SECTION 1
Forum Communications takes a hard look at regional water issues
ear readers,
D Forum Communications Co. is
pleased to present “Living with
Water.” This five-part series focuses
on water issues concerning the Northern
Plains.
This series runs each Sunday through Feb.
26 in The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead, the
Grand Forks Herald, Jamestown Sun and
Dickinson Press, all in North Dakota, The
Daily Republic in Mitchell, S.D., and Detroit
Lakes Newspapers in Minnesota. The
company’s North Dakota broadcasting outlets in Fargo, Grand
Forks, Minot and Bismarck will be involved in the series, and it
will appear on our Internet platforms across the territory.
Last summer, Mike Jacobs, publisher and editor of the Grand
Forks Herald, was selected as the project coordinator. He
assembled a talented team of professionals from across our
company, including reporters, photographers and production
specialists from our newspapers, radio and television stations
and our Internet sites to plan the series.
We also asked for public input via the Internet and email. We
appreciate your comments, input and feedback.
Discuss this series at water.areavoices.com
I’m extremely proud of this project, which
Forum
Communications
follows our award-winning series “Running
William C. with Oil,” presented in summer 2010. This
MARCIL first showcased our multimedia
capabilities.
Newspapers are a perfect medium to
Co. chairman report on issues such as water and oil. The
ability to explain issues in print is distinct
to newspapers and in-depth reporting is
paramount to understanding this type of
subject matter. In this case, Forum
Communications is unique because of our
capability to support the printed product with our broadcast
and Internet offerings. Our company thus has an unusual
ability and a responsibility to bring major issues before the
public, and we take the challenge very seriously. I can assure
you that our research and reporting is accurate and meets the
high standard the company enjoys.
We welcome your comments, by email to
mjacobs@gfherald.com or by U.S. mail to Living with Water,
PO Box 6008, Grand Forks, ND 58206-6008.
Thank you and please enjoy this series.
William C. Marcil, chairman, Forum Communications Co.
PAGE 2 Patrick Springer / Forum Communications Co.

A FORUM
COMMUNICATIONS
SPECIAL PROJECT

SUNDAY,
JANUARY 29, 2012

ON THE COVER
Water from swollen The Little Missouri River winds through the North Dakota Badlands near Medora.
Lake Sakakawea
pours over the
spillway below
Garrison Dam in May
as it heads down the
Missouri River toward
the Bismarck-Mandan
On the Plains, water
area.
John Stennes / Forum
Communications Co. bedevils each generation
n April 27, 1805, of the region. cities of the How urgent is all this?

O Meriwether Lewis and

William Clark had a
disagreement.
In some ways,
water is the
Holy Grail of
Mike
valley. Yet it
repeatedly
JACOBS threatens each
Water worries have not produced
a regionwide approach to water
management – so far. Perhaps that
LIVE

This was unusual. The explorers the Northern of these cities is too much to expect. It is not,
Grand Forks
valued what Lewis called “perfect Plains, as Herald publisher
with however, too much to aim for.
harmony” in their relations. Their politicians and and editor and catastrophic Three essential elements have
journals record fewer than 10 engineers “Living with flooding. shaped development on the
disagreements in the 829 days. sought ways to Water” project Grand Forks Northern Plains: location, weather
What did they argue about? find water and coordinator was inundated and water. Water is the one that
Well – it wasn’t water exactly, but funnel it to in 1997; Fargo humans can do something about,
rather, what water could do. development. has escaped – and management of the region’s
The explorers were at the During the but barely – in water resources has been a
confluence of the Missouri and 1930s, development of the region’s three successive years, 2009, 2010 consistent theme in the region’s
Yellowstone rivers, near present- water resources became a kind of and 2011. history.
day Williston, N.D. This was an national epic, as FDR’s New Deal Surplus and scarcity. Water hasn’t cooperated with
obvious location for a settlement, pushed ahead with construction of There’s a third horn to this these dreams, and the region faces
first a military outpost and later a Fort Peck Dam on the Missouri dilemma, and that is politics. a stark reality. Like the weather,
trading establishment. River in Montana, about 100 miles The Northern Plains are divided water is something we have to live
Clark thought the fort should be west of the mouth of the between river basins – the with.
WE

built near the rivers, where it
would be accessible from the river
no matter how low the water.
Lewis thought any fort should be
built on the bluffs high above the
river, where it would be “immune
from flooding.”
Their disagreement
encapsulates the dilemma that the
Northern Plains have faced for
generations.
WHERE
Yellowstone.
Fort Peck was Keynesian
economics writ large – a huge
stimulus program that eventually
employed nearly 10,000 people,
many of them farmers whom
drought had driven off the land
and many of them drifters who
turned up in Montana to take
advantage of good jobs and good
wages – and then moved on.
Missouri and the Red – and legal
jurisdictions, cities, counties,
states, even countries.
Every water problem comes with
political problems attached.
So the reality on the Plains is
three-fold: Scarcity. Surplus. And
politics.
By far the most important
division is between two countries,
the United States and Canada. The
This is the first installment of a
project that Forum
Communications Co. has
undertaken to examine water’s
impact on our lives on the
Northern Plains. Today’s section
sets the stage, introducing the
drainage basins of the region.
Next week’s section deals with
flooding. A third section addresses
water supply, a fourth water

Scarcity.
And surplus.
A look at a map demonstrates
how important these
considerations have been for
settlement of the Northern Plains.
With a single exception, each of
North Dakota’s 10 largest cities is
built on a river. The exception is
on the north bank of the region’s
largest natural lake.
Scarcity.
Every one of these towns,
including Devils Lake, is protected
by dams or dikes or both.
Surplus.
Settlers understood this
dilemma – but they had few
options. Settlement required
water.
Subsequent generations have
had a range of options. None of
them has been completely
adequate, however, and the Plains
WATER
Fort Peck Dam was the first of
the great Missouri River dams, all
of them intended to harness the
region’s greatest river. Today
many thousands of homes and
businesses are lighted by electric
power produced as the Missouri
rushes through turbines at the
great dams – Fort Peck in
Montana, Garrison in North
Dakota, Oahe, Fort Randall and
Gavin’s Point in South Dakota:
Each and every one of them a
planner’s dream: Jobs. Power.
Progress.
It didn’t work out exactly that
way.
Plans to use move waters from
the Missouri River reservoirs to
irrigate farmland in North and
South Dakota ran into opposition
from taxpayer groups, landowners,
environmentalists, members of
Congress and, eventually, the
two share the Red River Basin, and
Canada is on the receiving end. It
has steadfastly opposed projects
that would threaten any of its own
water resources.
For Canadians, the issue has
been water quality, not water
supply. While Canadians have
their own flooding problems, these
don’t often impact U.S. interests.
The converse is not true, however.
Water quality issues in the United
States have a direct impact in
Canada. Canadians have worried
about issues as varied as invasive
species of fish and excessive levels
of phosphates.
These international issues only
highlight the extraordinary
complexity of water policy on the
Northern Plains. Several groups –
private and governmental – focus
on cross-boundary issues.
The situation is only more
quality and the fifth the maze of
water management issues that
must be faced in living with water.
Central to all of this is the
dilemma of scarcity and surplus,
and the need to manage water
effectively, so that neither is a
threat to communities.
Lewis and Clark foreshadowed
the dilemma on that April more
than two centuries ago.
As it turned out, the
“establishment” that Lewis
foresaw was not built precisely at
the mouth of the Yellowstone.
Instead, both military and trading
posts were built on the higher,
northern bank of the river a little
upstream of the mouth of the
Yellowstone.
Fort Buford was an important
military post that played a
significant role in Plains history.
The trading post, Fort Union, was

are still whipped on the horns of White House. confused on the state and local even more vital for development of
this dilemma: The dreams are far from dead, level. Water management boards the Plains. For decades, Fort
Scarcity and surplus. however. In North Dakota, there’s reflect political divisions Union, was the focus of the fur
SECTION 1

The lakes country of Minnesota
benefitted. Its freshwater lakes
quickly became destinations for
prairie settlers. As early as the
1880s, tourism was big business in
Lakes Country – because Lakes
Country had water.
It’s impossible to understate the
importance of water to the history
a plan to move water from
Garrison Reservoir to the cities of
the Red River Valley.
It’s in the Red River Valley that
the paired perils of scarcity and
surplus are most apparent. The
Red River provides a barely
adequate supply of water for
Fargo, Grand Forks and other
(counties) or drainage basins.
There’s no consistent approach.
So there is disagreement, driven
partly by conflicting jurisdictions,
partly by local interests, partly by
national patriotism and partly by
water levels. Urgency increases as
water levels drop toward drought
or rise toward flood.
trade and the commercial heart of
the Northern Plains.
Today, Fort Union is a National
Historic Site – exactly on the spot
where it was first built close
enough to the river to ensure ease
of access but high enough to have
remained “immune from flooding”
for more than 200 years.

In upcoming sections Join us at water.areavoices.com

FEB. 5
When water overwhelms us:
Flooding from Minnesota
Lakes Country to the
Montana line
FEB. 12
Print and online design
Water when we need it:
Rob Beer and Ryan Babb
Forum Communications Co. Sometimes, there isn’t enough
FEB. 19
Keeping our water clean:
Quality poses challenges
throughout the area
FEB. 26
Making water policy: A
maze of agencies manage
resources in the region
Have a story to tell about living
with water? Then please visit our
Living with Water website at
http://water.areavoices.com/ to read
more about this project, to interact with
others who are contributing and to tell us
your own story.
Also on the site, you’ll find a library of
water-related news stories from regional
Forum Communications Co. newspapers,
and you can visit our collection of water
resource Web links, and much more.
This project’s mission is to build
understanding about water and its
impact on our lives across the region,
and your contributions will lead to a
deeper understanding of the issues
surrounding water. Discuss it with us.
 PAGE 3
The average annual precipitation (rain and melted snow) over 130 years of kept records is 21.36 inches.
15
25.26 in. average A FORUM
Inches above average

22% COMMUNICATIONS
10 SPECIAL PROJECT

SUNDAY,
JANUARY 29, 2012
5

0
Inches below average

-5
21.36 in. average

-10
15.46 in. average
30%

-15
1900

1905

1910
1885
1881

1890

1895

1915

1920

1925

1930

1935

1940

1945

1950

1955

1960

1965

1970

1975

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

2005

2010
Weather is not a ‘cycle’
Graphic by Troy Becker
Forum Communications Co.

Wet or dry, hot or cold, every year can be different

ntil recently, the most periodicity that is not there. 1940, the average was a mere 15.46

U outstanding weather in
North Dakota history was
the drought of the 1930s.
From 1929 to 1940, the weather
was extremely dry most of the
John
WHEELER
The WDAY and
WDAZ chief
meteorologist earned
Climate records from tree rings
and lakeshore cores tell us that
large-scale droughts such as the
1930s and persistent flooding like
the past 19 years do not happen
inches, which is 30 percent less
than the other 118 years. This
illustrates numerically the havoc
that happens when either dry or
wet weather continues for a
time. Sometimes, the weather his degree at Iowa with any kind of simple multiyear period.
would briefly turn hopefully wet, State University regularity, if there is any The Dust Bowl was 70 to 80 years
but the drought always returned. regularity at all. ago, about the span of a human
The winter of 1936-37 produced a An English farmer’s proverb lifetime. A young person in the
record (for the time) snowfall of 82 urban population increases and goes, “There is no debt so surely 1930s would have had difficulty
inches. When that snow melted, contemporary water uses. met as wet to dry and dry to wet.” imagining how much our climate
instead of major flooding, the Red Now, fast-forward to the present. But it is important to understand would be changing. Likewise,
River at Fargo crested at 10 feet. Instead of being parched and that the dry years and the wet within the context of our ongoing
Not 10 feet above flood stage, but dusty, our soils have become years do not even out over time. wet weather, it is easy to look back
10 feet – 8 feet below flood stage and perpetually saturated. Instead of Our climate is not cyclical. to the 1930s drought as a historical
31 feet below the 2009 record flood. hardly flowing at all, our rivers By definition, “normal” weather aberration. But we all need to
Because the Red River had been are now routinely out of their is not “the way weather is recognize that each of these
reduced to a series of stagnant, banks, and severe flooding has supposed to be.” Actually, phases are really just samples of
muddy pools with no real flow at become an annual spring “normal” weather is only the the way our climate irregularly
all, the spring runoff from a nightmare. Devils Lake is 53 feet average over the three previous swings back and forth.
record snowfall was just barely higher than it was in 1940, and has decades. And every new decade, When you live with water, the
enough to get the river flowing grown from about 13.4 square these “normals” are recalculated years go by, and it is easy to get
again. miles to 327.8 square miles. to reflect ongoing trends. used to a certain set of
Meanwhile, Devils Lake, the In complete contrast to the The average annual circumstances. “We’ve always had
largest body of water in the drought of the 1930s, the weather precipitation (rain and melted enough water.” “We’ve never had a
region, was by 1940 reduced to a lately across the Red River and snow) over 130 years of kept flood here before.”
few acres of shallow, brackish Devils Lake basins has been wet, records is 21.36 inches. From 1881 But this use of always and never
pools surrounded by a vast beach wet, wet; the opposite of drought. through 1992, the average was 21.36 are taken from a perspective that
of wind-blown alkaline sand. Interestingly, there is no word in inches, but during the past 18 does not include enough years. In
Think for a moment about how English for the opposite of years, it has risen to 25.26 inches, a order to appreciate our region’s
our region would be affected by drought. The phrase “wet cycle” is gain of 22 percent. During the weather, we need to develop a
such conditions today, given our commonly used, but this implies a drought years of 1929 through much larger perspective.

