Aircraft operations to temporarily stop at St. Paul Downtown Airport during flood preps
ST. PAUL, Minn. -- No flights were able to go in or out of the St. Paul Downtown Airport for much of the day Tuesday as crews worked to install a temporary flood wall in anticipation for flooding from the Mississippi River.
The main runway was shut down so work could start at 10 a.m.
The work is an extension to the 1,300 feet of flood wall that went up last week. When it's all done, the wall will stretch more than 3,000 feet long.
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The Mississippi hugs much of the airport and it currently sits about 14.5 ft high, but it's expected to reach major flood stage Wednesday and continue to rise to 18 feet by this weekend.
This is the seventh time since 2008 these flood walls have gone up around the airport.
No flights going in and out of the St. Paul Downtown airport until about 8pm tonight. Crews are expanding a flood wall around the main runway as the Mississippi River continues to rise @WCCO pic.twitter.com/tP7pGEY9d2
— Pauleen Le (@PauleenLe) April 18, 2023
Normally airport officials wait until the river is forecasted to go to 17 feet before they get to work, but with rain and snow in the forecast for the next three days they didn't want to wait and risk having the airport close because of flooding.
"It's a lot of work," said Mike Wilson, manager of the St. Paul Downtown Airport. "It's a lot of coordination for us, but the flood wall has paid dividends for us. We used to have whole buildings that would flood on us. The whole basement on our historic terminal building would flood, the 3M hangers would flood, the Army National Guard would flood. They would build earth and levees around those hangers, and they don't have to do that anymore. The flood wall protects everything out at the airport."
The walls stand about 4.5 feet high but can be extended to 8.5 feet if needed.
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The flood wall has closed two secondary runways and those will stay closed so long as the wall is up.
The new extension will shorten the main runway by about 1,150 ft. Crews also spent the day Tuesday repainting the lines on the runway to reflect the change.
The main runway is expected to reopen Tuesday at 8 p.m.
In 2019, the flood walls remained up for two months at the airport.