ROCHESTER, Minn. - Following a heavy rainfall, teams from Rochester Public Utilities inspect flood infrastructure, such as the 8 man-made reservoirs on the outskirts of the city to make sure they’re still working properly.
Project development manager Matthew Crawford oversees the inspections. "These hold the water outside of Rochester, the reservoirs, because Rochester is like a bowl, so it holds the water outside and releases it slowly back into town," he says.
Inspectors check to see if there's any debris on the structures and make sure the structure isn't plugged and is draining at a proper speed.
Despite the rainfall Rochester experienced on Tuesday, Crawford says the flood infrastructure is built to handle much more water than that. "Our flood control system is designed for a more significant rainfall than that. So that's a lot when you're talking about street flooding," he explains. "They're not designed to handle that much water but our flood control system is well designed to handle that without any problem."
