A Lump in my Stomach

Ah, yes, and I'll probably have it there for the remainder of the winter, through the spring until flooding season is over again. Every time it snows or rains I'll be wondering how much higher this will make the river in the spring.

We went to the Watershed Board meeting last Monday night to find out where they were on letting us build a dike around our house. You have to have all kinds of permits and things, you know, before you can do ANYTHING to your own property. We've been working with the Watershed Board for three years now trying to get things worked out. I won't go into all their reasoning, which seems quite bogus, but like they say, you can't fight city hall. We've had Watershed Board engineers and designers out here several times this summer, planning and drafting and drawing, etc., and bringing their designs back to the board. We've hired our own engineers and have had soil boring tests done and more. We finally came to some terms that we can all agree on, although they aren't good. But at least we agree.

For the last three years there has been money in the budget to do this project. The way the program works is that the DNR pays 50% of the costs, the Water Board pays 25% and we foot the remaining 25% of the costs. After we spent three years working the kinks out of everything, at the last meeting they told us that there is no more money available.

Oh, well, I wasn't crazy about putting a dike in anyway. It would mean digging up everything, lots of mud to contend with and starting over with all the landscaping. I've finally got Ole convinced that we should put the place on the market and look for something new - away from the river.

So we had a real estate agent come out and look at the property. She was in awe - telling us that under normal circumstances there wouldn't be any problem selling our property due to its location and layout. She didn't even think there would be a problem selling it because buyers would be afraid of the flooding situation. You see, the house has never been wet - but our driveway goes under and the outbuildings get water in them about every third year. And with all the rain we've had this summer and into fall, the soil is so saturated that I'm sure we're in for a humdinger next spring even if we don't get much snow. BUT - and here's where the glitch comes in - she said she doubted that anyone would be able to get financing because of the water issue unless we put up the dike.

Okay. Now we don't have a choice - we have to put up a dike and at this point we'll have to fund the whole thing on our own because some bureaucrats sat on their you-know-what's so long that the money was all used up.

The problem is that according to the estimates that we've had done for a dike it would cost more than what we could get in return for the investment if/when we sold the property.

Talk about being between a rock and a hard place.

Here's a few pictures that were taken a year ago this past summer. You can see how close the river is, although you can't see what a steep incline there is.

Oh well, I'll just have to put it in God's hands and trust that he will do what's best for us.

Love you all,

Lena