CASS COUNTY
GOVERNMENT
Very Significant Flood Risk Reduction
Efforts have been undertaken by
the Cass County Commission and
Water Resource Districts in the past
2 decades. These efforts however
do not diminish the need for a
permanent solution. The County
Commission fully supports the Fargo Moorhead Diversion Project and
believes the successful completion of this project is vital to the entire
region’s future. Projects completed in the past two decades include:
• Acquired and removed over 120 of the most vulnerable homes in rural Cass County
• Constructed a 50,000 acre-feet flood control dry-dam on the Maple River
• Constructed the Horace and West Fargo Diversion Projects on the Sheyenne River
• Completed over two miles of earthen levees along the Wild Rice River and Red Rivers
• Completed numerous road raise and culvert improvement projects to improve access to
rural residents and rural subdivisions during flood events.
• Adopted land use regulations to preserve floodways, prohibit building within 450 feet of
rivers, ensure homes are elevated and have emergency access during flood events
• Increased public awareness and preparedness of flooding by developing a website with
comprehensive flood related resources including an interactive flood risk reduction map
• Developed an active flood planning process that enables staff to better assist homeowners
most at risk with individual protection plans and more effectively distribute resources to the
most needed areas
R001676926

PAGE 4
A FORUM
COMMUNICATIONS
SPECIAL PROJECT
SUNDAY,
JANUARY 29, 2012
The Missouri River flows between Bismarck and Mandan, N.D., on its journey to St. Louis.
MIGHTY
IN EVERY WAY
Missouri River provides ‘lifeblood’ in Plains region
By Patrick Springer
Forum Communications Co.
BISMARCK – The Missouri River
runs through the heart of North
Dakota. It’s an artery that infuses
the state’s economy, helped shape
its destiny, and will play a vital role
in defining its future.
The Missouri’s importance is
manifest in ways that are both
obvious and easy to overlook.
The Missouri is by far North
Dakota’s largest river. By one
estimate, its flows account for up to
LIVE
96 percent of the surface water
streaming through the state. It
provides drinking water for
thousands of people residing along
its shores, and to thousands more
who live many miles away.
Directly or indirectly, it lights the
vast majority of homes and
businesses throughout the state –
some from the hydropower
generated by the turbines of
Garrison Dam.
It is almost impossible to
exaggerate the Missouri’s
importance to a drought-prone
state where rains often have proved
WE
unreliable – a reality easily
forgotten in the midst of the
current wet period.
“This is our lifeblood,” says Todd
Sando, North Dakota’s state
engineer.
The Missouri River runs deeply
through North Dakota’s commerce,
culture and history – most
famously, with Lewis and Clark’s
storied exploration.
WHERE
“I don’t think North Dakota
would be what it is without the
Missouri River,” says Mark Harvey,
a professor at North Dakota State
University who teaches
environmental history and the
history of the West.
“Because of the Missouri River,
we are connected to other states,”
Harvey says. “We can’t be isolated.
We can’t stand alone. The Missouri
River connects us for better or
worse to people and interests
elsewhere.”
Before railroads and highways
linked the state to the rest of the
world, the Missouri provided the
primary means of transportation,
first by canoe and then the
steamboats that chugged up and
down the river, moving people and
goods.
Fur traders were the first
Europeans to ply the Missouri, in
search of beaver pelts and then
WATER
buffalo hides, starting with a trip
by a French nobleman who
SECTION 1
reached the Mandan villages in
1738, more than six decades ahead
of Meriwether Lewis and William
Clark on their quest for a water
route to the Pacific Northwest.
All these were latecomers to the
river, of course. The Mandan and
Hidatsa, later joined by the
Arikara, and their predecessor
tribes lived in earth-lodge villages
along the Missouri for thousands
of years. They live there today as
the Three Affiliated Tribes.
The Missouri’s historical
importance has been
acknowledged. The advocacy group
American Rivers, for instance, has
proclaimed the Missouri the
nation’s most historically
significant river.
Fed by Rocky Mountain
snowmelt and runoff from rain
“Because of the Missouri River, we are connected
to other states. We can’t be isolated. We can’t stand
alone. The Missouri River connects us for better
or worse to people and interests elsewhere.”
Mark Harvey, North Dakota State University professor
and snow that falls on the Great
Plains, the Missouri has sustained
towns and farms when other
waters failed.
“Every other river in North
Dakota has gone dry for enough
periods of time that they’re not
really dependable,” says Mike
Dwyer, executive vice president of
the North Dakota Water Users
Association.
Other rivers, including the flood-
prone Red and Souris, are fickle
compared to the steady Missouri.
“They’ve all gone dry so they all
have supplemental sources,” either
aquifers or reservoirs, Dwyer said.
The Missouri River in North
Dakota has reservoirs of its own –
huge man-made lakes that help
control floods, supply water,
generate power and provide
recreation.
Garrison Dam’s Lake Sakakawea
– the largest of the six Missouri
River reservoirs – holds more than
a third of the all the water in the
chain of artificial lakes. Its
powerhouse generates enough
electricity to light 216,666
residences a year.
The dams came with a heavy
price, however. North Dakota lost
550,000 acres of prime bottom land
and a sixth of its trees to Lake
Sakakawea and Lake Oahe, the
reservoir for Oahe Dam near
Pierre, S.D.
The biggest sacrifice was forced
upon the Mandan, Hidatsa and
Arikara, who lost 155,000 acres of
their best land, displacing 1,700
residents who were relocated from
river communities and scattered
among five remote districts from
1948 to 1954.
The costs of the dams, although
real and enduring, are outweighed
by the overall benefits, Sando says.
The significance of the Missouri
River was well understood by the
state’s founders.
In fact, exploiting Missouri River
water was the subject of one of the
fledgling state’s first smoke-filled
rooms. John Wesley Powell, a one-
armed Civil War veteran, scientist,
explorer and visionary of western
water use, addressed the state’s
constitutional convention in 1889.
He advised North Dakota to divert
water from the Missouri River to
irrigate faraway fields.
Diverting Missouri River water,
in fact, was long a dream of the
state’s leaders. That possibility
first seemed within reach in 1944,
when Congress approved a plan to
build the Missouri River dams and
associated water development
projects.
But what became known as the
Garrison Diversion Project came
under heavy criticism from
environmental critics and
ultimately was converted in 2000
from a massive irrigation project
to one aimed at delivering water
for municipal, residential and
industrial uses.
A big component of the project
was to provide Missouri River
water to the Red River Valley
where, in Fargo during the
parched 1930s, the Red stopped
flowing for many days.
Today, more than six decades
after passage of legislation that
gave rise to Garrison and the other
big dams, the Red River Valley still
waits for water from the Missouri.
Northwest North Dakota also is
working to divert Missouri River
water, but water has been flowing
from the Missouri to the state’s
southwest corner for 20 years.
North Dakota’s semi-arid
Missouri Slope, the rugged range
lands and badlands south and west
of their namesake river, offers one
of the most vivid illustrations of
the Missouri’s importance.
A pipeline from an intake in
Lake Sakakawea’s Renner Bay
carries water 90 miles to a
treatment plant in Dickinson, the
hub of the Southwest Water
Project, which delivers drinking
water to 4,000 farms and ranches
and almost 41,000 people.
“It’s the lifeblood of southwest
North Dakota, I can tell you that,”
says Mary Massad, manager of the
Southwest Water Authority.
Before fresh Missouri River
water started flowing through the
authority’s pipelines, residents
had to put up with water that was
smelly, tasted bad and was
sometimes unhealthy.
Dickinson’s water source, for
instance, used to be Lake
Patterson, which blooms with
green algae in the summer and
often shrinks from drought.
“It was kind of smelly fish
water,” Massad says. “It was hard
to treat and really wasn’t very
good to drink.”
Similarly, the water in Dunn
County north of Belfield, where
Massad once lived, contained coal
tannins. “The water was the color
of coffee,” Massad says.
People in the Hettinger area used
to drink water high in nitrates, the
cause of oxygen-starved “blue
baby syndrome,” and water
elsewhere contained uranium.
Missouri River water piped to
the southwest also is making new
industry possible.
A case in point is the Red Trail
Energy ethanol plant near
Richardton, N.D., which opened in
2007 and uses corn and Missouri
River water to produce 50 million
gallons of ethanol a year, pumping
a $1.8 million payroll into the area.
North Dakota’s Oil Patch needs
lots of water to sustain the boom
in drilling the Bakken Formation,
which requires fluid to force the
oil under pressure from pockets
deep underground.
The southwest authority
operates one water depot for the
oil industry with plans for two
others under consideration.
Meanwhile, in northwest North
Dakota, a new consortium is
moving to build a water
Patrick Springer / Forum Communications Co.
distribution center for the oil
industry with Missouri River
water drawn at Williston.
The oil boom, in turn, is fueling
a growth spurt in towns and cities,
where many new subdivisions
have an assured source of good
water.
“They all come knocking on our
door,” Massad says. “The
development we have here in our
region now is huge, and I’d say it’s
due to water.”
Before Missouri River water
became available, mayors in many
towns in southwestern North
Dakota had a hard time
persuading businesses or residents
to move to the area.
The region’s traditional business
– ranching – also benefits from the
availability of Missouri River
water. “It’s huge for our livestock
industry,” Massad says.
The Missouri and its two big
lakes, Sakakawea and Oahe, also
comprise a prime fishery.
Anglers took more than 500,000
walleye from the Missouri,
according to the state’s last creel
survey, in 2009. The recreation
fishing industry is big business.
Anglers spend more than
$60 million a year fishing the
Missouri, according to the North
Dakota Game and Fish
Department.
“The worth is more than that,”
says Greg Power, the department’s
fisheries chief, noting the Game
and Fish Department figure
doesn’t include economic ripple
effects.
It’s estimated that almost half of
all the state’s resident anglers will
spend at least a day testing their
luck on the Missouri River system.
The lignite coal industry – which
contributes $3 billion to North
Dakota’s economy directly and
indirectly – would not be possible
without the Missouri River. It’s no
coincidence that all of the state’s
seven coal-fired power plants, as
well as the nation’s only coal
gasification plant, are located on
the river or along Lake Sakakawea.
The power plants use water for
cooling and to produce the steam
used to generate more than 80
percent of the state’s electricity.
“The Missouri River is very
important to the North Dakota
lignite industry,” says Steve Van
Dyke, a spokesman for the Lignite
Energy Council. “That’s what
made it so attractive, was the
Missouri River and Garrison Dam,
the impoundment of water at Lake
Sakakawea.”
Missouri River water and energy
will be inextricably linked in
North Dakota for years to come.
But the state is fighting a battle
with federal officials over charges
the government wants to impose
for using Missouri River water
from Lake Sakakawea in the Oil
Patch.
Similarly, the state has
encountered environmental
opposition for decades to proposals
to divert Missouri River water to
the Red River Valley.
Both disputes serve as reminders
that the saying “whiskey is for
drinking; water is for fighting
over” still rings true.
Patrick Springer reports
for The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead.

Missouri River
by the awesome numbers
The confluence of the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers in western North Dakota as photographed in 2004. It is one of the only
stretches of the Missouri that has remained as Lewis and Clark saw it.
The mighty Missouri River begins with the
humble snowflakes that drape the jagged peaks
of the Bitterroot Mountains in Wyoming and
Montana.
Runoff from melting mountain snowpack
forms the Three Forks, a trio of rivers that
converge on a low plain in Montana to form the
headwaters of the Missouri.
The river winds its way to the north and east,
gathering flows from more melted snowpack
from mountain ranges and high plains.
The Missouri gets a big boost near Williston,
N.D., when it meets the 678-mile Yellowstone
River, its greatest tributary, whose last 18 miles
flow through North Dakota.
Not far below Williston, the Missouri widens
into Lake Sakakawea – the reservoir created by
Garrison Dam. Under normal conditions, it
In 2005, Lake Sakakawea, a reservoir on the Missouri River in
central North Dakota, was at its lowest level since it was first filled
nearly 40 years ago.
holds enough water to cover all of North
Dakota to a depth of 6 inches.
The water in the lake comes from a drainage
area of 181,400 square miles, an area larger
than the state of California.
Below Garrison Dam, the Missouri flows in
its channel through the heart of the state,
including Bismarck-Mandan, until it
encounters the headwaters of Lake Oahe, the
reservoir of the Oahe Dam, near Pierre, S.D.
Garrison and Oahe are two of the six earthen
dams on the upper and central Missouri.
Collectively, the chain of reservoirs holds
enough water to store more than a year of the
river’s flows.
By the time the Missouri exits North Dakota,
it has flowed 410 miles, draining 34,000 square
miles, or almost half of the state. But the river
PAGE 5
Fort Peck Dam
Garrison A FORUM
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SUNDAY,
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still has most of its journey before it.
By the time the Missouri ends at St. Louis,
where it joins the Mississippi River after
running through the country’s heartland, it has
traveled 2,341 miles.
That’s actually 205 miles shorter than its
measured length in the late 1800s, the result of
channels built to remove meanders in the lower
river to aid barge traffic between Sioux City,
Iowa, and St. Louis.
The Missouri River is the country’s longest
river. Its basin – 530,000 square miles – takes in
about one-sixth of the continental United
States.
Its dams, reservoirs, channels and levees
make it one of the nation’s most altered rivers.
Some call it America’s greatest river.
– Patrick Springer
The water level of the
Missouri River was so low that
the gauge on the Hermann
(Mo.) Bridge leg is useless in
July 2003. The Army Corps of
Engineers battled conflicting
court orders over the water
level on the Missouri.
Environmentalists wanted it
lowered to protect Map by Troy Becker
endangered wildlife, while Forum Communications Co.
Photos, clockwise from top: Mike
barge companies that use the Anderson / Special to Forum
river wanted it higher so they Communications Co.; Tom Gannam,
Associated Press; North Dakota
could remain in business. Game and Fish Department
PAGE 6 Patrick Springer / Forum Communications Co.

