As the Red River Valley readies for its spring river flooding season, the people of the Devils Lake Basin sit and wait.
Ramsey County Emergency Manager Kristen Nelsen says the two outlets on Devils Lake cannot pump any water until rivers in the valley get back down to lower levels. And with predictions that the lake could rise two feet this year, that has a lot of people feeling uneasy.
"You know, people get upset, and there's loss of homes, loss of land, which means loss of dollars in their pockets, as well as the community's," Nelsen says. "Overall, it's an extreme hardship, and with a lake flood that we suffer from here - it's so catastrophic, and an awful thing to experience. But the thing with our flood is that our water doesn't just recede after a week, few weeks, six weeks, however long like a river flood. They're both detrimental, it's just that we sit here with ours, and if the rivers to the south of us are at full capacity, we're not able to let our water go."
Last year, dry conditions aided the pumps in taking off nearly three feet of floodwaters from Devils Lake, which had swollen to its highest ever elevation of 1454.3 in 2011. That drop in the lake level freed up 30-thousand acres in 2012. Nelsen says it's likely that this year, that land will once again be lost. She says with unstable water levels land - and roads - can become impassable throughout Ramsey and Benson counties.
"With some of our rural and county roads potentially going back under or having no travel on them due to water running over and debris and whatnot, it makes it difficult for our residents to get to and fro and possibly get home. It arises a potential threat for our EMS here in the area, for our Lake Region Ambulances, and our other rural ambulances as well - to be able to get to people, to rural homes, farmsteads, and things like that."
Devils Lake has had unstable elevations for many decades, and has roughly quadrupled in size since 1993.