With Twin Cities residents bracing for a rainy, slushy week, officials in several cities are putting out an unusual call for help. They’re asking people to help free city storm drains.

St. Paul’s sewer division cleared ice and snow off more than 500 catch basins during the past week, most of them this weekend, based on reports of water pooling at intersections.

But they can’t stop street flooding alone.

“Really, with this much snow, it can happen at any intersection in St. Paul,” said Lisa Hiebert, a spokeswoman for St. Paul Public Works, who is urging residents to “adopt” a storm drain. “There’s plenty to adopt. We’ve got over 28,000 of them in city.”

Melting snows need someplace to go, and if water can’t make it to storm sewers through the drains that line city streets, then it pools in intersections and other inconvenient places.

Sidewalks and parking lots throughout the metro have already suffered some puddling, and wet, heavy snow is being blamed for partial roof collapses at the St. Francis De Sales Catholic Church in Moorhead, the Holiday Inn Express & Suites in Winona and other parts of the region.

Following a record February snowfall, that’s going to get worse before it gets better. The National Weather Service in Chanhassen predicts a “warm and wet week ahead (that) will likely lead to localized urban and small stream flooding.”

Monday so far: 1) break shovel at 7AM

2) go to @GroundswellMN for meeting

3) walk to hardware store on Snelling & buy shovel/ice pick (#supportstpaul)

4) chop out two #stormdrains

5) be sore the rest of the day pic.twitter.com/eZ43HlI6F1 — Matt Privratsky (@MattPrivratsky) March 11, 2019

Rain and snow melt make an unfortunate combo. Temperatures are expected to reach a high of 40 degrees on Tuesday and 45 degrees Wednesday, with “rounds of rainfall” between Tuesday evening and late Thursday night.

ADOPT-A-DRAIN GOES METRO-WIDE

Those willing to try and clear their storm drain can enter their address at Adopt-a-Drain.org.

The city of St. Paul, the Capitol Region Watershed District and the Center for Global Environmental Education at Hamline University have created an interactive map to allow metro residents to see where drains are located and even “adopt” them as volunteer stewards.

That means shoveling them clear of trash, snow and ice.

The map isn’t limited to St. Paul.

Nearly 50 cities have now mapped their storm drains, including Apple Valley, Arden Hills, Burnsville, Eagan, Farmington, Lakeville, Inver Grove Heights, Medonta Heights, Maplewood, Roseville, Rosemount, New Brighton among others.

If your city isn’t listed, don’t fret. By the end of the week, Adopt-a-Drain plans to launch a new website with GIS information for the entire seven-county metro.

“If people are able to get out there as they’re shoveling their sidewalks, and they can shovel off the snow and some of that ice over the catch basins in their neighborhood, that would be great,” Hiebert said. “That way all the water ends up in the storm sewer, as it should, and not pooling on their streets or even backing up into the sewer lines into their homes.”

Adopt-a-Drain officials said flooding isn’t the only reason to be a good steward. Leaves and debris that fall into storm drains end up polluting lakes and rivers.

“Almost everything in the metro area empties eventually into the Mississippi River, but first it empties into local lakes,” said Jana Larson, project director of Adopt-a-Drain. “A lot of people feel that storm drains are filtered somehow, but they are not.”

“It’s really about preventing water pollution, and it’s not just trash that’s a problem,” she added. “It’s leaves, fertilizer, grass clippings that feeds algae which ends up turning lakes green. … That stuff washes right off the street and right into the river.”

Minneapolis plans to roll out an updated version of its own adopt-a-drain program in the spring.

EVEN-SIDE PARKING BAN IN ST. PAUL TO CONTINUE TUESDAY

Meanwhile, St. Paul, which on March 4 instituted a parking ban on the even side of residential streets, temporarily suspended the single-side parking restrictions on Sunday after declaring a snow emergency — the seventh such emergency of the season. Related Articles St. Paul district reports enrollment drop as pandemic moves school online

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Regular snow emergency parking rules went into effect for night plow routes on Sunday night, followed by day plow routes on Monday morning.

St. Paul’s even-side parking ban resumes as of 8 a.m. Tuesday.