St. Paul to reopen park areas near site of deadly landslide

More than a year and a half after a landslide killed two fourth-graders on a fossil-hunting field trip in St. Paul, the city on Wednesday announced plans to reopen a small portion of the park where it happened.

The city plans to reopen the mile-long Brickyard Trail at Lilydale Regional Park by this summer and allow school groups to use one of the park's four fossil sites in the fall.

But even with $450,000 worth of planned safety enhancements, much of the park's brickyards, including the site of the landslide, will remain closed indefinitely.

Council Member Dave Thune said during Wednesday's council meeting the public will appreciate the investments.

"Every week, we get calls wondering when the park's going to reopen," Thune said. "It's a very popular area. Getting those kinds of requests, I know people are going down there now anyway, and this is going to ensure their safety."

But St. Paul City Council Member Dan Bostrom said he was "kind of concerned about opening the thing up again in the first place, because we've had significant lawsuits that have cost us over a million dollars.

"And there's been a loss of life," he added. "Why in the world are we going back and doing this again?"

Parks Director Mike Hahm said the cost of making all areas closed after the landslide safe enough to reopen "would be significant. We haven't studied it," he said, adding "it would look a lot different than it looks right now. It would cease to look like a natural condition at that point."

The Brickyards account for about one-eighth of the 380-acre park.

In addition to adding fences to keep people out of dangerous areas, the city also plans to add signs that include coordinates to help first responders locate people in the park during emergencies.

St. Paul has spent more than $330,000 on studies related to Lilydale since the landslide on May 22, 2013. It also paid out more than $1 million in legal settlements to the families of the children killed and injured in the incident.

St. Louis Park Public Schools paid out another $200,000 to the families, whose children attended Peter Hobart Elementary School.

The Parks Department has already set aside $300,000 for the safety improvements announced today, and is hoping state grants will cover the remaining expenses.

Barr Engineering determined that the park's three clay pits posed the highest risk of deadly landslides.

The Twin City Brick Company mined clay from the Mississippi River bluffs up until the 1970s. In doing so, the company made the slopes artificially steep, increasing the chances of erosion and sudden collapse.

During the course of Barr's nine-month study, the park experienced an even larger landslide than the one that killed the children.

Engineers determined that last June's heavy rains had caused another section of the bluff to fall, not far from the East Clay Pit where Mohamed Fofana and Haysem Sani died.