A FORUM
COMMUNICATIONS
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SUNDAY,
JANUARY 29, 2012

Chuck Gerhart of Mandan is shown near the Lewis and Clark Riverboat he pilots on the Missouri River near Bismarck-Mandan.
He captained the riverboat Far West II on a trip downstream almost to Pierre, S.D., in a trip that recalled the riverboat era of the
Work on Garrison late 1800s. The river Gerhart encountered was profoundly changed by Garrison Dam and Oahe Dam, but he ran into sandbar
Dam, 75 miles snags, a problem that plagued riverboats of old.
upstream from

Missouri’s untamed
Bismarck, began
in 1947. Six years
later, in 1953, the
earthen dam was
closed, allowing
its reservoir, Lake
Sakakawea, to
begin filling
controversies rage on
with water. Power, barges, irrigation, recreation among contentious issues
By Patrick Springer State Historical Society of North Dakota D0005
Forum Communications Co.
BISMARCK – Chuck Gerhart
suspected a few surprises lay
ahead on a trip floating down the
Mighty Missouri aboard a
paddlewheel riverboat.
He’d soon learn, yet again, that
the Missouri River can fool even a
veteran who knows its currents
well.
LIVE

Gerhart’s boat was the Far West

II, a replica of a famous steamboat
by that name that ventured the
upper Missouri in the 1870s, when
riverboats were the primary
means of transportation before the
railroad.
As Gerhart left the dock, with 30
or 40 passengers on board, he
eased the Far West into the
current that would carry the boat
more than 200 miles downriver.
But the journey would be on a
Missouri River radically different
than the days of routine riverboat
traffic. Gerhart’s departure and
WE

destination points were dictated by

two mammoth dams, Garrison and
Oahe, that now regulate the river’s
flows.
The Far West could only go so far
on the modern Missouri.
Once the boat had traveled 20
miles downriver, it encountered
the headwaters of Lake Oahe – and This undated image shows the river steamer Far West, which was built in 1870. The 190-foot-long
ran aground on a sandbar. boat supplied Army outposts in Montana and the Dakota Territory. It carried Gen. George Custer
The new Far West, like the to the Little Big Horn in June 1876.
WHERE

original, was designed to travel in

shallow water; it drew no more State Historical Society of North Dakota, 2003-P-02-008-1
than 4 feet. But that proved not
shallow enough.
“We had problems just like the
1880s,” Gerhart, 71, said of the trip
he took, near as he and friends can
recall, in the late 1980s. “When you
slide on a sandbar going
downstream, you’re in trouble.”
Showdown in Omaha
The country delivered a defiant
message to the Missouri River in
1943: No more.
The nation would no longer
tolerate the river’s frequent
rampages that spawned
widespread floods that devastated
cities and swamped crops.
The river’s destructive
unruliness determined its own fate
that year by inspiring the Flood
Control Act of 1944, which would
forever change the Missouri River. A steam-powered locomotive is surrounded by floodwaters of the Missouri River in 1947 near
WATER

On April 3, 1943, the Missouri at Bismarck. The river flooded five times between 1943 and 1952, the year it inundated 300 Bismarck
SECTION 1

Bismarck did what it had done

countless times before. It burst its
banks after a huge ice jam formed,
flooding thousands of acres with a
wall of water.
The river, clogged with huge
cakes of ice that hammered the
Memorial Bridge, causing it to
shudder, crested at 21.86 feet,
almost 6 feet above flood stage in
Bismarck.
Mandan, also battling the raging
Heart River, saw its business
district inundated and almost half
the town’s residents had to flee to
higher ground.
Similar scenes of devastation
played out along the Missouri’s
banks for more than 1,000 miles
through the nation’s heartland.
Damages were tallied at
$20 million, the equivalent of
$43 million in current dollars, and
homes with water levels 12 feet above flood stage.
1.8 million acres were inundated.
Officials gathered in Omaha,
Neb., where the city’s airport had
been flooded, and solemnly vowed
to take action.
Levees wouldn’t do the job,
Army engineers announced.
Taming the Missouri would
require a series of six huge dams
and reservoirs – immense pools to
hold back water to be released in
flows regulated by gigantic gates.
Work on Garrison Dam, 75 miles
upstream from Bismarck, began in
1947. Six years later, in 1953, the
earthen dam was closed, allowing
its reservoir, Lake Sakakawea, to
begin filling with water.
But the petulant Missouri River
would not wait for the dam to be
finished. It would flood again five
times after 1943 – in 1944, 1947,
1949, 1951 and, most notably, in
1952.
That year, in another ice-jam
flood, the Missouri surged to 27.9
feet, almost 12 feet above flood
stage in Bismarck.
The 1952 flood, considered the
worst in 42 years, drove 1,000
Bismarck residents from their
homes and inundated 300 houses,
sweeping at least one away.
As the water receded, an official
with the Army Corps of Engineers
gave reassurances. The big dams
then under construction offered
the only protection against such
major floods, said Lt. Col. R.J.B.
Page, the Garrison district
engineer.
“The Oahe Dam will, of course,
stop flooding at Pierre and Fort
Pierre completely,” Page said,
referring to South Dakota, “and
the Garrison Dam, after its closure
in the summer of 1953, will do the
same for Bismarck.”
Devastating floods would become
a relic of the past, thanks to the
massive dams. As well as
providing flood control, the dams
and reservoirs would generate
huge amounts of hydropower, help
supply municipal and industrial
water, irrigation, and support
barge traffic downstream on the
lower Missouri River.
MISSOURI: Page 7

The Missouri River floods Bismarck in this circa 1940s photo.
But the dams also would
transform the Missouri
into one of the nation’s
most altered rivers.
In North Dakota, all but
70 or 80 of the Missouri
River’s 410 miles flow
through a channel; the rest
flow through artificial
reservoirs.
The most natural stretch
of the river is near
Williston, below where the
Yellowstone merges with
the Missouri, says Greg
Power, a biologist and chief
of fisheries for the North
Dakota Game and Fish
Department.
The reach above Garrison
Dam near Williston still
has sturgeon, for instance,
a fish species that has
disappeared from most
places. “It’s quasi-natural,”
Power says.
Of sturgeon and erosion
It was no coincidence
that the Far West was
stranded on a sandbar at
the headwaters of Lake
Oahe.
Along the headwaters,
where the river widens as
the lake begins, the river’s
pace slows, allowing
sediment carried in the
water to settle on the
bottom, where it
accumulates over time,
forming deltas and
sandbars.
Siltation, as the effect is
called, is a major problem
on the Missouri River.
Sediment buildup plagues
the river cities of Williston
and Bismarck-Mandan.
The formation of a delta
south of Bismarck was one
factor in the formation of
an ice jam in 2009, which
briefly caused flooding
before dynamite helped
break it up.
Sandbars are a natural
part of the Missouri River.
In fact, management of the
dams was altered in 2004 in
a manner to promote more
sandbar formation,
providing valuable nesting
habitat for endangered bird
species.
Dozens of species,
including sport fish and
game birds, were declining
along the river, according to
American Rivers, an
environmental advocacy
group that proclaimed the
Missouri the nation’s most
endangered river in 2002.
That was two years after
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service released a
biological opinion that
required the Army Corps of
Engineers to manage the
dams to re-create the river’s
seasonal fluctuations.
The altered operating
manual for the dams
followed years of studies
and criticism from
environmentalists calling
for regulating the Missouri
River in a way that more
closely mimicked natural
seasonal rhythms.
Every year, the heavy
flows from spring melt,
with water flowing from
the mountains and plains,
would flush the river and
rearrange its elaborate mix
of sandbars and islands.
Then, when flows would
recede in the dry summer,
the sandbars would be
State Historical Society of North Dakota 0276-23
PAGE 7
A FORUM
COMMUNICATIONS
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SUNDAY,
JANUARY 29, 2012
“You can’t
have dry dams.
Hydropower is the
moneymaker.”
MISSOURI Todd Sando, North
Dakota’s state engineer
From Page 6 miles north of Pierre, S.D.
A crowd and a band were
exposed, allowing bird “You need head to had a depth finder to help waiting.
species like the least tern produce the energy,” Sando him stay in the river’s Many of the passengers
and piping plover to build says. “You can’t have dry channel. Although helpful, decided they’d had enough
nests. dams. Hydropower is the the finder could only read of riverboat travel, and
Releases from the dams moneymaker.” the river bottom below, not elected not to make the
are kept relatively stable to The ongoing tug-of-war out ahead. return journey onboard the
provide hydropower and between clashing interests, Once the Far West Far West.
reliable flows to operate as well as upstream states reached the open waters of The roundtrip voyage
barges on the lower river, and downstream states, Lake Oahe, however, the was in all likelihood the
as well as minimize reflects the inherent traveling became easier, first long paddlewheel
riverbank erosion. contradictions in running largely free of the obstacles riverboat trip on the Upper
The operation of the dams that must balance including snags and Missouri since the
dams was further modified eight authorized uses as numerous sandbars that steamboats stopped
in 2006 to provide for a diverse as irrigation and plagued the Missouri running in the 1880s, after
“spring pulse,” a surge of hydropower.
before the dams. the arrival of the railroads.
water that helps rare The Flood Control Act of On today’s river, the On the trip home, going
sturgeon spawn. 1944 was a compromise that
greatest hazard to boaters against the current, it took
The fluctuating river melded two competing often is posed by other a whole day to travel the
levels are good for birds plans from rival
boaters, moving at speeds last 20 miles.
and fish but exacerbate bureaucracies. “It was an adventure,”
far greater than the tortoise
bank erosion – a point of The Army Corps of Gerhart says. “I got to
pace of the Far West’s
contention among Engineers pushed the Pick experience a little bit of
paddlewheels, with an
landowners and plan, which emphasized what it was like in the
communities along the average speed of 4 or 5 mph.
flood control and Eventually, after 2½ days, 1800s.”
river in North Dakota that navigation. Meanwhile, the
deal with loss of land and the Far West put ashore Patrick Springer reports
Bureau of Reclamation’s above the Oahe Dam, a few for The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead.
flooding aggravated by Sloan plan favored
deltas. irrigation, municipal and
That is just one of the industrial water
ongoing controversies development projects.
involved in the balancing Washington merged the
acts required to operate the blueprints into the Pick-
Missouri River dams in a Sloan Plan, which
way that serves multiple authorized eight uses for
uses. the yet-to-be-built Missouri
During periods of River dams.
drought, including much of “Congress forced kind of
the late 1990s and early
a shotgun marriage and
2000s, upstream recreation
ended up with the system
interests clashed with the
we have today,” says Lee
downstream barge industry Get
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barge industry by a factor Steam boatin’
of 9 to 1, according to corps
figures. by moonlight
The argument ultimately Finally, after half a day of
was taken into account in rocking back and forth, and
the 2004 revised master using the paddlewheels to
manual for operating the wash away part of the
dams, allowing for greater sandbar, the Far West broke
water storage during free and resumed its
droughts. journey down the Missouri
But conditions can River.
change dramatically in Gerhart had to make up
only a few years – as shown for lost time. A reception
by the historic Missouri was planned for the Far
River flood of 2011, which West’s arrival on the lake
came only a few years after above the Oahe Dam, where
a prolonged drought. the boat’s owners and
So while coping with others would be waiting.
flooding that lasted three “We had to travel all day
months in Bismarck- and most of the night just
Mandan and elsewhere to get to Mobridge,”
along the Missouri, Gerhart says.
officials found themselves Traveling in the dark of
criticizing the corps for night was more Order your copy of the series today!
failing to anticipate the treacherous. A pair of
To order the complete five-part Living with Water series, visit theforumplus.com or send a check
possibility of heavy spring spotters on the bow helped
along with this form to: The Forum, Living with Water, PO Box 6022, Fargo, ND 58107.
rains following a heavy Gerhart keep a lookout for
mountain snowpack. hazards, including snags,
Name: Please send me the complete
Thus, the critics were fallen trees embedded in
saying the corps should the sand that sunk many an Living with Water series
have begun releasing more old wood-hulled riverboat. Orders will be sent to you after the
water sooner – the opposite “If you have a full moon, Address: Feb. 26th installment*
argument they had made that is much better,” says
just a year earlier when, Gerhart, who has 50 years 1 for $12.50
mindful of recent severe of boating experience on City: State:
2 for $23.99
droughts, they called for the Missouri. “We were
storing more water. very lucky.” 3 for $32.50
Todd Sando, North The boat, designed for Zip: Phone:
Dakota’s state engineer, brief pleasure rides, was 4 for $ 37.50
acknowledges that equipped with a bar and
operating the dams calls for snack area, but no sleeping E-mail: 5 for $ 40.50
delicate balancing acts. accommodations. Yes, I want important information and special offers Prices include shipping and handling.
Hydropower, by far the Passengers had to sleep on sent to me via e-mail. *Orders will be mailed by March 1, 2012
biggest economic benefit, the deck, using life vests as
requires storing enough pillows.
Mail this form and a check to: The Forum, Living with Water,
R001677605
water to run the generating Unlike the riverboat
PO Box 6022, Fargo, ND 58107 or order online at theforumplus.com
turbines, for instance. captains of old, Gerhart
PAGE 8 LIVING WITH WATER PAGE 9
Troy Becker / Forum Communications Co.

