As Mississippi levels rise, so do concerns by river users

Rising river levels causing issues in St. Paul

It was another soggy Saturday in the metro, with teeming rains adding to river levels in the area.

“I have never seen rain and wind like this,” declared Greg Simbeck, who was strolling along Upper Landing Park in St. Paul on Saturday.   

Not far away, Watergate Marina was living up to its name, with the Mississippi creeping up boat landings, even as a few hardy souls were out fishing.

“We’ve had a drought the last few years, so I accept the rain, you know?” smiled Travis Plummer, from St. Paul.

Plummer, no fair-weather fisherman himself, said the river levels are the highest he’s seen in a long time.

“It’s pretty extreme,” he said. “Usually, it’s to the bottom of the culvert right there, went up about eight to nine feet.”

It wasn’t hard to find cars splashing through standing water on area roads. High levels shut down Water Street from the St. Paul Yacht Club to the marina. Fourth Street, near CHS Field, is also closed, from Willis Street to Commercial Street.

“To see it this high, just because of rainfall is crazy,” Simbeck said. “I can’t even remember just from the rain being like this.”

At Upper Landing Park, riverside walkways and access points simply disappeared.

“It’s incredible,” says Vanessa Whitney, from North St. Paul. “You can clearly see that the walkway is supposed to go down here, but we’re not able to go.”

All that excess water is causing problems for Sue Rodsjo and her family’s 1966 Chris Craft boat.

“Because it’s an old boat, our boat always takes on water, so it always gets a bit of a leak through the wood boards,” Rodsjo explains.

Rodsjo said that when the river reaches a certain height, the power will be shut off at the dock her family uses. She said that power is needed to keep her bilge pump going and her boat dry, so a temporary move elsewhere on Friday was a necessity.

“We figured it would be better to get to Stillwater than find our boat at the bottom of the Mississippi,” Rodsjo said.

After all the wet weather of the past week, is there such a thing as rain fatigue?

Plummer thinks so and he likely isn’t alone.  

“It’s somewhat scary, and somewhat intriguing to me,” he noted.  “I like the storms, but I think I’ve had enough, because it seems like it’s rained every day for the last two weeks. I’m ready for it to dry out a little bit.”