Tom Landwehr from the Minnesota DNR said the F-M Diversion Authority's Plan A was bad for the environment, bad for the people of Minnesota, bad for the Red River and illegal in Minnesota. Doing nothing was the preferable alternative. Plan B is also illegal and should not be permitted by the Buffalo Red River Watershed District for the same reasons.
The problem with Plan B (and Plan A) is the dam. The dam is necessary to free up the 50-square-mile flood plain south of Fargo for economic development, not to protect Fargo as it exists now from flooding. This economic development piece is what makes Plan B illegal.
The law in Minnesota says clearly that the resources/environment/people of the state should not be trashed for economic reasons alone.
For the Diversion Authority to push Plan B through the DNR while deliberately and systematically excluding all options that would contradict their own view was also disingenuous. In the end, it's all about money. No dam equals no money.
The people who wrote the law were clearly fair, moral people, and the bigger issue is a moral one. My neighbors, cousins and I have been selected to be some of the ones to "pay the price" for Fargo to move their "problem" up hill to us. Is that fair? I and others I know find it appalling. It's particularly sad when people's homes, livelihoods, and way of life are at stake, and the law was so clearly written to prevent this kind of abuse.
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No permit and no action will leave the Red River alone and would actually prevent flooding in Minnesota. Please, stand your ground. That's what the DNR should have done.
