Damage a couple weeks after the flood in Grand Forks and a year late
By Stephen Pate, NJN Network, Charlottetown, PEI, Canada, March 30, 2009
with story from Canwest News Service
The Mayor of Winnipeg is not worried. Well he’s worried a little but after spending $400 million for a flood spillway around Winnipeg he knows the worst is in the past for Canada’s biggest city along the ever-flooding Red River. Estimates are the flood way saves Manitoba $10 billion in damage. The countryside is not protected by the spillway only the city of Winnipeg.
Fargo’s reliance on dikes and temporary measures may be questioned in the months to come as the cost and toll on its citizens is measured. Damage, lives lost, lost productivity are costs that may not be ignored any longer. Grand Forks was devastated by the flood in 1997 and built it’s protective measures within one year.
The Red River has been flooding since time began. Donald Smith, one of Canada’s early business giants, made one of his early fortunes plying the flooded Red River in the 1870’s from Winnipeg south. Smith went on to be the head of the Canadian Pacific and the Bank of Montreal.
After the 1997 flood in Grand Forks when the downtown flooded and then burned to the ground in an uncontrollable fire, Grand Forks built an invisible flood way developed in Germany under the downtown known as “the point”
The city of East Grand Forks built an "Invisible Flood Control Wall" to protect the downtown area.
The river at Grand Forks is expected to crest at 54 feet which will leave Grand Forks a margin of error. “The base of the floodwall will protect against flooding up to the 100-year flood level. If a higher flood is expected, the “Invisible Flood Control Wall” is assembled on the base, which will provide protection to a 60-foot river level.”
The CanWest story is interesting but misses the advances the US engineers made in 1998 with the hidden spillway versus the Winnipeg open ditch or slough. This flood will test the engineering of the Grand Forks solution.
Dakota cities may mimic Winnipeg floodway
By Andrew Mayeda, Canwest News ServiceMarch 29, 2009
WINNIPEG — As the threat of a catastrophic flood recedes, calls are growing in Fargo, North Dakota, for better flood-response infrastructure, and some experts say the city could do worse than look to Winnipeg.
Assisted by the National Guard and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, thousands of Fargo volunteers, officials and residents have worked frantically this week to shore up dikes to protect the city of about 100,000 from a record surge in the Red River.
Despite their efforts, hundreds of homes have been ruined, thousands have been forced to evacuate and about 50 people have been injured. Two people have died in flood-related incidents.
On Sunday, a clay dike failed to contain the river, swamping an elementary and primary school as well as homes in the vicinity.
Amid the wreckage, angry residents and shell-shocked politicians are calling for big investments in Fargo’s flood defenses. Over the weekend, U.S. members of Congress representing the area suggested some long-term improvements are needed.
Meanwhile on this side of the border, Manitoba officials have assured residents that the Winnipeg area is in better shape to face a major flood.
“Fargo and Grand Forks don’t have a floodway,” Manitoba Premier Gary Doer said this week. “We do. That makes a lot of difference.”
The 47-kilometre Red River floodway, which loops around the eastern outskirts of the city, sets Winnipeg apart from other cities along the Red River.
Built in 1968, in the wake of a major flood in 1950, the floodway took four years and roughly $390 million in today’s dollars to build. But floodway officials estimate it has saved the city about $10 billion in damages by diverting the river’s overflow.
Since the 1997 deluge, dubbed the “flood of the century,” the province has widened the floodway. It has also built or reinforced ring dikes, and ensured that 95 per cent of the homes, businesses and farms in the valley are flood proofed.
When the flood way expansion is complete, which could happen as early as this spring, officials estimate the region will be protected from all floods with a 1-in-700-year chance of occurring.
The flood way is one of the main reasons Winnipeg suffered less damage in 1997 than such upstream communities in North Dakota as Grand Forks, said Donald Schwert, a geology professor at North Dakota State University.
“You’re going to be seeing a lot of people from Fargo going up and having a good look at the Winnipeg floodway after this,” he said.
Fargo, by contrast, has a relatively modest system of permanent dikes, which volunteers have been scrambling to reinforce with sandbags. Schwert fears the city has been building dikes too close to the channel, which doesn’t give the flood water enough room to dissipate.
The best solution would be some combination of a floodway and dikes set farther back from the river, he argues.
“We have to recognize that a river needs to flood, and accommodate that flow by diverting it around the metropolitan area,” he said.
Grand Forks and neighbouring East Grand Forks, Minnesota, were devastated in the 1997 flood, suffering nearly $2 billion US in damage. Fargo emerged relatively unscathed.
Perhaps not surprisingly, much more of the rebuilding money poured into the Grand Forks cities. Since 1997, more than $400 million has been spent bulking up their defenses, compared with roughly one-tenth that amount in Fargo.
Fargo Mayor Dennis Walaker offended some residents of Grand Forks this month when he suggested his city was being punished for beating back the flood in 1997.
North Dakota officials say the state is prepared to pick up part of the tab for major infrastructure improvements, including possibly a floodway. But the various local governments in the Fargo area have yet to develop a coherent plan.
As with any mega-project, the biggest challenges could be political. After the 1997 flood, experts recommended that Fargo build dikes farther away from the river, but business owners along the channel objected, said Schwert.
Similarly, residents who live in communities south of Winnipeg have complained about flooding triggered by the floodway.
Ironically, former Manitoba premier Duff Roblin faced stiff opposition when he unveiled plans for the floodway. Critics ridiculed the idea as “Duff’s Ditch” and “Roblin’s Folly,” but the premier persevered and eventually convinced the federal government to pony up more than half the money.
Leave a Reply