One year after historic flooding damaged more than 100 homes in Waterville, not everyone is back in their home.
“Currently, we still have people staying in the shelter location for the showers and things like that. Some homes still don’t have water, some are still being rebuilt,” said Waterville Mayor Bill Conlin.
Conlin said he would like to be a Cinderella story, but it’s not.
He said insurance companies and FEMA were quick to help some people and slow to help others.
Conlin said he’s learned they could always be better prepared. He said flooding in 2014 helped prepare them, but he said there’s always room for improvement.
“I would like to improve… some of the pumping systems [that] are operable in a way we can just turn them on rather than sandbag it, bring in pumps,” Conlin said.
He said Le Sueur County installed devices to measure the height of the water, but he would like to see funding for flooding become a bigger priority at the state level.
Conlin said there’s no extra money for things like this, so they had to use part of their 2024 budget on flood repairs.
“We had to use the money to repair flood damage and repair streets down by the school and things and those same projects we’re finally getting to those in the 25 budget,” Conlin said.
He said they had to delay their street and infrastructure repairs by a year.
One thing Conlin said he’s grateful for is all the help that came to Waterville.
“We’re very lucky everything went well for us, and we had the Village to lean on for housing here, and we had so many donations and so many volunteers and everyone came to help,” he said.
