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City Administrator Aaron Parrish alerted the Crookston City Council near the end of their meeting Monday night that city officials have decided to take a "proactive" approach to the spring flood outlook and sandbag Jerome's Addition to hold back water to a Red Lake River crest of 28 feet.
National Weather Service hydrologists, so far in their long-range flood outlooks, have indicated a 50 percent probability that the river in Crookston will reach a crest of around 25 feet. That's based on current snow and moisture data and normal moisture between now and the spring melt. The outlook will be updated later this week.
Crookston's other at-risk neighborhoods like the Woods, Chase-Loring and Sampson's addition have permanent levees that protect to approximately 30 feet.
Parrish said the decision to sandbag to 28 in Jerome's came after numerous flood planning meetings among local officials.
The plan is to do the sandbagging during the first week of March using community volunteers, he said. UMC students, who have come out in force along with high school students to sandbag in the past, will still be on campus then, Parrish said. The following week they'll be gone on spring break, so he said the decision was made to sandbag when they're still around.
The city will release more details on the effort as they fall into place.
Newsroom bloggers include Managing Editor Mike Christopherson and News/Features Editor Natalie J. Ostgaard.
