MINNESOTA, South St. Louis SWCD — “Everything was a mess,” said Kubiak. “There were trees all over the place, so we purposely build this floodplain. Without a floodplain, it digs out its banks.” Sargent Creek is a good example of what happens when there isn’t a floodplain with enough capacity to handle high amounts of water. The 2012 flood washed away a lot of sediment and wore away the sides of the creek. “Now we have measured it just so when (water) rises, it spreads out and dissipates its energy,” said Kubiak. “Now it’s happy. It’s stabilized. It’s in the right slope.”
Kubiak works for the South St. Louis Soil & Water Conservation District, which has tackled a number of stream restoration projects in recent years. The Sargent Creek project is its 15th.
