Sioux Falls streets are back open for business

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — Sioux Falls is still feeling the effects of last week’s heavy rain, but all the city’s streets are once again open to traffic.

It’s business as usual on the streets of Sioux Falls.

“We had quite a few closures across the city over the past few days, all of those have been opened,” Street Operations Manager Dustin Hansen said.

Street Operations Manager Dustin Hansen says about 20 city streets were closed over the past 72 hours.

“We’d close them and then within a few hours the water may recede, we’d open them back up, and then there were other ones that were kind of more permanent over the last couple three days to where we were opening some up as late as last night, 7-, 8:00, and then we had a couple yet this morning that we had to open up,” Hansen said.

Hansen says 30-40 people have been working to remove water from the streets.

“We’re bringing in people from all across Public Works, even our parks system, to work together and we’ve been in the Emergency Operations Center for the last few days. That’s where we could basically collaborate together and make sure we’re dispersing teams in the right directions,” Hansen said.

The rest is up to what’s in the ground.

“The storm drainage system consists of both a pipe and inlet system and also overland flows,” city engineer Andy Berg said.

Andy Berg is the City Engineer.

“During an event like this, those collection systems grab that water, convey it off the street, into the river,” Berg said.

The water level at this section of Skunk Creek has dropped more than six feet since Friday, and it was the height of the water across the city that caused the storm drainage system to back-up into the streets.

“When the level of the river gets high enough that the pipes are underwater, they have flap gates on them and those flap gates close so that the river isn’t able to back-up into the neighborhoods and onto the streets and make the situation even worse than it could be, and so when those flap gates close, it also doesn’t let water go off of the streets and into the river,” Berg said.

And Hansen says the departments can’t do a complete assessment until the water fully recedes.

“They’ll start to evaluate all their facilities, system, infrastructure this week to see what kind of damage there is,” Hansen said.

Berg says with more wet weather in the forecast, make sure your sump pump is draining outside, into the yard, and not into a floor drain to help ease the strain on the city’s sanitary system.