The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources wants the public to weigh in on the fate of a $2 billion flood control project along the Red River of the North.
The proposed Fargo-Moorhead Diversion has been a source of tension between the Minnesota and North Dakota sides of the river. The massive project would protect bustling Fargo from the Red's frequent, costly, spring floods -- but at the price of damming the Red River and backing some of that floodwater onto Minnesota lands that are currently high above the flood plain.
Before Minnesota signs off on the plan -- if it signs off -- the DNR will have to give the project its blessing and sign off on construction of a high-hazard dam across the Red. Before that happens, the agency will spend the next month inviting the public to share their own data or make suggestions about issues the agency may have missed.
""I think the biggest concern is, by placing this new high-hazard dam, this embankment, we will be flooding lands that have historically not been flooded," said DNR Commissioner Tom Landwehr, who will have the final say on the Red River dam permit sometime in the summer of 2016, once the environmental impact review is complete. "You've got the impacts on private property, both cropland and structures. You've got impacts on public structures, roads and...cemeteries."
On Monday, the DNR released a draft of its environmental review of the project, which sums up the project, its alternatives and its potential problems in depth, but makes no recommendations. The public comment period will be open until Oct. 28, and DNR officials will spend the winter responding to those comments.
Construction on the diversion project has been idled by court order until Minnesota completes its environmental review. Diversion Authority Chairman Darrell Vanyo sees the release of the draft report as "positive for us," and is resigned to several more months of waiting for the final decision.
"It's obviously been a long process for us," said Vanyo, who has clashed with the state in court over whether construction could begin on the North Dakota side of the river while Minnesota completed its review. "We've grown accustomed to waiting."
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' current flood control plan calls for digging a 30-mile trench around Fargo to divert spring floods around the city, while retention structures across the Red and Wild Rice rivers backed even more water away from Fargo and into North Dakota and Minnesota territory to the south. Supporters say the project is an investment that will protect the region's economic hub from the frequent spring floods on the north-flowing river. Opponents, however, have battled the plan through the courts, calling for alternatives that would spare the farms and communities currently in the path of the diversion.
