River ice jam cannot be removed

The Sweetwater County Emergency Management Agency can’t blow up ice jams in the Green River even if a home is being threatened.

Jamestown residents Todd and Susie Heslep called emergency management hoping they would break up the ice jam, which is causing flooding on their property, but didn’t get the response they were hoping for.

“It’s not our policy to break up the ice jam. We prefer for nature to run its course,” Emergency Management coordinator Judy Roderick said. “We can help with sandbagging. We can do that kind of a thing.”

But the agency will not enter the Green River itself.

According to the agencies website, “the Sweetwater County Emergency Management Agency analyzes the hazards, assesses capabilities, plans for the potential events then responds to, recovers from, and mitigates against the emergency or disaster. We coordinate with response agencies, industry, elected officials, and volunteer agencies to accomplish our mission of limiting injuries, reducing loss of life and damage to property.”

Roderick said, in the past emergency agencies used to blow up ice jams to try and alleviate the stress placed in one particular area of the river. However, historically, it showed to cause more damage than if the jam would have just been left alone.

Even if the agency was going to blow up an ice jam, it would need to get permission from the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality and the Army Corps of Engineers. Roderick said by the time she would get all of the permission she would need the problem would have taken care of itself.

“There’s no way they’d let me do anything in the river channel,” Roderick said.

The they she’s said she was referring to was the Sweetwater County Sheriff’s Office and the Sweetwater County Commissioners.

Roderick said the liability issues alone are a good reason to stay out of the river. She said if they were to blow up an ice jam and something even worse happened downstream, they’d be liable for that.

As for the ice jam itself, Roderick couldn’t believe one was taking place at this time in the year. Usually, springtime is when the problems occur.

“This one was kind of odd to me,” Roderick said. “We have no water in the river because the Green River is very low.”

She thought maybe somewhere upstream ice had formed and then let loose and came downstream creating the ice jam when it got caught on something.

“I know the river wasn’t frozen this morning,” Roderick said was the first thought she had when she received the call about the ice jam Thursday.

“It is very odd,” she said.

As for future ice jams, she said they can contact dispatch for help.

“We can do sandbagging to help save those homes, but we can’t redirect the river,” she said.