SUNDAY, JANUARY 29, 2012 SUNDAY, JANUARY 29, 2012

PAGE 10
A FORUM
COMMUNICATIONS
SPECIAL PROJECT
The ‘Jim’ is a
SUNDAY,
JANUARY 29, 2012
trial, tribulation
and home
“People say to us, Don and Donna McLean, of rural Mitchell, admit living alongside the James River makes farming tough, but they both love the
scenery.
‘Who buys land
there? You know
it’s going to flood
part of the time.’
James has a reputation as an unusual river
By Tom Lawrence
When we started Forum Communications Co.
we were told, MITCHELL, S.D. – The James
River has been a companion to Don
‘You’ll get a hay and Donna McLean of rural
crop every year.’ ” Mitchell for decades.
They have watched the James
Don McLean
rise and cover cropland, and the
Mitchell, S.D. river has provided for them in
times of drought when other
farmers couldn’t grow much of a
crop. The “Jim,” as some locals
call it, has provided a place to fish
and hunt, to boat and swim, and
offered magnificent views and
pleasant times.
A river has ups and downs, and
LIVE
so does living alongside it. The
McLeans, retired now and
enjoying life by their river, are
glad to live exactly where they do.
The James River winds 710 miles
and stretches from Wells County,
N.D., through eastern South
Dakota before it drains into the
Missouri River southeast of
Yankton.
The river flows through and past
small towns and cities, including
Jamestown, N.D., Huron, S.D., and
Mitchell. It is dammed in several
areas for recreational purposes
WE
and to ensure community water
supplies.
After decades of being a slow,
low river, it has hit much higher
levels since 1997, when flooding
sparked by heavy winter snow and
a sudden spring poured water
through the region.
That’s when the McLeans, both
76, started to notice a difference in
their land.
Don McLean was a high school
WHERE
history teacher and three-sport
coach and referee for more than 40
years. He and his wife moved a
house to a rise near the James
River shortly after he started
teaching. They raised three
daughters while McLean “did a
little farming” to supplement his
teacher’s salary.
He grew alfalfa and grass hay
and raised cattle, all alongside the
James.
When they bought their more
than 400 acres along the river, they
were assured the river wouldn’t be
Whatever the story, Mitchell is high and dry
WATER
SECTION 1
Water flows over the road at the confluence of Firesteel Creek
and the James River, the site of the defunct town of Firesteel, in
this March 27, 2011, photo. It wasn’t until the railroad came
through that the town was moved to a higher elevation and
named Mitchell, as seen in the background.
a problem. Nowadays, attitudes are
different.
“People say to us, ‘Who buys land
there? You know it’s going to flood
part of the time,’” McLean said.
“When we started we were told,
‘You’ll get a hay crop every year.’
“Well, it’s changed over the
years. And that started in 1997.”
National Weather Service
hydrologist Mike Gillispie, based
in Sioux Falls, says the record
backs the McLeans up.
The James River flows just east
of Mitchell. Flood stage is 17 feet.
The five highest crests at that stage
have all been since 1997, according
to NWS records. The two highest
measurements were both in 2011 –
25.33 feet on April 11 and 25.14 feet
on March 26.
Gillispie said the James has a
well-deserved reputation for being
an unusual body of water. It’s
known as the world’s longest un-
navigable river.
Gillispie said the river is nearly
flat, falling only about a half-foot
per mile as it winds through South
Dakota.
“I do know it is one of the flattest
rivers, at least in the United
States,” he said. “That’s why when
it floods, it stays flooded for a long
time.”
That flooding has been a concern
in recent years.
Walter “Sonny” Morrison has
lived in the same house near the
James all 73 years of his life. He
still farms on land next to the land
his two daughters work.
Some of his land is under water
now, and other land is surrounded
by water, and he can no longer
plant wheat or harvest hay from it.
Morrison said he wonders why
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
doesn’t release more water in the
winter, especially in recent years
with heavy snow. The water would
move through the river and empty
into the Missouri River at a better
rate, he said.
Instead, the water is released in
the spring, causing a great deal of
flooding. Morrison said he doesn’t
recall flooding being a major
concern for most of his life, but in
the past four or five years, it’s
Chris Huber / Forum Communications Co.
become standard.
Again, NWS records bear that
out.
In 1968, the high-water mark for
the year was 5.28 feet. In 1970, it
was 9.33 feet.
That changed in the mid-1990s,
and by 2010, highs in the 20-foot
range were regular events.
“A new river channel cut off a
point of land I have,” Morrison
said. “I lost 22 acres.”
Some land has been covered by
water and other land has become so them and move along quickly.
wet it is useless for farming or
raising hay.
Don McLean said a neighbor used
to grow some of the best soybeans
around, with top yield.
“That tells you a little bit about
some of the potential for
agriculture,” he said.
Flooding also sends large trees
and other debris down the river,
blocking the water flow and
causing other problems.
“It is costly for all the farmers up protect and conserve our natural
and down the river,” McLean said.
Patty Morrison, 41, who farms on quality of life in our communities,”
land next to her parents, said she
has also lost land to rising water.
Because much of it is hay land, she Conservation Reserve
cannot get crop insurance to cover
the loss, since hay isn’t considered
a crop, no matter how valuable it
becomes.
If the land is flooded for three
years in a row, obtaining crop
insurance is impossible. Renting
the land is also a major challenge,
she said.
Despite water covering once-
farmable land, their property taxes other things, filters runoff before it
don’t fall appreciably, the farmers
said. Sonny Morrison smiled wryly
as he said his tax bill dropped $4
annually.
It’s not just the decisions of the
Corps of Engineers that plague the Morrisons are farmers by
farmers along the southern end of
the James, the Morrisons said.
Farmers on extremely flat land in come high water or anything else.
northeastern South Dakota are
increasingly tiling their land, a
form of drainage that propels
water into ditches and, eventually,
the James River. That water flows
south and a lot of it ends up
widening the James, according to
farmers downstream.
By Seth Tupper
Forum Communications Co.
MITCHELL, S.D. – It’s peculiar
how chance and a quick decision
can affect thousands of people far
into the future.
Such may have been the case
with the city of Mitchell and its
dry perch atop the bluffs of the
James River Valley – at least
according to legend.
It was 140 years ago when a
pioneer named Heman Cady
Greene traveled up the James from
somewhere near its terminus at
the Missouri River. He stopped at
the confluence of the James and
Firesteel Creek, a distance of
about 65 miles as the crow flies,
and far more as the river bends.
The trip would have been a long
and winding one among gently
rolling bluffs and flat prairie, with Geological Survey report on the
grass arching up high in all
directions. I’ve never found a
source that could tell me if Greene
traveled overland or by boat, but if
he was in a boat, the arduousness
Chris Huber / Forum Communications Co.
The Morrisons and McLean have
suggestions to alleviate the
problem.
They would like to see more
culverts installed to move water
along. Currently, the water level is
often at least 2 feet higher on the
north side of roads, which often act
as mini-dams, Sonny Morrison
said.
Lower roads, the kind he recalls
from his youth, might also help, he
said. The water could pass over
Politicians have taken an interest
in the James at various times.
In 2009, then-South Dakota Gov.
Mike Rounds and U.S. Agriculture
Secretary Tom Vilsack signed an
agreement intended to improve
water quality, reduce soil erosion,
aid flood control and enhance
wildlife habitat in the state’s James
River Watershed.
“The USDA is proud to
collaborate with South Dakota to
resources while improving the
Vilsack said then.
The goal of South Dakota’s
Enhancement Program is to enroll
up to 100,000 acres of eligible
agricultural land located in the
James River Watershed.
Landowners in the program retire
environmentally sensitive land
from production agriculture in
return for government payments,
and the land is planted with
natural vegetation that, among
enters the James.
The Morrisons and McLeans
have examined their options but
aren’t ready to sign up for
government programs. The
upbringing and practice, and they
will continue to work their land,
The McLeans rent their land and
are satisfied with the money they
receive. They’re also leery of
restrictions that may be placed on
them if they sign up for a
government program.
JAMES RIVER: Page 11
of the journey would have been
mitigated by the calm of the
James, which can be as easy to
paddle upstream as it is to float
downriver.
The gentleness of the river’s
current derives from the near
flatness of its valley, much of
which was once an enormous,
post-glacial lake. The river’s
broader basin encompasses 22,000
square miles, including 14,000 in
eastern South Dakota and 8,000 in
southeastern North Dakota.
The river’s elevation falls only
130 feet over the course of 474
miles from its beginning near
Fessenden, N.D., until it empties
into the Missouri near Yankton,
which equates to a drop of about
3 inches per mile. At normal rates
of flow, according to a 1983 U.S.
river, it would take an object
dropped in the river about a month
to float through South Dakota.
MITCHELL: Page 11
 PAGE 11
Home on our own A FORUM

overflowing Sheyenne
COMMUNICATIONS
SPECIAL PROJECT

SUNDAY,
JANUARY 29, 2012

By Kristen M. Daum David Samson / Forum Communications Co.

Forum Communications Co.
The Sheyenne River has etched
its identity on North Dakota’s
landscape across several
millennia.
It has been a torrential surge,
boring into the earth, feeding on
rain and snow. Or a quivering
trickle, thirsting amid a deserted
riverbed.
These days, the state of the
Sheyenne is akin to most other
North Dakota waterways: too
much water for far too long.
Much like the Red River Valley,
the Sheyenne Basin was defined
over centuries from advancing and
retreating glaciers that once
buried modern-day North Dakota
under several thousand feet of ice.
Much of the evidence from those
prehistoric days is still visible in
the Sheyenne valley, as retired
University of North Dakota
English professor Robert King
discovered when he traversed the
river seven years ago.
In the opening pages of
“Stepping Twice Into The River,”
King chronicles the “swells and
hollows” whittled by the giant ice
sheets, and the gouged valleys of
the Sheyenne formed by glacial
floods, which flowed with the force
of 3 million cubic feet per second.
“It was not a wilderness, of
course, but it seemed a
wilderness,” King wrote of the
upper Sheyenne valley, “the relic
of an un-imaginable event that had
happened and disappeared and left
its mark.”
The Sheyenne River at 591 miles
is the longest waterway wholly
contained within North Dakota’s
borders. It is an enigma among its
peers in that it has no definite
starting point.
The river’s origin lies about 180
miles northwest of Fargo in a
sparsely populated area of north-
central North Dakota.
West of Sheyenne Lake, about 10
miles north of McClusky, pockets
of wetlands congregate amid
monotonous farmland. Sheyenne
Lake is isolated and hidden by the
surrounding hills. Its waters are
tame yet menacing –
foreshadowing the power the river
inflicts on communities hundreds
of miles downstream.
When water levels are high – as
they always seem to be recently –
the single-lane gravel road
separating Sheyenne Lake and its
eastern sister, Coal Mine Lake,
disappears beneath a few inches of
floodwater.
From that lonely rural respite,
the Sheyenne River blazes a
tangled trail. It juts northeast,
skirting south of Devils Lake,
before diving south past
Cooperstown. Several miles north
of Valley City, the Sheyenne hits a
man-made obstacle, where the
waters are funneled through Lake
Ashtabula and Baldhill Dam.
Completed in 1950, the dam was
intended to store water that
eastern North Dakota
communities – mainly Fargo –
could tap into in times of drought.
But for at least a generation, the
dam has functioned more for flood
control, helping to hold back
higher flows during a climactic
wet period.
South of the dam, the Sheyenne
continues its weaving path,
seemingly more threatening now
to more-populated riverside
communities. It flows south and
southeast through Valley City,
Kathryn, Fort Ransom and Lisbon.
That 63-mile stretch, in particular,
is home to a national scenic byway,
guiding travelers over mostly
gravel roads along the river’s
picturesque banks.
With one final switch east of
Lisbon, the river bends back north
into Cass County – visiting
Kindred, Horace, West Fargo and
Harwood before emptying into the
Red River north of Fargo.
In all, the Sheyenne River Basin
draws from more than 7,100 square
miles of drainage area across
eastern North Dakota. That
acreage is separate from the land
that drains into other nearby
waterways, namely Devils Lake.
Runoff from the surrounding land
flows into either the Sheyenne or
Devils Lake, never both.
Nature would keep the two
bodies of water separate under
normal circumstances, but their
fates have become intertwined
because of a man-made outlet built
to release water into the Sheyenne
and control the bulging level of
Devils Lake.
Not so many decades ago, the
Sheyenne River was docile –
nowhere near the flows it carries
these days. The erratic changes
have forced people along the river
to face difficult decisions they
never knew they’d have to make.
Some, like Scott Sand, have seen
their farms invaded by floodwaters
as the Sheyenne dredges new paths
through the ancient valley.
About two miles south of Pekin,
N.D., Sand’s family has lived and
farmed along the river for at least
two generations.
When his mother grew up on
that same land, the Sheyenne was
tiny enough to walk across.
Daniel Nielson
of Fargo spends
a Labor Day
holiday fishing
along the
Sheyenne River
near the
diversion on
Cass 17 south of
West Fargo.
But as of last summer, the river
spread as wide as 40 feet across –
slicing an altered course that
threatens the Sands’ farmhouse
during spring melts.
“It’s a very scary situation for us
right now,” Sand said, echoing a
sentiment countless other families
share downstream.
Aside from the routine floods
these residents have faced for
several consecutive springs, a
greater fear lingers on the horizon.
None dispute Devils Lake’s high
levels need to fall – but there’s
passionate, and at times bitter,
disagreement over how that ought
to be accomplished.
Many residents in the southern
Sheyenne Basin – particularly in
Valley City – worry about the
North Dakota Water Commission’s
steps to increase out-flows from
the lake into the Sheyenne.
Experts and scientists are
concerned about environmental
impact; farmers fear for their
livelihoods; residents weigh
whether to pick up and move
altogether.
“People like to come here
because it’s beautiful, it’s scenic,
the river’s alive,” longtime Valley
City resident Madeline Luke said.
Luke, 59, lives a block from the
Sheyenne and has watched many
of her neighbors leave rather than
continue the perpetual flood fight.
“We’re dead in the water here, so
to speak,” she said.
Kristen M. Daum reports
for The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead.

Still, living along the river has
been a positive, they all said.
When the McLeans came to their
property, there was one tree. Don
McLean planted hundreds, and now
their home, with a dazzling view of
the James, is surrounded by trees.
Their kids and grandkids love to
come to their house for holidays.
Deer are regular visitors, as are
would-be hunters who want a shot
at the McLeans’ four-legged
residents. Pheasants and wild
turkey bustle about and smaller
birds swoop past, singing songs
that fill the trees McLean planted
decades ago.
The river is also a source of
recreation.
“Had a lot of fun in the river
growing up,” Patty Morrison said.
JAMES RIVER
From Page 10
“Dad taught us to swim down blame them, since they, too,
there.” appreciate the beauty of the river.
She said she fished, boated and It’s just another way their lives
swam in the river for years. have changed in recent years.
Bullheads were once plentiful and The river can also serve as a
easy to catch, but now they have dangerous place, as cars slide into
been replaced by larger species it at times and people dive into or
such as catfish and the occasional swim in areas they probably
northern pike. shouldn’t. In 2010, a man being
City folks are a nuisance, drawn chased by Mitchell police dove into
to the river to hunt, fish and the water when it was at near-
otherwise recreate, the McLeans record stage and drowned. His body
and Morrisons said. They often wasn’t found for several weeks.
leave garbage and other messes “That was kind of eerie,” Donna
behind. McLean said.
More and more of those city The roads can be tricky in the
people are moving to houses on winter, when snow blocks them,
bluffs overlooking the river. The and in the spring, when water flows
Morrisons and McLeans don’t over them.
Don McLean recalls having to
park his car a half-mile from his
house and walk home late at night
after officiating a game. It was a
pleasant walk, he said with a smile.
Sometimes in the spring, they
have to drive all the way to
Alexandria to circle around and get
into Mitchell. The McLeans live 3.5
miles from Mitchell, but when the
James decides to close a road or
two, it can be a 35-mile round trip to
get home.
There have been challenges, they
agree, but they also wouldn’t
change a thing.
“From a housewife’s view, I’d say
it’s not easy,” Donna McLean said.
“But it’s the best place to live.”
Tom Lawrence reports
for The Daily Republic of Mitchell, S.D.

