How the Rapidan Dam failure continues to harm the Blue Earth River
The Blue Earth River following the partial failure of the Rapidan Dam experienced sediment pollution. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency says the impacts are still long-lasting, and may take decades for the river to heal. There were some fish killed and pools filled in with sediment. Rock riffles buried. These drone images were taken in October of 2024. Water quality still hasn't returned to baseline levels since the partial failure of the dam, and recreational access points to the river are still closed.
Courtesy of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency
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Audio transcript
NINA MOINI: On Thursdays, we're featuring the work of our regional reporters. We have them open their notebooks to talk in a little bit more detail about a story they've recently covered, and also bring us behind the scenes of how they go about their work. We also like to find out a little bit more about our reporters as people. [LAUGHS] That's important to note-- we are people.
Today, we're going to chat with Hannah Yang, MPR's senior reporter based in Mankato. Hannah reports on everything, anything and everything around Mankato, in southern and southwestern Minnesota. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us today, Hannah.
HANNAH YANG: Hey, Nina, it's great to hear from you.
NINA MOINI: To start us off, like I just said, you're busy because you're covering all those places.
[LAUGHTER]
But what's so cool is that every region does have something unique and special about it. Southern Minnesota versus eastern or northern parts of the state, there's so much going on in the state. And I wondered if you just would share, for starters, about what you love about Mankato, or one of the places that you cover, the region that you're in.
HANNAH YANG: Absolutely. So, I got to tell you, it's beautiful out here. There's prairie lands, sunsets, rivers, state parks, there's Blue Mounds State Park in Luverne, Flandrau State Park in New Ulm, and Minneopa State Park near where I live in Mankato. What I really love about this region is that each community has its own identity and a lot of small town pride. They have their own way of solving issues and adapting to change.
What I love about my job, in particular, is being challenged in my perception and understanding that each community has its own approach and solution to an issue that really highlights their resiliency. And knowing what may work in Mankato may not work in New Ulm or Fulda, for instance. And so that is something I'm always open to learning about, and bringing those perspectives into my reporting.
NINA MOINI: I really love that, Hannah, because I think what you're talking about is nuance. And that's always our goal, is to bring people the nuance and the different emotions and views that people hold. And you talked about resiliency, and we all know that your region has been in the news a lot the last couple of years because it just unfortunate bad weather, flooding events. And this week, your reporting brings us back to Blue Earth River specifically and that incredible flood. Folks will remember this June of 2024 it was, and it caused a partial failure of the historic Rapidan Dam. Remind us of what happened back then, Hannah.
HANNAH YANG: Sure. So I don't just report on these communities, I live there, too. I live in Mankato, and so I saw firsthand how bad it got. It was a really rough time for this area. And for the communities that I cover that got hit by the flooding and heavy rains like Rapidan, Mankato, Waterville, Wyndham, St. Peter immediately come to mind. And businesses and homes got flooded. People lost their properties.
Minnesota, I believe, got hit with double to quadruple the normal rainfall amount in places around the state at the time, so there was so much water coming downstream. I saw huge trees and debris. And the Blue Earth River basically just carved a new channel around the Rapidan Dam. And there was a viral video that went national of the Hruska family house and a storage shed falling into the raging river-- into the raging river.
NINA MOINI: Yeah, I remember that.
HANNAH YANG: And because of the partial failure, it unleashed more than a century's worth of sediment build-up behind the dam downstream into the river. And the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency released its latest analysis of water quality of the state's water. And we decided to come back to the Blue Earth River specifically, and found it's come a long way since that summer of the dam failure, but it's still considered significantly impaired.
NINA MOINI: OK, so let's dig into that a little more. How has the water quality changed and it's still significantly impaired?
HANNAH YANG: Sure. So it's a mixed bag. The dam failure churned up the river bottom and all that sediment and pollutants encrusted in it. It moved more than 12 million cubic yards of polluted sediment downstream. So if you want to picture more than 600 Olympic-sized swimming pools filled with muck--
NINA MOINI: Wow.
