In response to Mississippi River flooding, the St. Paul City Council voted Wednesday to affirm Mayor Melvin Carter’s declaration of a state of local emergency.

It’s a largely procedural legal maneuver that allows the city to apply for county, state and federal disaster relief as it becomes available. The mayor’s declaration, which is retroactive to Monday, is effective for 30 days.

Rick Schute, the city’s director of Emergency Management, informed the council that the most recent estimates from the National Weather Service call for the Mississippi River in downtown St. Paul to crest at 20.8 feet on Saturday evening, which would be well within the range of the Top 10 historic crests.

The river surpassed the major flood stage of 17 feet late Tuesday afternoon and 18 feet on Wednesday afternoon, leaving water engulfing the area around the Cap Wigington Pavilion at Harriet Island Regional Park and creeping toward the park’s largest playground.

Excessive rainfall

Excessive rainfall from multiple storms have turned a particularly rainy spring and early summer into cause for alarm in many river communities throughout Minnesota and Iowa — including the partial failure of the Rapidan Dam outside Mankato — but the visible impact to date in St. Paul has been mostly scenic or traffic-related.

The city closed Barge Channel Road on Wednesday morning, the latest in a series of street closures and partial street closures that began with the closing of three miles of Shepard/Warner Road on Sunday evening.

Still, after the crest, the city can expect receding waters to reveal “public and private property damage as a result of rising water levels, saturated soil and increased runoff,” reads the emergency declaration, and more rain is forecast next week.

The Metropolitan Council and Metropolitan Airports Commission have also had to roll out their routine flood-related precautions at their riverfront facilities, including Holman Field, the MAC’s downtown St. Paul airport.

More information, including a live river flood cam, is available online at StPaul.gov/flood.

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