So flat is the James in some
stretches that high inflows from
tributaries can actually cause the
river to back up. In 1969, for
example, heavy inflows from the
Elm River in northern South
Dakota caused the James to flow
backward for nine days.
The James has been informally
dubbed “the longest unnavigable
river in the world.” Some sources
indicate the distinction comes from
the translation of the Sioux name
for the river, “E-ta-zi-po-ka-se
Wakpa,” meaning “unnavigable
river,” but I’ve always assumed it
came from early European settlers
who viewed the river during an
average-to-dry year and deemed it
too narrow and shallow for
riverboats.
Whatever the origin, records tell
us there have been plenty of years
when the river was a trickling
stream of a few feet in depth. John
Paul Gries apparently had such
years in mind when he crafted this
artful put-down of the James in his
1996 book “Roadside Geology of
South Dakota”:
“Now we have a puny stream,
wildly meandering, lost in the
broad floor of the James River
valley.”
Neither the “puny” nor the
“unnavigable” label has been true
of late, especially in the Mitchell
area, where the flooded river has
reached the decidedly un-puny and
very navigable record depth of
25.33 feet.
Whatever shape the river was in
when Heman Cady Greene traveled
it, he apparently liked what he saw
there at its meeting with Firesteel
Creek. He staked a claim and lived
briefly in a dugout on a creek bluff,
and soon built a house and moved
in with his family. Other
homesteaders arrived, and a village
MITCHELL
From Page 10
called Firesteel sprang up. In the railroad baron, instead of the
coming decades, as part of the townspeople themselves, had come
Great Dakota Boom, the area to select and control the land
around Firesteel filled up with where the new city of Mitchell
farms and towns. would take root, up on the bluffs
Historians tell us the settlers of about three miles to the west.
Firesteel probably hoped to We can deduce from George
capitalize on the advance of the Washington Kingsbury’s “History
railroad, which was headed of Dakota Territory” that such an
straight toward them from the explanation may have been needed
east. The late, great South Dakota to placate the people of Firesteel,
writer Bob Karolevitz tells us in who were so destitute around 1875
his book “An Historic Sampler of as to require the formation of a
Davison County” that a chance relief association.
occurrence during the railroad’s “It was estimated that twenty
advance set Firesteel down the families were suffering for food,
path to oblivion. fuel and clothing; and that seed
“… A railroad surveyor grain for at least five hundred
supposedly saw a piece of acres would have to be provided,”
driftwood either lodged in a tree or Kingsbury reported.
lying on high ground along the Whatever the reasons, Firesteel
creek,” Karolevitz writes. soon died, and Mitchell was born.
“According to local legend, that It’s a good thing it happened that
was indication to him that the way because the Firesteel site has
village was in a floodplain and been underwater an awful lot in
therefore not suitable for modern times. These past two
permanent development.” years especially, the city of
I should point out that James Firesteel would have been
McLaird, a historian and professor submerged by floodwater.
emeritus at Mitchell’s Dakota As it is, the city of Mitchell is
Wesleyan University, pooh-poohs high and dry, even when the James
the legend. reaches record depths. Some rural
“Quite often there would be a roads wash out, a few low-lying
little town founded with people residences are inundated and
trying to get ahead of the railroad fields and pastures are swamped,
and get ahead of the game,” he but a James River flood is more of
told me during Mitchell’s 125th an annoyance to Mitchell residents
anniversary year in 2006. “The than a catastrophe. For those
railroad would usually pass them relatively few people who live and
by and set up a town about two farm along the river in the
miles away. You find that Mitchell area, recent years have
repeatedly, so I’m very suspicious been a trying time as floods have
of whether (the driftwood story) become more frequent.
happened in Firesteel.” At other locations along the
Perhaps the story was concocted James, the situation is more akin
by Greene and other leaders of to dire. Jamestown, N.D., like
Firesteel to explain to fellow Mitchell, has its roots near the
residents why a faraway, wealthy confluence of two waterways – in
Jamestown’s case, it’s the James
River and Pipestem Creek. I don’t
know the history of Jamestown,
but maps show the confluence of
those waterways is still within the
city limits.
Both waterways are dammed
above the city, but this past spring
and summer, water was present in
historic quantities throughout the
James and Missouri river basins.
Historic releases totaling nearly
277 billion gallons were sent
rushing through Jamestown,
sending city officials scurrying to
place thousands of sandbags and
inciting all manner of griping
about the government officials
who control the releases.
Five years ago, I visited the old
Firesteel site with the old farmer
who owns it. It’s quite obvious to
the modern eye, even in dry years,
that the site is part of a floodplain.
After all, rivers in valleys
sometimes fill up those valleys,
don’t they? It makes me wonder
what those early settlers were
thinking.
Perhaps they never planned to
stay and were only waiting for the
railroad, hoping to strike it rich
and move on, never giving a
thought to the future water-related
consequences of the town site.
Still, I can’t help but wonder if
the legend of the driftwood is true,
and if that chance occurrence and
resulting decision are the only
reasons we weren’t filling
sandbags this summer in Firesteel
rather than watching the flood
from on high in Mitchell.
I also wonder about the flood-
related decisions being made these
days, and what consequences those
decisions might send tumbling
into the future.
Seth Tupper is editor
of The Daily Republic in Mitchell, S.D.
PAGE 12 Taming the Souris Christian Randolph / Forum Communications Co.

A FORUM
COMMUNICATIONS
SPECIAL PROJECT

SUNDAY,
JANUARY 29, 2012

Marvin Jensen stands last summer in front of the Souris River, which runs right past his home in Velva. Jensen has lived by the river
his entire life and never had his home flooded until the 2011 flood.

The Mouse that roared

By Tu-Uyen Tran Carrie Snyder / Forum Communications Co.
Forum Communications
RURAL VELVA, N.D. – The
“We humans, farmstead where Marvin Jensen’s
we’ve occupied grandparents raised him lies next
to the Souris River. There, he has
that space, and witnessed the worst flood and the
Mother Nature worst drought ever recorded in the
river valley.
wants it.” The worst drought was in effect
Steve Buan, National when he was born 75 years ago in
Weather Service the depths of the Great
Depression.
hydrologist
The worst flood happened this
past summer.
On the side of Jensen’s house, a
muddy line shows where the water
lapped under his windows. A
month into flood cleanup, there
LIVE

were still big pools in the yard

where tiny fish swam in the
sunlight.
In all the floods that came before,
the water never reached his
grandparents’ old home, he said.
When he built a new house 15
years ago, he made the foundation
10 inches higher than his
grandparents’ just in case.
“But I should’ve had another foot
higher,” he said with a weak laugh.
Still, he won’t leave the
farmstead, where he said trees Carl and Barb Clemetson watch as the swollen Souris River makes its way closer to their house,
muffle the winter storms and wild top left, from the Broadway Bridge in Minot, N.D., on June 22, 2011. The river, which begins in the
game crowd the fields. Canadian province of Saskatchewan and flows for a short distance though North Dakota,
WE

“That’s where I came into the
world, and that where I’m going to
leave it,” he said.
In a nutshell, that’s been the
struggle with water in the Souris
River Valley – not to mention the
rest of the state – when there is
often too much or too little water
and never just enough.
Planning doesn’t always help, as
valley communities discovered
WHERE
eventually inundated thousands of homes and businesses.
third the size of North Dakota.
When a lot of snow or rain falls,
all that extra water will follow the
river’s ancient path, and that’s
where people now live, according
to Steve Buan, a hydrologist with
the National Weather Service
office charged with forecasting
river levels in the Souris Valley.
wanted their dams for power
generation and for water storage –
they too feared a drought – and the
U.S. piggybacked on the two
projects. The first dam was
finished in 1991 and the other in
1995, respectively. The Lake
Darling Dam upgrade was finished
in 1998. The system was designed
but excessive rainfall over a large
area in Saskatchewan. It was so
rare the USGS has not ventured a
statistical analysis. Is it a 300-year
flood? A 500-year flood? To Wiche,
settling on one number is probably
as good as another.
What can be said is there has not
been a flood like this past summer’s

last summer. In nearby Minot, the
state’s fourth-largest city and one
of its fastest growing, 4,100 homes
and businesses were flooded, many
built by the river under the
assumption that upstream dams
would protect them.
Traumatic birth
It was a catastrophic flood that
gave birth to the Souris River
11,500 years ago at the end of the
last Ice Age.
According to a widely accepted
theory by former University of
North Dakota geologist Alan
Kehew, an ice dam containing a
vast lake in southern
Saskatchewan broke. The water
carved a path down through
Minot, then Velva, eventually
making its way back north into
Manitoba, where it joined the
waters of ancient Lake Agassiz,
the precursor to the Red River
WATER
“We humans, we’ve occupied that
space, and Mother Nature wants
it.”
Battling nature
The first major water project in
the Souris River Valley was
completed the same year Marvin
Jensen was born.
The drought of the 1930s had
been disastrous not just to farmers
but to waterfowl, which had
become a symbol for the
conservation movement,
according to Kelley Hogan, a U.S.
Fish and Wildlife official. Using
duck stamps, still sold to duck
hunters today, conservationists
established a system of reservoirs
to preserve wetlands, including the
Upper Souris National Wildlife
Refuge he oversees.
In 1936, the federal government
built Lake Darling Dam just
upstream of Minot as part of that
to protect against a 100-year flood.
In the years that followed, there
were some floods, but none that
really put the system to the test.
That test came this past summer,
and it swamped the system,
damaging more than 4,500 homes
and businesses in Minot alone.
Orlin Backes led the effort to win
support for the Burlington Dam,
but when it proved fruitless, he
agreed to the compromise. Critics
had said the Burlington Dam was
unnecessarily big, he said. “I guess
we bought into it. We thought a
100-year would take care of it, but
we were wrong.”
He recalled ruefully how happy
he was when flood insurance
requirements for homes in the
valley were lifted.
The end of those requirements
encouraged more residents and
businesses to move down into the
for the 108 years in which there are
records and there has not been a
drought like the Depression-era
drought for 116 years.
Worst for predictions, the
question of risk is tied to wet and
dry periods, according to Wiche.
When the statistical model for
flooding was developed, scientists
thought the chance of a flood is
random and is equal in every year.
Scientists now know that the
chance of a flood during a drought
is much less than during a wet
period.
“How do you adjust for these
relatively long wet and dry
periods?” Wiche said. “The science
is still evolving.”
In other words, a 100-year flood
predicted 75 years ago is going to
be different than a 100-year flood
predicted today.
“It’s kind of a moving target; it
necessarily would change if the

valley.
Valley. refuge. climate shifted to be wetter or
In some places, such as the Fickle water
SECTION 1

Fifty years later, Congress dryer,” Buan said.

rolling terrain of the Towner area
downstream of Velva, the ancient
flood spilled out across a large
area. In other places, its fury was
concentrated.
A person floating in the middle
of the Souris in Minot may look up
and see steep hills that are, in fact,
the edge of the surrounding
plateau 60 yards or so above the
river. In its wild youth, the Souris
had once scoured the top of those
hills.
Today, the Souris, also known as
the Mouse River (“souris” means
“mouse” in French), is often as
meek as its namesake. There is no
lake threatening to inundate the
valley, and the climate in the rain
shadow of the Rockies or close to
it is relatively dry. Still, it’s a very
small river that drains an area a
authorized another water supply
project, a pipeline bringing water
from the Missouri River.
Construction began in 2002.
After Lake Darling Dam was
built, major floods in 1969 and 1976
shifted attention to flood control.
The first effort, to create a
supersized version of the Lake
Darling Dam called the Burlington
Dam, was to protect the valley
from a 500-year flood. It met stiff
opposition from landowners
fearing loss of land and
conservationists fearing loss of
wildlife habitat.
The compromise was the
construction of new dams
upstream in Saskatchewan near
the towns of Estevan and
Alameda, and a slight upgrade of
the Lake Darling Dam. Canadians
Nobody knows how rare a flood
like the flood of 2011 might be or
how rare a drought like that of the
Depression era. Put another way,
nobody knows the risk of such
events.
Records and observations in the
Souris Valley go back only as far
as the turn of the 20th century,
making any prediction a matter of
debate, according to Gregg Wiche,
director of the U.S. Geological
Survey’s Bismarck office. The last
record flood in the Minot area, in
1881, was very early in the history
of European settlement, and, to
his knowledge, there is no written
record of it aside from a
newspaper article.
The 2011 flood, unlike most of
the others, was a summer flood
caused not by excessive snowmelt,
In the meantime, those who
would fight flood and struggle for a
secure water supply continue their
work.
Like Jensen, the people of Minot
and Velva and other communities
up and down the valley don’t plan
on going anywhere.
In fact, more and more are
coming to take advantage of the
booming oil industry farther west.
Heeding the lessons of the recent
flood, new homes and businesses
are built in the hills.
But the new people also need
water, as does the fracking
technology employed by oil
explorers. The Depression-era
drought may have other lessons to
teach.
Tu-Uyen Tran writes
for the Grand Forks Herald.

