Flood plans make residents north of Fargo uneasy

CAVALIER, N.D. – Talk in Fargo-Moorhead of billion-dollar flood-protection projects has some officials to the north a bit uneasy.

“I think there’s going to be water coming at us like we don’t know what,” Pembina County Commissioner Andy Adamson said at the County Commission meeting Tuesday.

Adamson wants to know what effect another major flood-protection project will have on Drayton, where he lives, and Pembina, the final North Dakota town the Red River passes before it flows into Manitoba and Lake Winnipeg.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Monday unveiled a series of diversion and levee options for permanent flood protection in the Fargo-Moorhead metro area. Among the options is a diversion project to carry 45,000 cubic feet of water per second around the cities.

Federal officials say local governments in the Fargo area must decide by Dec. 1 what option they will support.

Officials who live to the north say the flood threat is ever-growing. Besides the nearly annual fight to keep the north-flowing Red River in its banks in Pembina County in Drayton and Pembina, the county has been experiencing more overland flooding.

The commission discussed other flood-control projects, such as water-retention efforts in Minnesota and renewed discussion about a levee or diversion project along the Park River in Grafton.

The Red River Basin Commission is holding public hearings in the region to gather information and comments on what kind of permanent flood protection would work for the entire basin.

But officials in northeastern North Dakota fear that may be too late to get their message across.

“There aren’t enough people up here,” Adamson said. “When the water leaves Grand Forks, they all think the flood is over.”