HANNAH YANG: --that's a pleasant image. [LAUGHS] So pools and riffles got filled in. Fish and insect habitats were buried and pretty much wiped out. So I got to visit with Eileen Campbell, who's a scientist with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, who tests water quality. She showed me a sample she took two days after the dam failure, and it was pretty gross. It was a jar of mud with something growing in it. So the samples she took Monday were definitely clearer. But she also said this.
EILEEN CAMPBELL: It is dirtier than we've ever seen it. It's staying dirtier than it should be than we would expect it to be this time of year. And we expect that it's going to take a really long time for this to get back to any semblance of normal.
NINA MOINI: And I understand, Hannah, the Blue Earth River was already on the state's list of impaired waterways. And why is that?
HANNAH YANG: So it is important to note that the Blue Earth River was already impaired before the dam failure. So to understand that, it really depends on where you live in the state. And it depends on the history of land use, geography, climate patterns. And southern Minnesota has a lot of history of agricultural land use and erosion that contributes to the sediment pollution. We generally see a lot more rainfall in this part of the state than other regions, so we do typically experience poorer water quality.
NINA MOINI: So, is there a way to improve that or to get off the impaired list? How would that happen?
HANNAH YANG: It's hard, but not impossible. I talked with Kim Laing of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, and her job is to oversee programs that track the health of the state's water bodies. And she told me it can take about 20 years for a water resource to get delisted. Nearly 100 lakes and river segments have been removed from the impaired waters list in recent years, so it's definitely possible. And that report also showed that Minnesota's water quality, in most parts of the state, over 15 years, have significantly increased in fish and insect health and streams, and phosphorus levels have stabilized. And so Lang did say that it takes a lot of resources and money to remove pollutants from a water body. Here's Laing.
KIM LAING: It's going to take all of us to do our part to change water quality, to protect those that are healthy to improve those that are degraded.
HANNAH YANG: And those actions can include installing rain gardens, buffer strips, and regulating farmland water runoff. And so what I also learned is that the MPCA says it might take somewhere up to 30 years possibly for all that sediment to move through the Blue Earth River. But they also say there is hope for it to return to an equilibrium.
NINA MOINI: All right, Hannah Yang, we really appreciate you joining us and filling us in on all of your important reporting. Thank you.
HANNAH YANG: Thanks, Nina.
NINA MOINI: MPR News Mankato Bureau reporter for you there, Hannah Yang.
Today, we're going to chat with Hannah Yang, MPR's senior reporter based in Mankato. Hannah reports on everything, anything and everything around Mankato, in southern and southwestern Minnesota. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us today, Hannah.
HANNAH YANG: Hey, Nina, it's great to hear from you.
NINA MOINI: To start us off, like I just said, you're busy because you're covering all those places.
[LAUGHTER]
But what's so cool is that every region does have something unique and special about it. Southern Minnesota versus eastern or northern parts of the state, there's so much going on in the state. And I wondered if you just would share, for starters, about what you love about Mankato, or one of the places that you cover, the region that you're in.
HANNAH YANG: Absolutely. So, I got to tell you, it's beautiful out here. There's prairie lands, sunsets, rivers, state parks, there's Blue Mounds State Park in Luverne, Flandrau State Park in New Ulm, and Minneopa State Park near where I live in Mankato. What I really love about this region is that each community has its own identity and a lot of small town pride. They have their own way of solving issues and adapting to change.
What I love about my job, in particular, is being challenged in my perception and understanding that each community has its own approach and solution to an issue that really highlights their resiliency. And knowing what may work in Mankato may not work in New Ulm or Fulda, for instance. And so that is something I'm always open to learning about, and bringing those perspectives into my reporting.
NINA MOINI: I really love that, Hannah, because I think what you're talking about is nuance. And that's always our goal, is to bring people the nuance and the different emotions and views that people hold. And you talked about resiliency, and we all know that your region has been in the news a lot the last couple of years because it just unfortunate bad weather, flooding events. And this week, your reporting brings us back to Blue Earth River specifically and that incredible flood. Folks will remember this June of 2024 it was, and it caused a partial failure of the historic Rapidan Dam. Remind us of what happened back then, Hannah.
