Ranchers in Towner Experience Flooding
|  Video
|
| KMOT |
| 4/15/2009 |
 |
| Residents of Towner began seeing flooding earlier in the week. The city did enough preparation to help protect many homes, but ranchers have had some significant problems. Wednesday morning the water began rising and causing problems. The water has been pouring into the southern part of Towner at an uncontrollable rate. "We had some awful floods in ‘69 and through the 70`s, but this by far is going to be the worst one in my life time," says Lynn Kongslie, a Towner Rancher. Despite dikes being built around his barn years ago, Kongslie knew when he went to check out the river Tuesday that he would be seeing problems. "We had water come in here during the night, which we expected, but maybe not quite this much. Pretty soon I`ll have barns underneath water," says Kongslie. Kongslie has been working all day to move over 600 cattle to higher land. "We can get the adults out if the water does come over, we can chase them through water. But them little calves don`t work very good when chasing them through water," says Kongslie. While some flooding is usually a good thing for ranchers and livestock, too much can cause a lot of problems "The only good I can see is I don`t have to worry about what the cattle will drink. Otherwise it will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars for the ranchers in the valley. I`ll loose all my alfalfa land, its real devastating," says Kongslie. The McHenry County Extension office has been getting calls from ranchers about losing livestock. "Most of the ranchers in this county are going through the same thing. We`ve had significant livestock loses from floods, lack of hay and not being able to get food to cattle," says Raquel Dougan-Dibble, McHenry County Extension Agent. Kongslie has worked on the same ranch for decades and noticed a change in the amount of water flowing through the valley after a few changes in other cities. "Since Minot has cleaned out their river and straightened their channels out and Velva that water gets here 4 or 5 days faster than it use and it comes with such force now," says Kongslie. It could take weeks before ranchers in Towner will be able to assess exactly what has been lost and the cost of all the damage. The extension service has information at www.ag.ndse.edu/disaster/flood.html that can help people prepare their farms, ranches and homes for a flood. |
BACK TO NEWS | BACK TO MINOT STORIES
© 2009 KFYR-TV
Home | News | Weather | Sports | Webcast | Morning News | Programming | Primetime Rewind | Advertising & Sales | About Us
Community Connection | Movies | Contests & Promotions | Search | Links | Contact Us | Follow us on: Facebook and twitter
Sister Stations: KMOT in Minot, KQCD in Dickinson, KUMV in Williston
