Minnesota wrapped up its environmental review of a proposed $2 billion Red River Valley flood control project Wednesday and is moving on to the make-or-break question of whether to permit a dam across the Red to protect Fargo from floods.
The end of Minnesota's environmental review clears the way for Fargo to start work on the first phase of construction — including possibly buying up Minnesota properties in the path of the diversion and breaking ground on a ring dike around the North Dakota towns of Oxbow, Bakke and Hickson.
The construction had been under a court-ordered freeze while the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) conducted its review. But the end of the environmental study simply kicks off the next step for the DNR — a review of North Dakota's request for a permit to dam the Red upstream from Fargo and another bustling city — Moorhead, Minn.
"It's not an approval of the project, it's not an endorsement of the project," DNR Commissioner Tom Landwehr told reporters Wednesday.
The Red River Diversion project has been a source of tension between Minnesota and North Dakota.
Spring floods along the north-flowing Red spill across the tabletop prairie, sending residents scrambling to form sandbag brigades to protect homes and business.
But protecting Fargo means flooding more than 2,000 acres in Minnesota that currently sit safely above the flood plain.
The massive U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project would protect fast-growing Fargo from frequent, destructive spring floods by damming the Red to back up floodwater onto Minnesota and North Dakota land south of the city. A 36-mile trench would channel even more water around Fargo to the west.