Flood-weary looking at 'Big Ditch’

People in Fargo, N.D., and Moorhead, Minn., have a plan for easing flooding from the Red River of the North: Just dig another river.

Only months removed from a heroic sandbagging and dike-building effort that protected the cities against the highest flood crest on record, a consensus is building for a plan to divert the river into a channel that, in times of high water, could be bigger than the Mississippi as it flows through the Twin Cities.

The $962 million price tag for the basic diversion option would be more than double the cost of the levee system installed to protect Grand Forks, N.D., and East Grand Forks, Minn., after the catastrophic flood of 1997.

The project is so big that it's likely to take on a nickname much like Boston's Big Dig, said Vijay Sethi, administrator for Clay County, which includes Moorhead.

"This is going to become the 'Big Ditch,' " Sethi predicted.

The basic design would, during times of extreme floods, form a river a third of a mile wide and 30 feet deep for 25 miles around Moorhead. It would carry more than twice as much water as the Mississippi does through downtown Minneapolis on an average day.

And that's the small option.

Alternative channels around Fargo would carry more water and cost as much as $1.3 billion.

But that option doesn't have as high a cost-benefit ratio, a key factor guiding the Army Corps of Engineers in choosing what projects it will pursue. But local leaders have asked the Corps to take a second look at the North Dakota alternatives. Local officials will pick an option in January.

No more sandbagging?

Fargo-Moorhead's flood fight last spring cost upward of $50 million, and saved a potential $2.8 billion in damage, according to the Corps. Even so, the struggle forced hundreds of people from their homes, closed schools, universities and shopping centers, disrupted businesses and transportation and required a massive turnout of volunteers, many from hundreds of miles away. Soccer fields were dug up to provide clay for temporary levees. The effort resembled a trench warfare front for weeks, and was followed by a multimillion-dollar cleanup.

The $962 million diversion would be a grassy corridor with recreational trails during times of low water. It would knock off 9 feet from the height of a 100-year flood as it flows between the two cities.

But the river exceeded that 100-year level in March (by more than a foot) and in 1997. Evidence that the region is going through a long-term wet climate cycle have some thinking they might need protection to the 500-year level, which is 3 feet higher than the record set in March.

"There's no question in my mind, and I'm speaking as a technical person, that if we don't have a project, some day these two cities are going to suffer the same fate other cities in the Red River Valley have suffered -- millions, if not billions, of dollars put into repairing damages from a major flood event," said Bob Zimmerman, Moorhead's public works director.

Reams of studies

The diversion plan has emerged from the latest of many studies that have been undertaken in the region over more than 60 years. Corps and citizens' panels have studied a tunnel diversion, upstream impoundments and wetland restorations, building up foundations, filling basements, raising bridges and even widening the Red itself. Most were rejected as too expensive, disruptive, ineffective or counterproductive.

Wetland restoration, while supported by some people and by the National Wildlife Federation, probably wouldn't hold back enough water, and might not be in the right places, said Aaron Snyder, the Corps' project manager.

Levees were also rejected. As Hurricane Katrina proved in New Orleans in 2005, and the Red River proved in Grand Forks in 1997, levees and flood walls can break or be overtopped. They also can't be effectively raised by sandbags. Though the new levee system downstream in Grand Forks kept those cities dry in March, levees would require removal of more than 1,000 homes in Fargo and Moorhead.

They were also ruled out because the surrounding landscape is so flat that there's really nothing to seal up the ends.

Diversion projects helped keep Winnipeg, the Wahpeton-Breckenridge area south of Fargo and West Fargo dry in last spring's record crest, Snyder and others noted.

Some objections

Officials in Dilworth, Minn., just east of Moorhead and 4 feet higher, protest that a diversion would block its eastward development.

"A lot of residents are moving to Dilworth to be high and dry. Now the river is possibly coming to Dilworth," City Manager Ken Parke said.

Traci Goble, the mayor of Georgetown, Minn., 13 miles north of Moorhead, is also worried that the city of 125 people -- even with its new ring dike -- will in effect be staring down a big water spigot at the downstream end of the diversion.

The Corps' Snyder said Georgetown might see an increase of 3 inches on its flood crests. Meanwhile, the countryside upstream won't see any less flooding. Any flood protection that the Corps participates in, he added, must be designed to protect the most people and property, which is why its focus is on Fargo and Moorhead.

A diversion would be one of only a handful of billion-dollar Corps projects, Snyder said. The federal government would pay 65 percent of the $962 million, because that basic project stands so far as the most cost-effective. Local governments would pay the remaining 35 percent, plus all of the added costs of a bigger diversion, if they choose such an option. North Dakota would likely pay the larger share of that, as it would see more economic benefit, no matter where the diversion is built.

Fargo voters in June overwhelmingly authorized a half-cent local sales tax that could generate $200 million over 20 years to pay for the project. It takes effect in January. Minnesota may sell bonds to cover its share.

Fargo-Moorhead may not be New Orleans, where the Corps and local governments are spending $14 billion on 100-year hurricane protections, but it is the region's population center. Microsoft recently spent $70 million on an expansion in Fargo, and community leaders would prefer business-as-usual to costly timeouts for flood fights.

"Not everybody is going to be happy," Fargo City Commissioner Tim Mahoney said. "But we're going to have to come up with a solution."

Bill McAuliffe • 612-673-7646