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Environment
Kirsti Marohn

Cities receive state aid to help plan for climate change, extreme weather

Signs block flooding
Signs block the flooded intersection of South River Street and Second Avenue Southeast Thursday, June 20, 2024 in Cook, Minn. Heavy rain on Wednesday flooded parts of northern Minnesota including Cook, which was one of the areas that was hit hard around the Iron Range.
Erica Dischino for MPR News

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The Legislature allocated $100 million last year for a grant program to help local governments and tribes develop plans and tackle projects to make their stormwater and wastewater systems more resilient.

Eight small Minnesota cities will receive state funding to prepare for extreme weather caused by climate change.

The Legislature allocated $100 million last year for a grant program to help local governments and tribes develop plans and tackle projects to make their stormwater and wastewater systems more resilient.

On Wednesday, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency announced the latest round of climate planning grants, a total of $500,000 for small cities including Aurora, Belgrade, Comfrey, Danube, Ellendale, Lake City, Luverne and Wabasha.

“We want to make sure we are planning for a climate future that's here and that we know is coming,” said Kate Knuth, the MPCA’s climate director.

Not surprisingly, most of the cities applying for grants are focused on managing large rainfalls, Knuth said.

"One of the big expected impacts of climate change in Minnesota is more rain and coming in bigger storms, like we're experiencing this right now as a state, unfortunately,” she said. “At the same time, our stormwater infrastructure in many communities is pretty old — decades, even potentially a century old in some cases.”

According to the MPCA, over the past two decades, Minnesota has experienced 10 “mega-rain” events, defined as at least 6 inches of rainfall over an area of at least 1,000 square miles.

The city of Comfrey in southwest Minnesota will receive $57,000 to identify sources of stormwater runoff that contributed to major flooding last spring, and to a lesser extent this year. 

Mayor Gary Richter said more extreme rains and a farm drainage tile system that runs through town are contributing factors.

"It’s something I think we desperately need to address, or we're going to be facing what we faced a week ago or 13 months ago,” he said. “We're going to be facing that more often definitely in the future."

Many of the communities receiving planning grants are likely to return to the MPCA for financial assistance with costly upgrades to their infrastructure. 

The MPCA is in the process of reviewing applications for the first round of grants for stormwater projects, Knuth said.