State Storm Damage Assessment In Carlton County

County Reps Crunch Numbers On Flooding

During the week of July 10th, Carlton County was struck with heavy rain. Drainage systems around the county overflowed, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage to public infrastructure.

On August 16th, County representatives broke down numbers with the state trying to determine just how much funding is needed to help the 10 Minnesota counties affected by the July storm recover.

Public Assistance Engineer, Wayne Lamoreaux explains, “The discussion that’s taking place is if the damages are signified to be greater than 7.4 million dollars for this particular storm event, that would become a federal disaster and we could request federal assistance.”

Carlton County was also hit by heavy winds on July 21st, but the flood damage and wind damage are being treated as separate appeals to the state.

Lamoreaux comments, “The flooding event occurred July 9th through the 11th, the wind even occurred July 21st. The timeline between there does not allow us to tie those two events together.”

Now the state must determine if the total flood damage across all 10 counties meets the requirements for federal aid.

Carlton County Emergency Management Director Peter Neumann says, “They’re trying to assess the levels of damage that are out there. So that way they can determine if maybe it will go federal, we don’t know how big it is right now for sure.”

Public Assistance Engineer, Wayne Lamoreaux adds, “Here in Carlton County we’ve seen a number of townships that have been affected by the flooding event of July 9th through the 11th, washing out gravel roads, culverts, having them go back and replace that gravel, replace the culverts as necessary .”

If storm relief is handled at the state level, the state will provide 75% of the funds with the other 25% coming from areas of the county applying for aid.

Current state regulations make co–ops, like Lake Country Power, ineligible for that relief funding.

Lamoreaux explains, “They do receive funding in the event of a federal disaster, they receive 75% of federal funds, but they do not receive the 25% match of the state funds in a federal disaster either.”

Recent assessments predict the damage is not extensive enough to qualify for federal grant money. That would mean all relief funding will be handled at the state level.

Carlton County is waiting for an official response from Governor Dayton, over the next few weeks, about how much financial help will be coming.