St. Paul plans to reopen a trail and a fossil-hunting site in a section of Lilydale Regional Park that has been off-limits to the public since a landslide killed two students in 2013.
The Brickyard Trail from the top of the Mississippi River bluffs into the park will reopen this spring or summer after grading, erosion control and stabilization improvements are completed.
And this fall, the city will begin allowing school groups to tour fossil site No. 1 in the park southwest of downtown St. Paul.
“In the two years since the accident, we’ve taken the time necessary to perform the due diligence,” said Mike Hahm, the city’s parks and recreation director.
Hahm said his department will follow the recommendations of Barr Engineering, which has been studying the 50-acre Brickyard area in the past year.
The Barr report calls for about half the examined area to remain closed indefinitely.
Three fossil sites within the Brickyard area will remain off-limits, as will three man-made clay pits and the Vento View Overlook.
Besides the deaths of Haysem Sani, 9, and Mohamed Fofana, 10, two children were hurt, one seriously, in the landslide near the eastern clay pit during a school tour.
Attorney John Goetz, who represented three of the victims’ families, said Wednesday that St. Paul should have had the assessment done long ago.
“There had been a prior slide right where the kids died, and the city knew about it,” Goetz said. “The heart of the matter is, it’s good they’re taking action, but it’s too late for those kids and their families.”
Hahm shared the Barr report with the St. Paul City Council on Wednesday afternoon. Reopening at least part of the closed section of the 384-acre park has been a priority of Mayor Chris Coleman’s administration.
Hahm said fencing, warning signs and other precautions will be posted to keep visitors away from the closed sections of the Brickyard. Trail benches will be moved, and new visitor signs will carry eight-digit coordinates of the National Grid system to help rescue workers in case of emergency.
Hahm estimated the immediate trail improvements and safety precautions will cost about $450,000, depending upon the type of fencing. His department has $300,000 left from a road-widening project in the park and additional funding requests have already gone out for possible state grants.
Council member Dan Bostrom expressed concern about spending money and energy on reopening the restricted areas.
“Frankly, no one has approached me and said, ‘I’ve really got to get back down to Lilydale,’ ” he said.
Jim Herbert, vice president of Barr Engineering, said his company’s findings were largely in keeping with those of the civil engineering firm Northern Technologies Inc., which had been hired by the city to assess the site immediately after the deadly landslide.
Barr Engineering visited the site last July, shortly after heavy June rains, and discovered evidence of a new landslide in the general vicinity of where the two children were killed.
“We kind of had to restart the evaluation,” Herbert said. “Even between the two inspections, there was additional erosion.”
Bill Kussman, a geotechnical engineer with Barr, said the silty soils of the clay pits are prone to collapse when they become too wet.
The Barr report segregates the 50-acre Brickyard into high-, medium- and low-risk areas. The sites that are reopening are all considered low risk.
DEADLY LANDSLIDE
On a drizzly morning on May 22, 2013, a fourth-grade class from Peter Hobart Elementary School in St. Louis Park was gathering fossils at Lilydale when rain-sodden sand and broken shale collapsed on top of the children.
In the largest legal settlement in its history, the city agreed to pay more than $1 million to the families of the children who died or were hurt in the landslide. As part of the settlement, the city did not admit fault.
After the landslide, critics questioned whether water runoff from a municipal culvert project in the area could have been a factor and whether the city should have restricted access following previous evidence of erosion.
A 2009 report from consultants Bonestroo Inc. raised concerns about erosion within the park.
The “Natural Resources Plan,” however, focused on two clay-mining pits to the southwest, remnants of a defunct brick-making operation that had helped expose fossils. It did not recommend an erosion evaluation in the east clay pit where the 2013 landslide occurred.
Otto Strack, a University of Minnesota professor of civil and geological engineering, visited the park in 2013 after attorneys representing the victims’ families hired him to complete an analysis.
The landslide occurred in the portion of the park that had been home to the Twin Cities Brick Co. from the late 1800s until the 1970s. The excavation of the natural slopes left them perilously steep, which meant they were “liable to fall, sooner or later, and especially if there’s heavy rainfalls,” Strack said in an interview.
“I don’t think anybody really recognized that it was a man-made area and therefore dangerous,” said Strack, who noted in his report that there appeared to be a mistaken belief that the park’s distinctive landform is natural.
A landslide about 50 yards from the fatal accident site took place in 2011.
Strack wrote in his report that, in his opinion, the event “was treated by city personnel in an overly cavalier fashion; rather than examining the danger that should have been abundantly clear from the slide, emails and comments indicate a total lack of realistic and responsible assessment of the danger.”
SIGNS FOR HELP
While some emergency crews knew how to maneuver the park when responding to the landslide, others had trouble accessing the site, St. Paul Fire Chief Tim Butler noted. The coordinates on the new signs should help.
Lilydale Regional Park will represent the city’s first significant use of the international grid system, which is gradually gaining popularity with public safety agencies in Minnesota.
In the event of an emergency, visitors will be able to report grid coordinates to 911 dispatchers and first responders such as police and firefighters, who can access a National Grid map on mobile computers inside their vehicles.
