Red River Basin-wide authority garners support

WASHINGTON -- The Red River Basin needs an organization spanning both sides of the border that can wield enough authority to push through politically difficult measures, such as creating storage areas for floodwater.

An outfit overseeing the basin with broad arm-twisting power would go a long way toward answering the question posed Tuesday by Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D.: "Who's the symphony director here?"

The need for a basin-wide authority was a key point of agreement among local, state and federal leaders at a first-of-its-kind meeting at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday to discuss comprehensive and permanent flood control along the Red.

"This is something that's always been a problem," said Fargo Mayor Dennis Walaker of the lack of an overarching authority.

A new agency with clout along the Red wasn't the only subject by any stretch. Top officers from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers were on hand, and North Dakota Gov. John Hoeven pushed on whether Fargo's already-designed south-side flood control -- a $161 million project the corps didn't fund or plan -- might count as part of a comprehensive flood protection system for Fargo-Moorhead.

But no issue saw more consensus, beyond the need for consensus, than the suggestion of a Red River oversight group empowered to compel action. Though there was strong support for the idea -- no one objected when Dorgan asked if anyone opposed -- how the basin authority would work was far from decided.

Dorgan suggested the two governors could hash out the details, and Hoeven said he would discuss with Pawlenty a compact between the states and the federal government.

Pawlenty, however, said he would like to see such a group grow from the local level, perhaps forming from the Red River Basin Commission -- a group that Walaker, an alternate member, said had "absolutely no authority."

Minnesota Rep. Morrie Lanning, a Republican who represents Moorhead and once served as its mayor, said a basin authority is not a new thought. He first suggested it in 1979. And he, too, would like to see the group spring from the grass roots.

"We need local ownership," Lanning said.

It's still nowhere near a done deal, Pawlenty pointed out in a teleconference after the lunch-hour meeting.

"It's a concept at this point, an idea," Pawlenty said.

Discussion of the authority came up after several officials said floodwater retention needs to be a big part of a comprehensive plan for the Fargo-Moorhead area, which the Army Corps is studying.

Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., said holding back water before it hit the Red could take pressure of the river when it floods.

"Without it, I think we'll end up building more diking than we need," Conrad said.

Retention has always been a tough sell with farmers, whose fields are often used for the storage. Conrad said those farmers would need to be compensated, and Walaker said those payments could be similar to programs that reimburse crop losses due to disasters.

Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., who represents Moorhead and northwest Minnesota in Congress, said while flood-control projects are always fraught with competing interests, the 2009 flooding may have softened some of the most hardheaded.

"I sense a change out there among people," Peterson said. "Everybody's got to compromise, including me. I've been one of the worst."

Retention will be one of the options included in the preliminary results of an Army Corps study of flood control for Fargo-Moorhead, which are set to come out in the next month. Brigadier General Michael Walsh said the study will estimate the cost, and cost-benefit ratio, of various different types of flood control. These figures will be calculated both with and without the south-side project included, he said.

Feasibility study

The corps feasibility study is one of the key steps toward a federally funded flood control system. If approved, the federal share of Army Corps projects is typically 65 percent, with the other 35 percent coming from local and state sources.

Conrad said the split of the local costs would depend on how the benefits break down. For example, if the study shows that North Dakota would have 80 percent of the benefit, governments on that side would pick up 80 percent of the local match.

After the preliminary results come out, local officials will have to agree on which options appeal to them -- assuming the cost-benefit ratios show more benefit than cost. If they can't agree, no federal project will happen. That local consensus will have to be speedily reached for the final version of the report to be ready by its December 2010 deadline, "or we're just not going to be able to hit that," Walsh said.

Hoeven pressed Army Corps officials on whether they could provide an assurance earlier than the end of next year that the south-side project could be considered the first phase of any corps-directed flood-control system.

He continued to press the issue after the meeting, asking Walsh in the hallway outside the Senate Appropriations Room: "We're not asking for money. We're really asking for approval and coordination."

Asked about that during the meeting, Walsh said there would be no guarantees. "It's not a project until it's a project," he said of the corps plans.

Terrence Salt, principal deputy assistant secretary of the Army for civil works, said hearings held by the corps in the spring of 2010 could give local and state officials an indication of whether the south-side project could be considered a part of the overall one.

Hoeven said it's important to find out because south-side control -- paid for with $75 million each from the city and the state, and $11 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency -- could count as a portion of the local match on a larger system, for which early estimates have run as high as $1 billion. It might also affect the cost-benefit analysis, he said.

Walaker said part of the worry is that the south-side project has "zero impact to the Red," which could hurt its chances of being included as part of the corps plan.

If Fargo-Moorhead is able to get from preliminary results to final report in 18 months, that would be unusual, Peterson said. The process took three years in Roseau, Minn., one of the cities in Peterson's 7th District still waiting for federal money for Army Corps projects that were prompted by earlier floods.

It's a frustration that Cliff Barth is familiar with. He's the mayor of Breckenridge, Minn., another one of the cities still waiting on federal flood-control dollars.

"I'm tired of studies," Barth said. "Build it. Get it done. Protect us."

The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead and the Herald are owned by Forum Communications Co.