ABOVE: Multiple water pumps work to extract water from the flooded sewer system in the aftermath of Dunnell’s massive storm on Monday. Submitted photo.

DUNNELL – A storm over Dunnell on Sunday and Monday caused significant flooding, with the city and county now looking for ways to manage and fix the damage.

Dunnell Public Works Director Andrew Dorschner said the flooding occurred due to an isolated storm that dropped eight inches of rain over the area.

“I was called about midnight for our lift station,” he said. “I got here and started checking everything at the pumps. Already got the trash pump down there right away. Once it started going, the rain started going over the curbs and kept filling up the storm sewer, which is like the county storm drain. Once it filled that up, we were out of luck.”

While the pumps were fired up around 1 a.m., Dorschner said it started pouring at around 3 a.m. and everything broke loose.

“We could not keep up anymore,” he said. “We got pumps from Windom, Jackson and Sherburn. Once the storm drain filled up, we had to get a hold of the Minnesota duty officer and let everybody know we’re going to have to dump our lift station to the storm drain, which is going into the local creeks. When you’re getting storm water coming back into lift station, there’s nowhere you can pump it. I was waist-deep in water.”

The electrical panel at the lift station was damaged, which Dorschner said compounded the problem.

“The pumps were fried,” he said. “They wouldn’t work anymore for a little while. I got a company that came in right away in the morning, once we had stuff cleaned out. Once we could get the water back away from the electrical panel, we were able to get them in here and work on the electrical panel.”

Unfortunately, that was not the full extent of the damage.

“Several citizens in town had sewage and running water all backing up,” Dorschner said. “At that point, you’re three, four feet above station, you’re gonna have head pressure pushing back on the sewer system. A majority of our roads are gravel. Most of our roads were damaged. We got to them right away the next morning, when we could. They were rutted out pretty bad.”

Thankfully, Dorschner said they were able to repair the roads so people could get around. Looking forward, he said they are looking at ways to ensure better preparation and protection.

“This is our second year of dealing with this,” he said. “We are talking, trying to figure out what would be our best options to try to prevent these things from happening, or at least mitigate the issues at hand. Raising the lift station, raising the control panel, so that it’s higher than the road quite a bit.”

By raising the station, Dorschner said they would raise the system around the lift station, so it is less likely for water to breach the station.

“There are concrete rings or a tube that go around where the pumps are,” he said. “The pumps would stay at the same level down in the ground. We raise the cylinder around it up higher. If you raise that up higher, you end up preventing the water outside from breaching.”

While this is the second year an issue has occurred with flooding, Dorschner said this year’s was much worse.

Martin County Emergency Management Director Ben Johnson said they are working with Dunnell and the surrounding area on damage estimates.

“When the city of Dunnell declared a state of emergency for their damages, the county declared a state of emergency as well,” he said. “That way, if the city of Dunnell damages meet financial thresholds, the county declaring allows them to potentially get reimbursed for costs for those damages. My role then is to get that declaration signed by our county commissioners and then a resolution by the entire board.”

In a filing with the Martin County Board of Commissioners, Johnson stated that, during a meeting with Dorschner and Dunnell Mayor Marlin Bliesmer, they expect damages to exceed the state reimbursement threshold of $47,259. They will continue to monitor the situation to determine if it surpasses the federal threshold of $94,518.

“Reimbursement is going to be for a variety of work that’s done,” Johnson said. “It’s going to cover emergency work, any work done in the first roughly 72 hours after the damage happened. That’s going to include things like debris clearance, any kind of protective measures, like emergency pumping, and road closures. Then there are other categories, like if buildings and stuff are damaged, as far as infrastructural-type buildings of government property.”

In terms of an individual program through FEMA for personal reimbursement for damages, Johnson said that is unlikely to happen this time around.

“That one, from what I’m told, is decided on a case-by-case basis,” he said. “In my experience, we qualified last year because there was so much damage county-wide from the floods last year, whereas this is more of a localized one. I’ve been told it probably isn’t going to qualify this time around, but obviously I’m going to do some checking into it to make sure.”

Finalized estimates for total damage, and whether the damage in Dunnell passes state and federal thresholds, should be in within 30 days.