In December 2011, Howard Blegen walks across the frozen-over farmyard he and his family left in April 2011 south of Penn, N.D.,
due to flooding from Devils Lake.
The relentless closed
system of Devils Lake
By Ed Murphy
Special to Forum Communications Co.
Devils Lake is located in a large,
closed drainage basin of 3,580
square miles that extends from the
southeastern edge of the Turtle
Mountains in Rolette County to a
range of prominent hills just
south of the lake in Benson and
Nelson counties.
Devils Lake, East Devils Lake
and Stump Lake extend for about
40 miles along a northwest-
southeast trend.
A closed system means there is
no permanent source of surface
water into the system and no
permanent outlet for surface water
to exit the system. As a result, the
lake system is prone to extreme
variations.
During prolonged dry cycles,
Devils Lake shrivels in size and
clouds of dust are carried across
the dry lake bed. During wet
periods, the Devils Lake system
greatly expands in size across a
relatively flat basin.
Due to the current wet period,
Devils Lake, the second-largest
body of water in North Dakota,
has been relentlessly increasing in
size for the past 18 years.
The only natural release for
water in the Devils Lake system is
through the Tolna Coulee on
Stump Lake.
Water will flow through this
coulee and into the Sheyenne
River at an elevation of 1,458 feet,
almost 60 feet above where the
dried lake stood in 1940. Before
water can flow out of Stump Lake,
it must first reach an elevation in
excess of 1,446 feet so that it can
flow out of East Devils Lake
through the Jerusalem Outlet and
into Stump Lake.
In 1999, water began flowing into
Recollections of a recreational paradise
Kevin Bonham
Forum Communications Co.
Usher Burdick, member of
Congress in the 1940s and 1950s and
father to the late Sen. Quentin
Burdick, D-N.D., recalled the
abundant wildlife and fishing
bonanza in the Devils Lake Basin
in the latter part of the 19th and
early 20th centuries.
Born in 1879, he recorded his
memories of the region in
“Recollections and Reminiscences
of Grahams Island” in 1949.
Here are some excerpts:
“Fish, mostly pickerel, buffalo
fish and an occasional pike were
plentiful in Devils Lake in the early
days. From this source, the Island
and many prairie people had an
important food supply. The Big
Coulee, entering Devils Lake from
the north and emptying into
Minnewaukan Bay, was the best
fishing spot around Devils Lake.
This Coulee was in the very early
days an overflow from the Mouse
River and the waters from that
source and from streams entering
along the way contained surface
waters, made quite a stream of
fresh water. The water of Devils
Lake, in the main body, was bitter
and it would probably qualify as a
In 1940, the lake stood at an elevation of less than
1,401 feet, some 53 feet below its current record level.
Stump Lake through the
Jerusalem Outlet for the first time
in perhaps as little as 170 years.
The surface in the Devils Lake
area is underlain by glacial
sediment deposited during the past
1.6 million years when large
sections of North Dakota were
periodically covered by glaciers.
The glacial deposits in this area
vary in thickness from less than 50
feet to over 600 feet. The thickest
deposits occur in valleys that were
in existence long before the
glaciers came and filled them with
sediment and in valleys that were
carved by melting glacial ice.
The topography in this area
before the Ice Age was irregular,
with deep valleys carved into the
shales of the Pierre Formation,
perhaps somewhat similar to the
badlands topography of western
North Dakota. The glaciers
overrode and filled these valleys
with sediment smoothing over and
obscuring the underlying rough
topography.
Millions of years ago, the
ancestral or pre-glacial
Cannonball River flowed north-
northwest through the Devils Lake
area. As this ancient river system
incised into the soft shale of the
Pierre Formation, it deposited
sand and gravel that now comprise
the Spiritwood Aquifer, one of the
largest aquifer systems in the
state. A large portion of Devils
Lake overlies this aquifer system.
A series of hills just south of the
Devils Lake Basin are terminal
moraines or end moraines
marking the maximum advancing
edge of a glacier. These moraines
Elwyn B. Robinson Department of Special Collections, Chester Fritz Library, UND
Rep. Usher Burdick, R-N.D., reads with two unidentified North
Dakota delegates to Girls State in his Washington office in 1953.
salt water lake. …
“This coulee was once a place the
fish swarmed to in the spring of the
year. Just as the lake began to thaw
out the fish would leave the main
body of the lake and race up this
coulee to lay their legs. It was at
this season that the fisherman had
his greatest haul. The ice in the
lake would thaw first around the
edges. We used to row from the
shore out to the ice and fish by
lantern light. By hanging a lantern
on a belt, the fish would see the
light and invariably swim to it. We
extend from Minnewaukan to the
north of Tolna, bound the
southern edge of most of Devils
Lake, and encompass much of
Stump Lake.
Geologists have determined by
drilling into these moraines that
they are large blocks of rock and
sediment that were thrust or
pushed up by the glacier in what
are called “ice-thrust blocks.”
With the availability of this
subsurface data, geologists were
able to determine that the Devils
Lake Basin formed as a result of
large-scale glacial thrusting near
the end of the Ice Age. Sullys Hill,
a prominent landmark in these
moraines, is an ice-thrust block of
Pierre shale that was gouged out
from the adjacent Devils Lake
basin.
As the glacier that created the
Devils Lake Basin receded, glacial
Lake Minnewaukan formed along
the front end of the ice in the
present area of the Devils Lake
Basin.
Lake Minnewaukan expanded to
the north as the glacier receded
and stabilized at an elevation that
enabled water to flow freely from
Lake Minnewaukan through the
Jerusalem and Tolna outlets and
into a meltwater trench that is
now occupied by the Sheyenne
River.
At the end of glaciation in this
area, approximately 10,000 years
ago, the cessation of glacial
meltwater caused Lake
Minnewaukan to shrink in size,
creating the present-day Devils
Lake system.
The fluctuating water levels of
were armed with spears and as the
fish darted towards the light we
would let drive with our spear. I
have known several expert spear
throwers to get as many as 100
pickerel in a single night.
“Another method of fishing was
by setting nets. In the winter
months, we would sit by the fire
and weave fish nets, some of them
50 feet long and about three feet
deep. At the bottom, we hung lead
or iron at intervals and on the top
light wood floats, thus placing the
net in an upright position when
Eric Hylden / Forum Communications Co.
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Devils Lake have been a concern
to area residents for decades.
In 1940, the lake stood at an
elevation of less than 1,401 feet,
some 53 feet below its current
record level.
North Dakota Geological Survey
geologist Howard Simpson
recognized these inevitable
fluctuations in 1912, when he
wrote that the future of Devils
Lake “... may only be read from
the past … fluctuations in
response to variations in rainfall
may be repeated in the future as in
the past and those of a cyclic
nature undoubtedly be repeated.
Periods of rise will follow periods
of fall.”
Simpson, as well as earlier
scientists Warren Upham and
North Dakota State geologist Earle
Babcock, noted the presence of
beach deposits significantly above
the existing lake levels as well as
the natural outlets for the lakes.
Upham believed from the evidence
that he could see that Devils Lake
had risen numerous times since
the end of the Ice Age and flowed
into Stump Lake, but he did not
think that Stump Lake had risen
high enough during this time to
flow into the Sheyenne River.
More recent studies by the
North Dakota Geological Survey
and others have suggested water
levels fluctuated more frequently
than was previously believed.
Beach deposits and sediments in
the natural outlets suggest that
water levels in Devils Lake and
Stump Lake have repeatedly risen
and fallen over the past 10,000
years in response to changes in
climate, at times overflowing into
the Sheyenne River through the
natural outlets.
Ed Murphy is the North Dakota state geologist.
strung across the coulee. To set the
net we would fold it up in the rear
end of a rowboat and, as we rowed
across the stream, the net would be
fed into the water. When completed
the two ends were tied to stakes and
stretched taut. If the net was
properly made and set it would
form a perfect screen across the
coulee which was not more than 60
feet across. The fish were so thick
at this time of year that as soon as
the net was set, we could turn back
across the stream and pull up the
net and obtain a whole net full of
fish. …
“In later years when the lake
began to recede and the fresh water
supply from coulees became less
and less, the fish began to perish.
When Minnewaukan Bay had only
about four feet of water left and the
wind was from the east the fish
would go up with the waves and, as
the water receded, they would be
left stranded in the grass and
weeds. Millions and millions of fish
died in this manner and the stench
from the dead fish in Minnewaukan
Bay could be smelled for miles. The
fish finally disappeared altogether,
and I don’t suppose there is a fish in
Devils Lake now.”
Kevin Bonham writes for the Grand Forks Herald.
PAGE 14
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“I can assure
you that this
government will
do all it can to
solve the problem
Art Rice, 104, takes a walk around his farmyard north of Esmond, N.D., in October. Rice recalls a visit to Devils Lake by President
in North Dakota. Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1934 in drought conditions during the Great Depression.
We hope that
nature will
provide better for
you. I am glad I
came here to
North Dakota, and
Devils Lake: The saga
I’m not going to
give up attempting
to solve the
problem in North
of the great inland sea
By Kevin Bonham
Forum Communications Co.
Dakota.”
DEVILS LAKE, N.D. – Arthur
President Franklin Delano
Rice was 27 in August 1934, when
Roosevelt during 1934 President Franklin Delano
railroad stop in Devils Lake Roosevelt, traveling by train,
stopped at the Great Northern
Railroad Depot.
The president had been touring
the northern United States to get a
firsthand perspective of the
drought conditions in the midst of
the Great Depression. Back in
Washington, Congress was
considering the Missouri River
Diversion Project, a proposal to
LIVE
build a canal from the Missouri to
eastern North Dakota.
Rice was a young farmer, having
taken over the family operation
north of Esmond, some 50 miles
west of the city of Devils Lake,
after the death of his father,
Gilbert, in the early 1920s.
“I had to quit school to take care
of the stock and the farm,” he said.
“I was 15 or 16, something like
that.”
Now 104, Rice recalls the trip
from the farm to Devils Lake that
day, through Minnewaukan, north
WE
to Churchs Ferry, then east along
U.S. Highway 2 into Devils Lake.
“From Churchs Ferry along
Highway 2, they had soldiers
stationed at every section line,
every mile, all the way to Devils
Lake,” he said. “They were in their
uniforms out there, with their
rifles, watching the traffic. There
was a terrific amount of people
coming in that day.”
Rice arrived early and found a
WHERE
spot to stand to the west side of the
depot, where it just so happened
that the presidential train’s
caboose stopped, its rear platform
just about 15 feet away.
When the president came out to
address the crowd, the daughter of
the Minnewaukan School
superintendent handed him a
bouquet of roses.
“He had a crutch that he walked
with. That surprised us,” Rice
said. “At that time, we didn’t know
that he was crippled. He was
talking mostly about getting water
into Devils Lake, to freshen Devils
Lake and have water flowing.”
FDR’s message
“He will be shown the huge
dried-up lake bed … once a mighty
inland sea,” the Devils Lake World
reported a few days before FDR’s
arrival. “He will see the derelict
WATER
ship, Minnie H, now high up on the
dry shores of Devils Lake, which
SECTION 1
once plied proudly through the big
waters of the lake. The lake has
receded greatly again this season,
the only body of water being the
main lake, which extends from the
military reservation at Camp
Grafton to Fort Totten. Water 40 to
50 feet has now receded to less
than 8 feet in the deepest spot of
the lake.”
At the time, Devils Lake was at
an elevation of about 1,407.3 feet
above sea level, some 46 feet below
this winter’s elevation, according
to records from the U.S. Geological
Survey.
After returning from the tour, an
estimated 35,000 people in Devils
Lake listened as the president
described what he called
“alarming” conditions.
He noted a highway billboard he
had seen during his brief tour that
made reference to the Prohibition
Period, from 1920 to 1933. It read:
“You gave us beer. Now give us
water.” He responded that taking
on Prohibition had been easy,
compared with bringing water to
the drought-stricken area.
“I can assure you that this
government will do all it can to
solve the problem in North
Dakota,” he told the crowd. “We
hope that nature will provide
better for you. I am glad I came
here to North Dakota, and I’m not
going to give up attempting to
solve the problem in North
Dakota.”
“Boy, people were as happy as
could be,” Rice said. “They
thought there was going to be nice,
fresh water and it would be dandy
for fishing and recreation, cabins
and whatnot. They would get fish
in Devils Lake, and it would be a
real resort.
“But it never happened. We
heard about it every few years,
about getting the Garrison thing
going, to get water moving into
Devils Lake. But it never
happens.”
A promising land and sea
Talk of stabilizing Devils Lake
dates back to the European-
American settlement period that
began in the late 19th century.
In November 1889, just days after
North Dakota became a state, an
irrigation convention was held in
Grand Forks. It adopted a
resolution asking Congress to
study the feasibility of building a
canal, to be used for both
irrigation and navigation, from
the upper waters of the Missouri
River to Devils Lake and the Red
River and extending to the upper
waters of the Mississippi River
Basin and to Lake Superior.
Meanwhile, as railroads
expanded westward through
Dakota Territory in the 1880s,
some 20 years after the Homestead
Act of 1862, promoters lured
settlers with the promise of free,
fertile land.
Entrepreneurs from the Red
River Valley established a town
site called Harrisburg on the north
shore of Stump Lake, just east of
Devils Lake.
A front-page advertisement in the
Grand Forks Daily Herald on April
18, 1882, proclaimed Harrisburg
“the coming Metropolis and
potential capital of northern
Dakota and the principal watering
place and summer resort in the
northwest.”
It promoted the lake’s 18 miles of
shoreline, painting a picture of
high shores rimmed with trees,
and the potential of being a major
harbor for a fleet of steamboats
that would provide transportation
to other settlements that would
grow up all around the lake.
A grand hotel, the Wamduska,
attracted wealthy guests who
traveled from the East Coast for
waterfowl and big game hunting.
The promotion also offered hope,
if not the promise, that railroad
developer James J. Hill would
extend the line from what then
was known as the St. Paul,
Minneapolis and Manitoba
Railroad westward from Larimore,
Dakota Territory, to Harrisburg.
A year later, a new newspaper,
the Creel City Inter-Ocean, gushed
with excitement over Creel City,
the original name for the city of
Devils Lake, and the lake’s
potential development.
“The lake has an abundance of
fish,” Hill boasted. “Pickerel
weighing 30 pounds have been
caught; the average weight is from
3 to 10 pounds. A number of fish
have been obtained during the
winter through holes in the ice.”
Two commercial steamboats –
the Minnie H and the Arrow of
Milwaukee – were commissioned
for business on Devils Lake. The
Minnie H, a steamboat 125 feet
long by 30 feet wide, was built by
Edward E. Heerman. “It will be
fitted with hot and cold bath rooms
and will be constructed to carry
both freight and passengers,” the
Inner-Ocean reported.
The steamboats ferried between
ports at Creel Bay, Fort Totten,
Minnewaukan and Churchs Ferry.
Civil War Gen. William
Tecumseh Sherman rode the
Minnie H during a trip in 1884
from Creel City to Fort Totten,
according to historical data at the
Lake Region Heritage Center in
Devils Lake.
But the Minnie H’s command of
the Devils Lake inner ocean was
short-lived. The lake already was
dropping when it was christened.
Geologic evidence shows the lake
was about 1,441 feet in 1830. By
1867, the U.S. Geological Survey
measured it at 1,438. But by 1909,
when the Minnie H was
permanently docked, it was just
1,422 feet above sea level.
Slow rise
By 1940, Devils Lake nearly dried
up. With an elevation of 1,400.9
feet, it covered just 10.2 square
miles.
For the most part, it rose
gradually but steadily until
reaching 1,419.15 in 1956, before
the trend generally reversed.
By 1968, it had dropped to about
1,411 feet before beginning another
slow climb upward.
That wasn’t long after Art Rice
stopped farming full time. In 1964,
he rented out the land to a
neighbor but remained on the
farmstead, where he and his wife,
Irene, were raising their two sons,
Arthur Lee and Leroy.
Rather than retiring, Rice
started a carpentry business,
building houses in the area.
In 1977, the family moved into
the city of Devils Lake. Besides a
contracting business, Art was a
partner in a variety of businesses.
By 1987, Devils Lake had risen
again to 1,428.8 feet, refreshing a
fishing and tourism industry that
had dried up in the 1920s and
1930s.
Then, another short-term
drought lowered the lake to 1,422.5
feet by 1992, endangering that
fledgling fishing industry.
Between 1988 and 1992, a full
century after an Irrigation
Coalition first proposed a canal
from the Missouri River to Devils
Lake, the Red River Valley and
beyond, Devils Lake Basin
residents organized the Lake
Preservation Coalition to lobby in
Washington to build an inlet from
the Missouri to Devils Lake in an
Eric Hylden / Forum Communications Co.
effort to save the lake and its
fishery.
As it did in the early 1940s after a
prolonged drought, in 1993, nature
answered the call.
Since then, the lake has risen by
nearly 32 feet, to a 2011 record
elevation of 1,454.4 feet, less than
4 feet from the point at which it
would begin spilling naturally into
the Sheyenne River Valley and
then into the Red River.
In recent years, it has been
rising at a rate of about 2 feet
annually.
More than $1 billion has been or
is being spent to build up roads
and dams and to move or protect
infrastructure and private
property.
Flood-acquisition programs have
reduced the small communities of
Churchs Ferry and Penn to virtual
ghost towns. The town of
Minnewaukan, the Benson County
seat on Devils Lake’s western
shore, is being partially rebuilt on
higher ground a couple of miles
away. Even still, the population has
been cut nearly in half, to fewer
than 200 people, as the lake
encroaches on the community.
While there is no inlet from the
Missouri River, one small outlet is
releasing small amounts of Devils
Lake water to the Sheyenne River.
Two more outlets, plus a control
structure on the Tolna Coulee – the
natural outlet from Stump Lake –
designed to prevent a catastrophic
spill, will be built by this summer,
at a combined cost of about
$100 million.
In the meantime, Devils Lake,
which covered just 10.2 square
miles in 1940, grew to about 94
square miles by 1987 and to about
69 square miles in 1992.
In 2011, it covered some 330
square miles. That’s 211,300 acres,
an increase of 167,070 acres since
1992.
The outlet and control structure
projects have opposition from
people living downstream as well
as from within the basin.
Art Rice attended a rally in May
2011 on private land overlooking
the Tolna Coulee, where a small
rise in the landscape is all that is
preventing Stump Lake from
flowing to the Sheyenne.
It would take just a trickle of
cash, organizers said, to clear the
quarter-mile stretch of the coulee
to get the water moving and
provide flood relief to people
living in the Upper Devils Lake
Basin.
The tens of millions of dollars
being spent to develop more
outlets and millions in annual
operating costs, they said, could be
used to protect people living
downstream along the Sheyenne
River.
Rice liked what he heard that
day.
“It would be the simplest thing,”
he said. “All they’d have to do is
put a big culvert in and have a big
shutoff on it. And you could
control it. It should be no hassle to
get the water going there.
“They move water everywhere.
Down in Arizona, without moving
water, there would be nothing
there. Why can’t we get it done
here?”
Kevin Bonham writes
for the Grand Forks Herald.

