FARGO – A motion that was approved to lower the ring dike being built in the Oxbow, N.D., area in response to pressure from Minnesota state officials was made Thursday by the only Minnesotans on the Fargo-Moorhead Diversion Authority.
Both expressed disappointment with their state officials, who have of late made some big demands on the board, including lowering the dikes to reduce the feared impact on upstream communities and changing the makeup of the board itself.
The board oversees a project to build a $1.8 billion, 36-mile diversion that would protect the Fargo-Moorhead metro area from major flooding in the Red River Valley, but would submerge farmland to the south in the process.
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Minnesota state officials want their residents to have a bigger voice on the board, though their cost share of the project is much smaller than North Dakota’s.
Thursday was the board’s first meeting since those demands were put in writing.
“I’d just like to state that Fargo and Moorhead, West Fargo, Dilworth, we’ve been in this together from the get go,” said board member Nancy Otto, a Moorhead City Council member. “We almost lost portions of our city back in 2009, that was in Moorhead and in Fargo. This is a very serious situation.”
Board member Kevin Campbell, a Clay County commissioner, said he and Otto have volunteered to lobby Gov. Mark Dayton when he meets with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers next month. Campbell said the last time he spoke with the governor, it was clear the governor needed more information.
At the root of the Minnesota state officials’ demands seemed to be a feeling that their residents did not have an equal voice.
Dayton demanded more Minnesotans be put on the board. Four state lawmakers from the area, led by Rep. Paul Marquart, DFL-Dilworth, wanted all board decisions to require a majority vote of Minnesota members.
Board Chairman Darrell Vanyo, a Cass County commissioner, earlier asked some upstream Minnesotans to nominate an additional board member to comply with Dayton’s demand.
He said Thursday that their lawyers sent the board’s lawyers a letter that simply said a new member would not meet their goals, which is to not have a diversion at all.
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Keith Berndt, a member of one of the board’s committees and Cass County administrator, said Minnesotans had an outside role in planning the diversion. He gave a kind of history lesson at the board meeting.
“With the inevitable turnover of political leaders over time, it can be easy to forget how or why things came to be,” Berndt said. “Even with long-serving elected officials, occasionally we need to go through and do updates and reminders from time to time.”
In the aftermath of the 2009 flood, area leaders formed the Metro Flood Management Committee, which had 15 Minnesotans and 11 North Dakotans, he said. That group then evolved into the Metro Flood Management Work Group, which had six Minnesotans and five North Dakotans.
In 2011, the cities of Fargo and Moorhead, Cass and Clay counties, the Cass County water board and the Buffalo-Red River Watershed District in Minnesota sent a joint letter to the Corps of Engineers endorsing a diversion.
The Diversion Authority, which has two Minnesotans and seven North Dakotans, took over from those groups, but those groups laid the groundwork for the diversion project, Vanyo said.
Diversion officials have said the unequal makeup is because of the unequal funding, with North Dakota paying the larger share.
Campbell said he believes the recent flurry of demands stems from the Oxbow dike, which the Diversion Authority elected to push ahead despite objections from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, which feared the dike would displace enough water to raise flood levels in nearby Minnesota communities.
Vanyo said DNR officials have told him and others that lowering the dike to the level of a 100-year flood would be acceptable.
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The DNR is still working on an environmental impact statement to determine the impact of a dike at the 500-year level. Diversion officials said the Oxbow dike will be built wide enough that they can build higher to the 500-year level if the DNR report finds minimal impact.
