MONTEVIDEO — Judy Larson is the last homeowner still standing on Chippewa Street in Montevideo’s Smith Addition, and she can think of no place she’d rather be.
“Hey grandma, there’s a duck in the backyard,” she said her 7-year-old grandson excitedly told her on Tuesday morning.
The floodwaters of the Chippewa River cover most of her backyard and encroach on another side of her home.
Larson has made the Smith Addition her home for more than 40 years. She appreciates its quiet and park-like setting along the Chippewa River, she explained.
Her home is among only a dozen homes remaining in the addition, although there are also a handful of businesses in the area along the Chippewa River. More than a hundred homes were flooded in 1997 when the Minnesota River crested at 23.90 feet on April 6, 1997. It was the highest recorded crest in the community.
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The Minnesota River crested at 19.44 feet on Monday in Montevideo, according to the National Weather Service. That’s 4.46 feet below the record crest, but still high enough to rank among the top 10 since record keeping began.
The Chippewa County Board of Commissioners began its day Tuesday by approving an emergency declaration due to flood damage across the county. Stephanie Weick, emergency management director for the county, sought the declaration to obtain state funding help with flood-related damage repairs. The Lac qui Parle County Board of Commissioners was to consider a similar resolution on Tuesday.
In both counties, damage to township roads was believed to represent the greatest portion of the flood losses. Weick said she is not sure whether damages in the county will rise to the level needed to make it eligible for federal disaster assistance, but she is confident the toll will meet the state threshold.
While this year’s crest in Montevideo is one for the record books, it is not causing the disruption experienced in previous years when river levels were similar. In 2019, volunteer firefighters worked day and night to stack sandbags on the city’s 1969 dike along the Gravel Road.
But there's no need to do so this year.
A multi-year, $17 million flood protection project is complete. The newly built 2,300-foot-long levee along Gravel Road is not yet officially certified, but “has proven to be worth its weight in gold,” City Manager Robert Wolfington told the Chippewa County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday. He said there has been some pumping undertaken on the dry side of the levee, but overall it has more than demonstrated its ability to protect the city.
The city turned off sewer and water services to the Smith Addition when river levels reached major flood levels at 18 feet over the weekend. The city notified residents and placed portable bathrooms in the area.
“As of yet, we’re holding tight. Holding as well as we possibly could,” Wolfington told the commissioners. Water levels were on the decline, he added.
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The loss of sewer and water services had its impact on one of the community’s largest employers, however. Workers at Friendship Homes were told Monday that manufacturing would be suspended for the remainder of the week.
The manufacturing facility in the Smith Addition employs roughly 150, and about 120 of them are not working this week due to the suspension of manufacturing, according to JB Beal, sales representative.
Larson said she and her husband had purchased a small house in the Smith Addition when they moved back to the community more than 40 years ago. The 1997 flood was its demise. “It pretty much filled up with water,” she said.
Rather than leave the neighborhood they loved, they purchased a double-wide manufactured home. They raised the property and added a large concrete slab on which to place this home. Her husband has since died, but his plan was to either move the home or raise it on hydraulic jacks if waters should ever threaten it again.
Since 1997, Larson said she’s watched the waters reach similar levels as this year two or three times. She has experienced no problems.
She has rebuffed suggestions from the city to relocate. Who would pay the costs for a new lot and utilities, she asks.
Besides, there’s no place like home. She said her daughter once told her: “There couldn’t be a better place in Montevideo to grow up than the Smith Addition. It’s like its own little town.”
It is still that kind of place for her, she said.
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