Lawmakers say flood region must push for big bonding bill
Lawmakers who hold the purse strings for Minnesota’s bonding bills said Thursday that the 2010 package may have to be as big as or bigger than this year’s legislation to help pay for flood control in Moorhead and other cities in the Red River Valley.By: Helmut Schmidt, INFORUM
- Mary Lee Nielson talks to Dave Glatt
Lawmakers who hold the purse strings for Minnesota’s bonding bills said Thursday that the 2010 package may have to be as big as or bigger than this year’s legislation to help pay for flood control in Moorhead and other cities in the Red River Valley.
Rep. Alice Hausman, chairwoman of the House Capital Investment Committee, said Minnesota has spent $100 million in the last two years on flood mitigation and is prepared to do more.
“I would argue that a community like the Red River Valley needs to advocate for a large (bonding) bill,” Hausman said during a break from a meeting on Thursday with the Red River Basin Commission.
Construction costs are down and unemployment is up, making any project cheaper and a job creator, she said.
Rep. Tom Rukavina, D-Virginia, agrees this is the year to push for a big bonding bill.
“I think what we should do is have a very big bonding bill,” he said. But he cautioned it will need bipartisan support.
That works for Moorhead Mayor Mark Voxland.
Moorhead will get $20 million from this year’s bonding bill for home buyouts and infrastructure projects, he said, but another $20 million is needed to finish the work.
Hausman, D-St. Paul, also told the basin group that projects will fare better in the competition for funding if they provide long-term protection and multiple benefits. She also brought up worries about climate change.
“What if this isn’t a cycle? What is this is the new normal?” she said during the RRBC meeting at Courtyard by Marriott in Moorhead
Hausman said unless long-term flood protection is the aim, projects may not be funded. “People lose interest in putting money into a black hole.”
Many of the Red River Basin Commission’s 41 members were on hand, as well as representatives from local, state, provincial and federal agencies, to update the Minnesota lawmakers on flood issues.
Voxland was impressed by the number of Minnesota lawmakers on hand.
“I was thinking six (would show). We saw 16,” Voxland said.
State Rep. Morrie Lanning, R-Moorhead, has worked on flood issues for 36 years. He said with so many governments and agencies involved, solutions are complex.
“The investments we’ve made to this point have made a difference,” Lanning said, but “we have to do things through collaboration and consensus.”
Lanning said a long-term solution for flooding in the Fargo-Moorhead area, now being studied and researched by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, could cost $1 billion.
Even with the federal government paying 65 percent of the cost, that would still leave $350 million for North Dakota and Minnesota to pay, he said.
Voxland is confident a long-term flood control solution can be found.
“We’ve come too far over the last 20 years, and especially the last six months … to get frozen up now, because we don’t collaborate,” Voxland said.
Readers can reach Forum reporter Helmut Schmidt at (701) 241-5583
Tags: red river basin, flood protection, minnesota legislature, news, minnesota, flood, moorhead
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