businesses along the banks of the river are keeping watch. Residential areas should not be affected.

Whether the Minnesota River spills into Burnsville this year may come down to a matter of inches.

The National Weather Service (NWS) is predicting a 16 percent chance that the river, fed by record snowfalls and an early spring thaw, will rise to an historic level  surpassing even record floods in 1965, 1997 and 2001.

According to the NWS, the river could rise to 720 feet above sea level along the banks in Burnsville.  NWS forecasters are predicting a crest the week of April 10.

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At Burnsville’s Kraemer Mining and Materials Inc., located on the banks of the Minnesota, the flood-control dikes are designed to protect the limestone quarry to 721 feet.

“I’m always worried when they talk about the potential for significantly high river levels,” Kraemer CEO Dave Edmunds said. “Every year, we go through the same cycle, but this year seems like it might be more significant. That [projected level] would be too close for comfort.”

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Kraemer employees have made sure the company’s pumps—five vertical turbine pumps and four portable pumps that can be moved to where they are needed—are all working properly: “We want to be sure that all the equipment we use to move water around is ready and available for service,” Edmunds said.

Edmunds and others at Kraemer believe that the NWS prediction is a worst-case scenario.

“Our internal staff believes that 715 feet is probably likely,” he said. “We aren’t expecting anything higher than that other than from a contingency standpoint.”

Edmunds, who went to work for Kraemer in 1996, said levels on the company’s riverbank reached 714 feet in both 1996 and 2001.

While Burnsville officials aren’t anticipating flooding in the parts of the city that are a safe distance from the river, they keep an eye on both Kraemer and Xcel Energy’s Black Dog plant, both situated along the banks.

Ryan Peterson, Burnsville’s interim public works director, said the city uses NWS flood projections to determine what kind of precautions to take.

“No one knows,” he said. “But there’s a 98 percent chance this year of what they call ‘major’ flooding on the Minnesota River.”

But he’s careful to make the distinction clear: “I can’t stress that enough: We’re not expecting major flooding throughout all of Burnsville, but we do think there will be major flooding on the Minnesota River. We’re not flooding the whole town.”

The city of Burnsville has not undertaken sandbagging work, and no houses are in jeopardy this spring, according to Peterson. The city is working to maintain the storm-sewer system and making sure pumps work—the sort of tasks Peterson calls “typical maintenance”—but workers have been doing those things earlier than normal and very thoroughly this year.

At Xcel’s Black Dog plant, officials are also keeping a worst-case scenario in mind after commissioning an engineering-site survey to determine the flood threat, flood project coordinator Jeff Helgeson said.

An earthen dike at Xcel protects the property—including Xcel’s coal yard, substations and holding ponds—to 715 feet. The company’s main power-generation building is protected up to 720 feet.

“When [the NWS] starts talking about a 16 percent chance of the worst flood ever, it’s unrealistic that we could prepare ourselves for that,” Helgeson says. “And 720 feet is not necessarily a breaking point, but it’s one where you’re making some really aggressive decisions.

“That’s the elevation of our turbine deck. If it gets that high, invariably, it’s going to get in our building.”

After discussions with city officials, Black Dog workers are in the process of raising the property’s dikes to 718 feet.

“If we were to raise an earthen dike to 722 feet, the base would be very, very wide,” Helgeson says. “It’s not that we couldn’t do it, but it would take a lot of fill material, and there’s a cost involved in that.”

Coincidentally, Black Dog gets a lot of its fill materials from Kraemer, leading to a symbiotic relationship between the two companies most threatened by the river this spring.

Helgeson says Xcel’s main concern is the safety of its employees.

“First and foremost, we’re after the safety of people,” he says. “We wouldn’t want to put people at risk just to generate power.”

Burnsville officials, along with Xcel and Kraemer employees, are monitoring the NWS’s flood projections for Savage—just upriver from Burnsville—because the NWS doesn't specifically make predictions for Burnsville.

The city also has posted a map of the potential flooding area, which indicates how far the water would rise at 712, 716, 718, 720 and 722 feet.


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