![]() And I’m lucky, I have friends who lost their house.”Īs the community rebuilds, many are left with questions, specifically about the March 10 decision to not implement a high flood risk rule curve. “Unless they make changes, with any more bad winters, I can’t see us not having more floods. There’s a lot of lost infrastructure docks, particularly, and and just a lot of hardship.” “And obviously, there’s a lot of lost revenue. “Lots of people pulled together, and we got the sandbags out. Throwing sandbags in 2014 was easy, but not in 2022.”Įven with outside help, only so much could be done to defend against Mother Nature. They’re young, and everyone that lives here is retired. “It was really something the way they showed up,” recalled Waller. A group of Latter-Day Saints helped increase the amount of sandbags around the Waller home. Volunteers from all over the region came to help. When that came, I told my wife the night before, ‘can’t beat the wind’.” “We had the walls of sandbags, they were at least five feet tall. The dam operators opened more and more gates to accommodate that, and eventually that went to the all gates open criteria, which meant it was uncontrolled flow.”Īs the lake level rose, community members did everything they could to protect their property. As the flows increased out of Rainy Lake, the flows increased out of the dam. “All it can do is match what naturally flows out of the lake, so their job at that time was to match those flows. The dam actually doesn’t control the level of the lake in high water,” explained Jansen. “The operator’s goal is to match the outflow of Rainy Lake with the outflow of the dam. International Falls recorded 7.61 inches of precipitation, shattering the previous record of 4.53 inches that was set in 1925.Īs the northern quarter of Minnesota received 100-200% above the normal for April precipitation, the flow of Rainy Lake became difficult to control. For the Rainy-Namakan basin, this was the wettest April on record. ![]() March went out like a lamb, making way for a historic April. “So we asked the operators of the dams to target what we call the middle of the rule curve, and that resulted in reducing the lake level about four inches through March.” “We always want to play things on the safe side,” explained Jansen. Although the high flood risk rule curve was not implemented, the lake level was lowered at the time. “We decided not to implement that curve this year because the basin was experiencing normal conditions at the time and we were still in a severe drought following last year’s exceptional drought.”Ī rule curve is an optimal range to aim for when controlling the water level. ![]() “If it were to be fully implemented, it could result in reducing the level of the lake by about 12 inches,” said IRLWWB U.S. Every year by March 10, the Water Levels Committee of the International Joint Commission’s International Rainy-Lake of the Woods Watershed Board decides whether or not to implement a high flood risk curve when controlling the Rainy Lake Dam. Not everyone agreed with the concerns of Watson, Waller, and other Rainy River Basin residents. And obviously it went and it got way worse than I’ve ever seen.” “I didn’t dream that it would be this high or it would be this extreme, but with the amount of snowpack and frozen ground and in the spring rain, I had my fears way back in March. “Just being 75 years old and being around all those years, I sort of had this inclination that we were going to have a problem this spring,” said Watson. ![]() Many houses were surrounded by water as Rainy Lake continued to rise.
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