Story originally printed in the Winona Daily News or online at www.winonadailynews.com
Published - Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Flood fund ruling will be turning point for Garvin Brook group
Thursday will be a start or a start-over point for a local group trying to build flood-control structures along Garvin Brook.
The National Resources Conservation Service will debut Thursday a study commissioned after the August 2007 flood by the Garvin Brook Watershed Alliance, which wants to narrow its options for preventing future disasters.
The study should determine whether one or all of the group’s prevention proposals — which include dams or levees in an area from Lewiston, Minn., to Stockton, Minn. — could be eligible for a specific federal funding source.
But already, some members of the alliance worry the study may not do enough to protect flood-prone areas downstream of Garvin Brook, which converges with Rollingstone Creek just outside Goodview, Minn., and Minnesota City, both of which were inundated with flood waters last August.
“The cost-benefit ratio should be spread over the whole watershed,” Roberts said. “We should be looking at the benefit of everything downstream from Stockton.”
The Gunderson Addition, recently annexed into Goodview, is the farthest downstream area included in the analysis, NRCS hydrologist John Beckwith has said.
The study is expected to analyze financial feasibility of at least three options for building flood-control structures on Garvin Brook. Projects deemed worth the group’s expense through the study’s cost-benefit analysis may be able to access funds from the group’s small watersheds program.
The NRCS gave a favorable analysis to a 1957 proposal to build five dams in upstream portions of Garvin Brook, though the project was never completed because the agency couldn’t acquire the necessary land.
This time, the NRCS program isn’t the only prospective funding source, said alliance chairman Tim Terrill, who also directs the Winona County Soil and Water Conservation District. The alliance also may request a congressional appropriation.
The study will be presented at 7 p.m. Thursday at Stockton City Hall.
Contact Mark Sommerhauser at (507) 453-3514 or msommerhauser@winonadailynews.com.
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