Vern Lambert winces when he sees media reports of using a natural outlet from Stump Lake to the Tolna Coulee and the
Sheyenne River to relieve flooding in the Devils Lake Basin. “I think our people, when you look at our whole way of life, we never
built homes in lakebeds or riverbeds because we believed that if there was water here before, water would come back again,”
he said.
Going with the flow
Landscape changes mean Devils Lake no longer natural
By Kevin Bonham
Forum Communications Co.
FORT TOTTEN, N.D. – Vern
Lambert, an enrolled member of
the Spirit Lake Nation, winces
when he sees media reports about
using a natural outlet from Stump
Lake to the Tolna Coulee and the
Sheyenne River to relieve flooding
in the Devils Lake Basin.
Sure, Devils Lake has overflowed
from Stump to the Sheyenne at
least a couple of times in the past
4,000 years. And it probably will
again, perhaps within a few years.
That was natural. But now?
“There’s no natural thing about
Devils Lake anymore because the
landscape’s been changed so much,
with all the building up of roads
and dikes,” says Lambert, who,
along with Lorraine Grey Bear,
comprises the Dakota studies
program at Cankdeska Cikana
(Little Hoop) Community College
in Fort Totten.
Flooding in the Devils Lake
Basin is what’s natural. While it’s
an inconvenience, it will pass.
Lambert and Grey Bear, tribal
elders, describe it to their students
as living in harmony with nature.
“I think our people, when you
look at our whole way of life, we
never built homes in lakebeds or
riverbeds because we believed that
if there was water here before,
water would come back again,”
Lambert said.
Groundwater
The invisible water that sustains us
By Sean M. Soehren
Forum Communications Co.
DEVILS LAKE, N.D. – With no
furious flow or crashing waves, it
is easy to be unaware of one of the
state’s greatest water reservoirs.
Groundwater is one of North
Dakota’s most valuable resources.
More than 60 percent of North
Dakotans depend on groundwater
for one purpose or another –
municipal and rural water
systems, irrigation, livestock and
industrial purposes.
Water underlies land across the
entire surface of North Dakota
throughout 185 designated
reserves, as well as some that have
yet to be named.
“There are a lot of areas in the
state that there is not a named
aquifer, along some of the streams
and rivers and things like that are
unmapped and unnamed,” said
Carl Anderson, state health
department groundwater
protection manager. “But they do
provide water to wells that can be
used by people.”
Any permeable geologic
formation that contains and
transmits groundwater is known
as an aquifer. Some aquifers may
be hundreds of square miles, such
as the Spiritwood, which spans
1,800 square miles and is the
largest unconsolidated aquifer in
the state. Others are only a few
hundred feet.
“They are highly variable,”
North Dakota State Water
Commission director of
appropriations Bob Shaver said.
“Some are so small we haven’t
even identified them.”
Breaking waves on Devils Lake crash into the shoreline along
N.D. Highway 20 near the Spirit Lake Casino in September.
The lake has risen by about 32
feet since 1992, reaching a modern-
day record elevation of 1,454.4 feet
above sea level in June 2011.
More than $1 billion has been
spent to fight the flood and to
protect the permanent settlements
that have grown up around the lake
over the past 130 years.
While roads and bridges have
been raised, sewer systems
fortified, and some three to four
dozen homes at Spirit Lake moved
in recent years, Lambert said tribal
members hold onto oral traditions,
memories and stories passed from
one generation to another, to guide
their paths through life.
Much of Lambert’s research and
teaching comes from studying
tribal documents and treaties, the
tribe’s constitution and bylaws.
They teach the concept of dual
citizenship between the United
Across the state, 178
communities with municipal
distribution rely on groundwater
for their supply, and 94 percent of
incorporated communities get
their resources from private wells,
municipal distribution or rural
systems.
The amount of water in the
unconsolidated aquifers is about
60 million acre-feet, which dwarfs
the state’s giant Missouri River
reserve, Lake Sakakawea, which is
estimated at about 24 million acre-
feet, according to the NDSWC. (An
acre-foot is equal to 325,851 gallons
of water.)
Aquifers are commonly linear in
shape with tributaries that
resemble surface drainage
systems.
Groundwater is found in two
types of aquifers: unconsolidated,
which is coarse silts and soils, and
bedrock formations, which are less
permeable and generally deeper in
the ground.
Most unconsolidated aquifers
are the result of glacial deposits
and usually have better water.
“A lot of aquifers east of the
Missouri River are glacial drift
aquifers,” Anderson said. “They
vary quite a bit in different water
quality. Some of it is going to
depend on the materials, where the
well is screened and where the
well draws water from.”
Irrigation makes up the majority
of groundwater use at 95,000 acre-
feet in 2010, which is more than 60
percent of groundwater used in
the state, according to Mike Hove,
senior water resource manager
with NDSWC.
Photos by Eric Hylden / Forum Communications Co.
States and the Spirit Lake Nation.
“We teach how to become
constructive tribal citizens,” he
said.
It’s difficult because native
history is an oral history. Most of
what little written history exists
today was authored by non-
Indians.
The original inhabitants of
Devils Lake were relocated here
from Minnesota following the
Treaty of 1867, which established
the Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux tribe.
In the 15 to 20 years before non-
Indian settlers started building
permanent communities around
the lake in the early 1880s, tribal
members lived around, but not too
close to, the lake. Living in teepees,
families easily moved their homes
as climate and other conditions
changed.
While they hunted the
He said the percentages of
consumption haven’t changed
much over the years.
“The reality is, the numbers
don’t change a whole lot, with the
exception of industrial,” he said,
comparing studies from 2003 to
2010. “You may see it fluctuate a
few percentage points. You are not
going to see big changes.”
In 2010, the state used about
145,000 acre-feet of groundwater,
Hove said.
That’s about 47.2 billion gallons
of water.
The U.S. Geological Survey keeps
tabs on the water table levels,
hydrologic technician Dennis
Rosenkranz said. He said levels
vary greatly across the state.
“Out in the Devils Lake region,
the water is coming up with the
rise of the lake; some are even
coming above ground level,” he
said. “In the western part of the
state, it is pretty stable.”
There are about 3,900 wells
around the state, Hove said. The
state governs the use of water by
the prior appropriations doctrine.
“It is essentially first come, first
serve,” Hove said. “If there is a
water management problem,
where a resource is adversely
affected, the junior appropriators
would have to drop out.”
The largest growth has been in
the industrial sector, more
specifically the oil industry, Shaver
said. In 2003, industrial usage was
just shy of 10,000 acre-feet, and in
2010, it was about 16,000, according
to the NDSWC.
The need for water has increased
due to the development of oil
PAGE 15
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surrounding hills and woodlands,
these displaced residents who were
permanently relocated here
maintained an uneasy relationship
with the lake.
“There were legends about the
lake,” Lambert says. “There was a
spirit in the lake. And the lake was
salty. A lot of tribes used it as
medicine, so they called it Mni
Wakan – sacred water, mystic
water, or spirit water; that’s where
the name Spirit Lake comes from.”
The reservation boundary once
stretched to the lake’s north shore,
to where Minnie H. Elementary
School is located today, to the
flood-torn communities of
Minnewaukan and Churchs Ferry.
Had the city of Devils Lake not
built an eight-mile-long dike,
which currently is being raised
and lengthened to 12 miles, the
entire south and southwest side –
Walmart, the Holiday Mall and
Kmart and scores of other
businesses and residences – of the
city of 6,700 would be underwater.
“The flooding is the Creator
telling us something,” Lambert
said. “He’s giving us a sign. He’s
creating the flood for a certain
reason, and we should try and
figure out what that reason is,
instead of trying to fight against
it.”
Kevin Bonham reports
for the Grand Forks Herald.
industry fracturing and horizontal
drilling techniques, Shaver said.
However, using one of the
state’s largest bedrock aquifers
has allowed the industry to kill
two birds with one stone,
hydrogeologist and registered
engineer Jon Patch said.
The Dakota aquifer serves as a
source and a sink for water in the
Oil Patch, he said. Water is pumped
from the aquifer to pressurize oil
reserves, and the waste brines can
be injected back into the aquifer.
“It’s really kind of a perfect
scenario,” Patch said, adding that
Dakota water is very saline. “They
inject water to the great depth
(over 5,000 feet), and it is probably
similar in quality to the water that
is there naturally.”
The first water well drilled into
the Dakota formation was near
Ellendale in 1886.
Use of groundwater in western
North Dakota has shifted to surface
distribution because of continuing
enhancement of the Southwest
Water Pipeline, which draws water
from Lake Sakakawea. This has
caused a decline in groundwater
use from farmsteads and small
communities, Shaver said.
However, industrial use may be
picking up the slack.
“It’s hard to predict,” Shaver said
of future water use. “We try to look
at that and stay ahead of the game,
but some of it is so market driven
and technology driven; you just
don’t know what is lying out there
that is going to be the next big
change.”
Sean M. Soehren writes
for the Dickinson (N.D.) Press
 Forum Communications Co. photos
PAGE 16

A FORUM
COMMUNICATIONS
SPECIAL PROJECT

SUNDAY,
JANUARY 29, 2012

The 2008 Canoe & Kayak Races, sponsored by River Keepers, kicks off as racers leave the starting line under the Sertoma Peace
Bridge on the Red River between Lindenwood Park in Fargo and Gooseberry Mound Park in Moorhead.

“Right from the

get-go, they got a
pretty good sense
THE RED:
that the river has
a potential to kick
our butts.”
A young and restless river
Mark Peihl, Clay County By Marino Eccher
Historical Society Forum Communications Co.
BRECKENRIDGE, Minn.
archivist, speaking about
– If you didn’t know the
the Red River floods Red River was born here,
of 1873 and 1897 you might well miss it. In
midsummer, the confluence
of the Otter Tail and Bois
de Sioux rivers is a placid
affair, wrapped around an
equally placid park and
threatening to no one. In
the absence of their annual
deluge of spring melt, the
two rivers are so plodding
that it is a wonder they
manage to meet at all.
But meet they do and
LIVE
who call its basin home –
the river became a focal
point for settlement
because of its value as a
transportation route.
“The only reason that
Fargo and Moorhead are
where they are is this
happened to be the place
where the railroad crossed
the Red River,” said Mark
Peihl, archivist for the Clay
County Historical Society.
In the decade and a half
between 1870 and 1885, the
population of Clay County
alone exploded from about
70 people to about 17,000 as

slowly but surely begin a the area boomed as a trade

long journey north.
The road map for that
journey was laid out some
9,300 years ago by glacial
Lake Agassiz. At various
points, the lake covered the
land stretching from the
Red River Basin to Hudson
Bay. As it retreated into
Canada, it depressed the
landscape just enough to
give the river incentive to
follow.
From a geological
perspective, that timeframe
WE
hub. Those early residents
got a few rude welcomes,
with a sizable flood in 1873
and another in 1897. The
latter left 50,000 people
homeless.
“Right from the get-go,
they got a pretty good sense
that the river has a
potential to kick our butts,”
Peihl said.
In those days, the river
also suffered from an acute
sanitation problem. It
served as an outlet for the
Participants in the Brrr bike race last winter make their way along the 1-mile
course over the Red River and through Oak Grove Park.
a contest to coin a safety Built to retain water in recreation resource.
slogan. Her entry: “Taking times of drought, the dams To an extent, it’s
chances doesn’t pay – The also produced powerful working. Efforts like a
river is dangerous, night ’n pockets of current that cleanup program, a fishing
day.” served as prime traps for clinic, boat rentals and
Two hundred and fifty drownings. tours have helped spur a
signs bearing the slogan Most of the dams have detente between the public
were installed along the since been retrofitted to and the river. River
banks of the Red. eliminate the problem, and Keepers led the way in
Thousands of dollars went the last two are slated for getting the Red declared an

makes the Red very young.
“Most rivers in the world,
you measure their ages in
millions of years,” said
Don Schwert, a North
Dakota State University
geologist who has studied
the Red River for more
than three decades. “When
the Red began to flow, man
was probably already in
WHERE
early sewer systems of the
area, as well as a general
dumping ground for waste.
“People saw the river as a
water source, but also as a
place to throw garbage,”
Peihl said. “It is a bad
combination.”
Predictably, water-borne
illnesses ran rampant, and
the river took on a
reputation for being dirty
into summer programming
at parks and schools
designed to keep children
on dry land, and dire
warnings about the
dangers of the river were
issued early and often.
For generations, it
worked. “Many people
were told by their parents
and grandparents, ‘Stay
away from that river; it
overhauls as soon as water
levels allow. Even though
the phenomenon was
limited to the dams, the
notion of the river
dragging down hapless
swimmers stuck around.
“The word ‘undertow’
became used a lot in our
community,” Backman
said. “We still get
questions from people
official boating and canoe
route.
But in recent years, the
river has reminded
residents of the hazards of
getting too close.
When a wet fall and a wet
winter turn into a wet
spring, the plodding, lazy
headwaters of Wahpeton,
N.D., and Breckenridge

North Dakota.”
The Red is far too young,
in fact, to have carved out a
true valley. Mature rivers
cut their way across the
land and forge reliable
natural outlets for times of
high water. The Red,
Schwert said, “has
struggled over its short life
to carve a dynamic flood
plain.”
So when the Red spills
over – as flood-weary
residents of the basin
know well – it spills
everywhere. In wet years, it
sends residents up and
down the region
scrambling for
countermeasures and
praying for the best.
At its most destructive, it
simply wipes the map
WATER
that stuck around for will kill you,’ ” said Bob asking us about the become restless. The ice
decades after the fact (the Backman, executive dangerous undertows in sheets, in much the fashion
namesake brownish-red director of River Keepers the river.” of Lake Agassiz thousands
coloring from clay soil in Fargo. The nonprofit His group, founded two of years earlier, melt from
particles didn’t help). When organization is dedicated decades ago, has worked south to north.
a severe drought struck in to undoing decades of ill diligently to use outreach And the Red, in lieu of a
the 1930s, Peihl said, “it will toward the Red. and education programs to mature floodplain to
certainly gave people a The installation of a repair the river’s relieve the burden, looks
sense of what the river series of low-head dams in reputation. Backman for another way out.
could become: a fetid, the river compounded the hopes to restore the Red to Marino Eccher writes
stinking, open sewer.” Red’s deadly reputation. its former glory as a for The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead
But as Peihl and others
tell it, not even that
unsavory situation ruined
the area’s relationship with
the Red. Indeed, until the
middle of the 20th century,
it was a thriving recreation
spot for boating, fishing and
swimming. Photos from
those years depict bustling
water parades, with
spectators gathered on one

clean: In 1826, a flood bank and entertainment on

believed to be the worst in the other.
SECTION 1

recorded history (perhaps Instead, the turning point

10 feet higher than the 1997
flood) effectively ended
settlement near the
Canadian border.
But such incidents belie a
river that is meek by
nature. From start to
finish, its elevation falls
just 233 feet over 545 miles.
The slow, gentle decline
makes for a weak flow. In
some dry years, the Red
stops running altogether,
subjecting the region to a
disaster on the opposite
end of the spectrum:
drought.
In spite of those
extremes – drivers of no
shortage of tension
between the river and those
came in 1944. That summer,
five children drowned in
the river. One was 12; the
other four were 5 years old
or younger.
“People in the community
were absolutely horrified,”
Peihl said. “They could’ve
come away with a lesson –
maybe, ‘Parents, watch
your kids a little better.’
What they did is, basically
they blamed the river.”
The next year, the Fargo
and Moorhead Junior
Chambers of Commerce
went on a mission to
improve river safety. That
April, they awarded a $25
war bond to a 12-year-old
Moorhead girl for winning
SECTION 2