HANNAH YANG: Sure. So I don't just report on these communities, I live there, too. I live in Mankato, and so I saw firsthand how bad it got. It was a really rough time for this area. And for the communities that I cover that got hit by the flooding and heavy rains like Rapidan, Mankato, Waterville, Wyndham, St. Peter immediately come to mind. And businesses and homes got flooded. People lost their properties.
Minnesota, I believe, got hit with double to quadruple the normal rainfall amount in places around the state at the time, so there was so much water coming downstream. I saw huge trees and debris. And the Blue Earth River basically just carved a new channel around the Rapidan Dam. And there was a viral video that went national of the Hruska family house and a storage shed falling into the raging river-- into the raging river.
NINA MOINI: Yeah, I remember that.
HANNAH YANG: And because of the partial failure, it unleashed more than a century's worth of sediment build-up behind the dam downstream into the river. And the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency released its latest analysis of water quality of the state's water. And we decided to come back to the Blue Earth River specifically, and found it's come a long way since that summer of the dam failure, but it's still considered significantly impaired.
NINA MOINI: OK, so let's dig into that a little more. How has the water quality changed and it's still significantly impaired?
HANNAH YANG: Sure. So it's a mixed bag. The dam failure churned up the river bottom and all that sediment and pollutants encrusted in it. It moved more than 12 million cubic yards of polluted sediment downstream. So if you want to picture more than 600 Olympic-sized swimming pools filled with muck--
NINA MOINI: Wow.
HANNAH YANG: --that's a pleasant image. [LAUGHS] So pools and riffles got filled in. Fish and insect habitats were buried and pretty much wiped out. So I got to visit with Eileen Campbell, who's a scientist with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, who tests water quality. She showed me a sample she took two days after the dam failure, and it was pretty gross. It was a jar of mud with something growing in it. So the samples she took Monday were definitely clearer. But she also said this.
EILEEN CAMPBELL: It is dirtier than we've ever seen it. It's staying dirtier than it should be than we would expect it to be this time of year. And we expect that it's going to take a really long time for this to get back to any semblance of normal.
NINA MOINI: And I understand, Hannah, the Blue Earth River was already on the state's list of impaired waterways. And why is that?
HANNAH YANG: So it is important to note that the Blue Earth River was already impaired before the dam failure. So to understand that, it really depends on where you live in the state. And it depends on the history of land use, geography, climate patterns. And southern Minnesota has a lot of history of agricultural land use and erosion that contributes to the sediment pollution. We generally see a lot more rainfall in this part of the state than other regions, so we do typically experience poorer water quality.
NINA MOINI: So, is there a way to improve that or to get off the impaired list? How would that happen?
HANNAH YANG: It's hard, but not impossible. I talked with Kim Laing of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, and her job is to oversee programs that track the health of the state's water bodies. And she told me it can take about 20 years for a water resource to get delisted. Nearly 100 lakes and river segments have been removed from the impaired waters list in recent years, so it's definitely possible. And that report also showed that Minnesota's water quality, in most parts of the state, over 15 years, have significantly increased in fish and insect health and streams, and phosphorus levels have stabilized. And so Lang did say that it takes a lot of resources and money to remove pollutants from a water body. Here's Laing.
KIM LAING: It's going to take all of us to do our part to change water quality, to protect those that are healthy to improve those that are degraded.
HANNAH YANG: And those actions can include installing rain gardens, buffer strips, and regulating farmland water runoff. And so what I also learned is that the MPCA says it might take somewhere up to 30 years possibly for all that sediment to move through the Blue Earth River. But they also say there is hope for it to return to an equilibrium.
NINA MOINI: All right, Hannah Yang, we really appreciate you joining us and filling us in on all of your important reporting. Thank you.
HANNAH YANG: Thanks, Nina.
NINA MOINI: MPR News Mankato Bureau reporter for you there, Hannah Yang.
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