On the morning of Monday, March 5, during the middle of a nasty snowstorm, the Town of Wadena lift station flooded.

The culprit: cooking grease and fat that had accumulated on two sets of floats.

"It's pretty rare. It's the first time it happened to us," public works and utilities director Garrett Cull told Bolt FM.

"If we didn't catch it at the time we did we probably would have had multiple residents and buisnesss with a sewer backup in their place."

Luckily, the plant operator saw the flooding during his morning check. 

However fixing the problem made two of the town's three staff unavailable for snow removal.

"Our biggest priority was to get that lift station back up and running and get those levele down before it caused any damage to any residents," Cull said.

While some motors and pumps were submerged for hours, only one electric motor had to be replaced.