Story originally printed in the Winona Daily News or online at www.winonadailynews.com
Published - Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Watershed group seeks debris removal
STOCKTON, Minn. — After the floods destroyed three streams on their property, Barb and Martin Nelson didn’t wait for the government to rebuild them.
The August floods triggered mudslides on their
28-acre property near Lewiston, washing out three tributaries to Peterson Creek. The land — once used for gardening and grazing ponies — now was either washed away or in total disarray, Barb Nelson said.
“Water was running through my barn. We had to do something,” Nelson said.
So the couple forked over more than $13,000 to rebuild the creeks in the weeks after the flood. Martin Nelson did much of the heavy equipment work himself.
State officials pledged reimbursement for those expenditures, plus disposal of the mountain of woody debris they collected during the cleanup.
Neither has happened yet.
“I’m really hoping we see something back” in reimbursement for the cleanup, Barb Nelson said.
The couple’s impatience reflected the sentiments of others in the Stockton-Rollingstone-Minnesota City Watershed District at a meeting Tuesday night at Stockton City Hall.
The group — which has existed for decades — began to attract renewed interest in October after the floods, particularly from residents in the Garvin Brook Watershed. That watershed covers 48 square miles from Lewiston to the Mississippi River.
Healthy attendance has marked each meeting since, members told the Daily News on Tuesday night. Some of those in attendance were selected for a steering committee to guide post-flood recovery for the group, which can levy tax or leverage state and federal funding.
In the short term, the group is pushing for debris removal and stream-bank reconstruction on properties within the watershed.
For the Nelsons and others such as Willie Wehlage, that’s a time-sensitive concern.
Wehlage worries that a quick spring thaw could trigger more floods. And this time, old stream banks won’t necessarily be in place to contain the waters, he said.
Winona County recently received $130,000 in state funds to conduct such projects, said County Water Planner Pat Bailey.
Bailey said she expects the county to establish priorities for disbursing the funds “as soon as possible.” More funds from other state and federal sources also may be on the way, Bailey said.
The group’s long-term goal is to examine building dams or spillways on tributaries to Garvin Brook upstream from Stockton.
The National Resources Conservation Service should complete a cost-benefit study of the project by May, a spokesperson said Tuesday.
That study must find a positive cost-benefit ratio for the group to seek federal funds for the project.
Representatives for Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Rep. Tim Walz attended Tuesday night’s meeting.
All stories copyright 2000 - 2006 Winona Daily News and other attributed sources.