The Final Flood Mitigation Project for Granite Falls

Since the floods of 1997 and 2001, the Upper Minnesota Valley Regional Development Commission (UMVRDC) staff has worked with the City of Granite Falls in their flood recovery efforts. The city has utilized approximately $40 million funded from a variety of local, regional, state and federal sources.“Granite Falls has seen significant flooding in the recent past and these projects have already helped us to be better prepared for and better protected against the inevitable high waters that occur in the river,” stated Dave Smiglewski, Mayor of Granite Falls.
The city of Granite Falls is in the process of replacing the sanitary lift station on Minnesota Avenue.This project will relocate a large lift station that handles the entire wastewater load of the city and lifts it up above the flood plain to the treatment plant. This lift site will be relocated away from the Minnesota River onto higher ground, out of the flood plain.  A new lift station will lessen disaster impacts from flood events on the City’s economic base and make the community as a whole more disaster-resilient. This final large project, at a total cost of over $2 million, was moved along by obtaining a large US Economic Development Administration (EDA) grant that served to

match available funds from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR)’s Flood Damage Reduction Program. The UMVRDC authored a successful grant application to the Federal EDA which is providing $1,512,000. “Our Collaboartation with the RDC staff was key to landing those federal funds, enabling this important project to move forward,” stated Smiglewski.  Minnesota’s DNR is providing an additional $500,000 to cover the project.
The engineers that have been working on this project include Rodeberg and Berryman Inc., based out of Montevideo, and Stantec Consulting based in St. Paul, Minnesota. Granite Falls has awarded the bids for construction to Robert L. Carr Company of Marshall, Minnesota. The total cost for construction is $1,942,000. This total cost was $240,000 higher than the estimate that was provided by the city’s engineer. The additional costs were covered by the DNR. If the DNR wouldn’t have covered those additional costs the money would’ve fallen onto the city.
Carr Company will begin construction for the lift station this spring with hopes to have it completed by the end of the summer. “It will be the final large project of our multimillion dollar, multi- year flood mitigation program,” stated Smiglewski.  The lift station is a very important project that will help complete a comprehensive approach to flood mitigation in Granite Falls.
You can read more about this project by clicking on  Rice Lake Construction or Granite Falls News