Series examines flooding from Minnesota lakes to Montana border

elcome to the second installment of television and on websites affiliated with the

W
flooding.
“Living with Water.”
“Living with Water” is a five-part
series. Today’s installment deals with

Recently, flooding has been the most obvious

William C.
MARCIL
Forum
Communications
company’s properties.
Personnel from a number of our media outlets
have helped put this section together. Mike
Jacobs, editor and publisher of the Grand Forks
Herald, has been project coordinator.
water issue in our region. Finding ways to fight Co. chairman
We welcome your comments at
floods and to avoid floods is critical in the Lakes mjacobs@gfherald.com. Or you can write to
Country of Minnesota and in the river basins of Water Project, P.O. Box 6008, Grand Forks, ND
North and South Dakota. 58206-6008.
Next week’s installment of “Living with Water” Copies of the series are available by
takes up the issue of water supply, including completing the coupon printed in today’s
storage, always of critical importance. section.
Forum Communications Co. is proud to present the thought- Enjoy!
provoking and educational series in our newspapers, on radio and William C. Marcil, chairman, Forum Communications Co.

Discuss this series at water.areavoices.com

 Michael Vosburg / Forum Communications Co.
PAGE 2
A FORUM
COMMUNICATIONS
SPECIAL PROJECT

SUNDAY,
FEBRUARY 5, 2012

ON THE COVER
Devils Lake waters
surround the Spirit Lake
Casino on the Spirit Lake
Reservation in June 2010.
Forum Communications Co.
OVERWHELMS US

Sightseers take in the views of the flooded Red River on the Moorhead Center Mall parking ramp in April 2011.

Sometimes water hurts

those who value it so much
hat are we to make of has been the we lovers of weather conditions, essentially

W ourselves, we people of
the plains and hills, we
rule rather
than the Jack
our rivers and
lakes have
ignoring the best engineering
efforts of those who would save us
WATER

people who love the

water when it serves us, yet hate it
when it hurts us? What are we to
make of a pattern of development
so routine and ultimately foolish
that it has been inevitable from the
start – since settlement before the
territories became states – that
flooding would be as much a part
of our lives as the vast open spaces
and big skies?
Pick a place: the Lakes Country
of western Minnesota; the oxbows
of the Red and Sheyenne rivers;
the silt-laden Missouri River;
mysterious Devils Lake; the
usually meek but sometimes
mighty Mouse River. Any one of
those waters, at any time, can and
has delivered tragedy. In the giant
swath of land from western
Minnesota to the confluence of the
Missouri and Yellowstone rivers
SECTION 2
WHEN
exception. In
2010 and ’11,
high water
was
ubiquitous –
nearly every
lake, river,
even
historically
low-water
sloughs, rose to elevations never
seen in modern times.
Modern times? What do we
really know from that blink on the
geologic calendar? Floods of
gigantic proportions have
inundated the land for as long as
records have been kept – in some
instances 250 years. Newer
methods of measuring
floodwaters and river crests – and
assessing damage – have raised
flood forecasting to a sophisticated
ZALESKI never learned.
From the
from high water.
And today the risks to life and
Editorial page
start, we property are bigger than they were
editor for
The Forum of crowded along a century ago. Slow learners, all of
Fargo-Moorhead waterways, in us, we’ve continued to build in
part for vulnerable floodplains, hoping
commercial against hope that a levee here, a
purposes dam there will keep us dry
(riverboats on permanently. To date, it has not
the Red and happened.
Missouri) and in part because it’s So in 2012, we find ourselves in
just darn nice to be near the water this beautiful region of lakes,
(expensive homes around lakes rivers, unnamed coulees and
and too close to flood-prone sloughs, and reservoirs and dams,
rivers). essentially confronting the
Our river cities developed mostly problem of flooding that has
without serious regard to the plagued the land from the
threat of flooding. High water beginning. This second section of
didn’t happen that often, and when Forum Communications Co.’s
it did, recovery usually was “Living with Water” offers a broad
acceptable. Often the areas that view of flooding and flood
flooded near cities were potential. Our writers also focus
undeveloped farmland or on how individuals cope not only

near the North Dakota-Montana
line, there are few places that have
been safe from high water. Sure,
the region has been very dry at
times. But when conditions turn
wet, get out of the way. For
example, since the early 1990s,
flooding somewhere in the region
science. The difference between
now and a flood a century ago is
that the sciences of hydrology,
geology and meteorology can tell
us why it happened, how it
happened.
But nothing prevents it from
happening. And that’s the lesson
neighborhoods without the
political clout to secure protection.
Eventually, dams on the Missouri,
James and Mouse rivers provided
flood protection for all, it seemed,
but in recent years, it’s proved to
be false security. As they have done
for millennia, the rivers respond to
with high water but with living
under the perennial threat of
flooding.
Yes, we are people of the lakes
and rivers, people of the hills and
prairies. But we are also, as we
have been for several hundred
years, people of the flood.

In upcoming sections Join us at water.areavoices.com

SECTION 1: JAN 29
Water where we live: From
drought to flood, water
bedevils us
FEB. 12
Water when we need it:
Sometimes, there isn’t
enough
FEB. 19
Keeping our water clean:
Quality poses challenges
throughout the area
FEB. 26
Making water policy: A
maze of agencies manage
resources in the region
Have a story to tell about living
with water? Then please visit our
Living with Water website at
http://water.areavoices.com/ to read
more about this project, to interact with
others who are contributing and to tell us
your own story.
Also on the site, you’ll find a library of
water-related news stories from regional
Forum Communications Co. newspapers,
and you can visit our collection of water
resource Web links, and much more.
This project’s mission is to build
understanding about water and its
impact on our lives across the region,
and your contributions will lead to a
deeper understanding of the issues
surrounding water. Discuss it with us.

This field north of Wolverton, Minn., sits under water in April 2011.
Why, oh why, is it so wet?
sk a room full of people to
A explain why the rivers
and lakes across our
region have been flooding
so much in recent years, and you
will get myriad answers. Some
answers will have elements of
truth. Some will be based on
myths that need to be dispelled.
To begin with, the fact that the
Red River flows northward is not
why it floods the way it does.
Once the Red tops its banks, it
spreads out across the flat terrain
for miles. Ice in the river channel
cannot possibly be responsible for
a 10- to 20-mile-wide river. Rather,
it is the lack of slope downstream
that causes flooding.
The average drop of the Red
River from Wahpeton, N.D., to
Halstad, Minn., is about 5 inches
per mile. North of Grand Forks,
the slope drops to 3 inches per mile.
Between Drayton and Pembina,
N.D., the slope is 1½ inches per
mile. This is one flat river valley.
When waters gather due to
snowmelt or heavy rain, the slope
in the valley is just not able to
move that water downstream as
quickly as it gathers, causing the
waters to rise out of the river
channel and spread out over the
land.
Second, urban sprawl is not a
significant contributor to the
John
WHEELER
The WDAY and
WDAZ chief
meteorologist earned
his degree at Iowa
State University
increase in flooding.
It is true that rain falling on
concrete does not soak into the
soil but drains directly into the
river. But the percentage of land
covered in concrete remains
small. Plus, there is no evidence
of increased flooding immediately
downstream from urban areas
that cannot be otherwise
accounted for.
What about changes in the way
water drains from farm fields to
the river systems?
Since the 1880s, farmers have
been draining wetlands, building
ditches and sculpting their land to
allow fields to dry out more
quickly in the spring and after
heavy rains. Intuitively, this must
have an effect because it means
water gets to the river faster.
However, a comparison of
annual stream flow totals to the
five-year running average of
precipitation shows that the ratio
between these two has, over time,
changed only a little.
Essentially, when it is dry, there
is very little flooding, and when it
is wet, flooding becomes a problem.
And the effect is cumulative.
A run of dry years, as in the
1930s, reduces the water table to
such low levels that the risk of
flooding goes essentially to zero,
and even a very snowy winter
cannot create flooding. On the
other hand, the current run of
wet years has filled the lakes, the
wetlands and the reservoirs to the
point that now just slightly
above-average precipitation
causes serious flooding.
Devils Lake displays the same
accumulative effect.
Its lowest modern-day level was
not at the height of the 1930s
drought, but in October 1940,
when the lake was barely a mud
puddle. During the past 19 years of
wet weather, Devils Lake has
risen and grown to new levels
virtually every year. With the
repetition of heavy winter snows
and frequent summer downpours,
the water just keeps coming.
Flash back to the room full of
people. Ask them why our
weather is wetter than it used to
be. Again there will be
disagreement.
Some will lay blame on global
climate change. Some will
Michael Vosburg / Forum Photo Editor
PAGE 3
A FORUM
COMMUNICATIONS
SPECIAL PROJECT
SUNDAY,
FEBRUARY 5, 2012
vehemently deny the very
possibility of such a thing, saying
it is merely natural climate cycles.
Both responses are based in
political dogma. Reality in
weather is rarely so simple.
From intrusions of glacial ice to
decades-long drought, natural
cycles are certainly capable of
tumultuous changes. However, it is
foolish to categorically deny that
human-caused changes in our
atmosphere are incapable of
changing climate.
The ongoing 19-year wet period
likely has not one simple cause but
many causes, layered on top of one
another in a way that makes them
difficult to identify. This means, of
course, that there is no way of
knowing what direction our
climate will go next.
Will it remain wet? Will the
flooding get even worse? Would it
be possible for the climate to
suddenly swing back into a
multiyear drought that would
leave us wanting for water?
A big-picture view of our climate
makes it clear that all of these
things can be expected. What we
cannot tell is when to expect the
changes because our climate, like
today’s weather, is inherently
unpredictable.
John Wheeler is the
chief meteorologist at WDAY and WDAZ.

PAGE 4
A FORUM
COMMUNICATIONS
SPECIAL PROJECT
SUNDAY,
FEBRUARY 5, 2012
ONLINE
Watch Howard Blegen’s
“The Demise of a
Community,” and a video
produced in 2010 by
Northern Plains Electric
Cooperative, Cando, N.D.,
at water.areavoices.com
Howard Blegen, a farmer from rural Churchs Ferry, N.D., produced a DVD that illustrates the plight of farmers and farmsteads
being flooded by the rising Devils Lake.
Map by Troy Becker
Abandon farm
Forum Communications Co.
US
Families leave farmsteads they’ve held for generations
By Kevin Bonham
Forum Communications Co.
PENN, N.D. – Howard Blegen
waited until the ground froze late
OVERWHELMS
this past fall to haul furniture and
other belongings from the rural
house his family was forced to
abandon last spring.
As he walked through the yard,
he found bicycles, duck decoys, a
fishing net, a lawn mower, a
portable basketball hoop and more
frozen in time under a thick layer
of crystal-clear ice covering 2 feet
or more of water in his yard.
At the edge of the yard, 4-foot-
high fence posts protruded just
about a foot out of the ice.
A pickup and a car – a Chevy
Lumina – had become rusting
metal sculptures in the ice, along
with wagons, tools and dozens of
other items stuck in place inside
the Quonset.
“I wanted to get the vehicles out,
but there wasn’t time,” he said.
It was April 29, 2011, when water
overpowered a nearby country
road that had been serving as a
dike, rushing toward Blegen’s
farmstead and those of a dozen or
more of his neighbors in this part
of the Upper Devils Lake Basin,
from Penn to Churchs Ferry and
Minnewaukan.
“It was a Sunday, and I was
outside with a cup of coffee, and I
heard this sound – I can’t really
explain it – it was a noise I hadn’t
heard before. Later on, I went out
and I looked south across my place;
you could see the water coming.
“There was no longer time to box
things up and pack them nice, like
we were doing. We were dumping
drawers in boxes to get what we
could and get out. That night, the
water was coming over the road.
“We didn’t dare stay there that
night,” he said. “The first thing we
WATER
felt, I guess, was panic. We expected
we’d have a fair amount of time
before the lake actually rose high
enough to come in.”
The Blegens and several
neighboring families stayed in
motels in Devils Lake that night.
“I came back the next day and
was able to make it through the
water, and then I continued to
finish getting some clothing and get
what I could,” Blegen said.
He hitched a trailer onto a
tractor, driving through about a
half-mile of water up to the
hubcaps to get out.
“On Tuesday, I couldn’t get in. So,
I walked across the fields and
hills,” he said.
A flood on record
Like his neighbors, Blegen has
SECTION 2
been keeping a watchful eye on the
WHEN
rising lake for several years now,
knowing that it was just a matter of
time before they would be forced to
leave.
In 2010, he produced a video, a
DVD, “The Demise of a
Community,” to illustrate the plight
of scores of people who had lost
their livelihoods and even their
homes as a result of the flood that
keeps spreading, year after year,
across the upper Devils Lake Basin.
“The past several years have been
heartbreaking for many families
as, one by one, homesteads that
have been around for 120-plus years
are slowly devoured by a hungry
and cancerous-like flood and have
been or soon will be abandoned,”
he said as he narrated a story of
despair, of third-, fourth- and even
Churchs
Ferry
Penn
Minnewauken
Minnewaukan
fifth-generation families being
driven away.
Background music features
country pianist Floyd Cramer
performing Simon and Garfunkel’s
hit song from the early 1970s,
“Bridge Over Troubled Water,” and
a mix of other songs – country,
reggae, pop and gospel.
“They have been consumed by a
flood that moves slowly, nibbling
away at a community of farm
families who have worked for
generations to build up a
productive farm area,” the
narration continues, “eating away
and gradually destroying that
which our grandparents and
parents worked all their lives to
build up – a neighborhood of
friends and family, where the coffee
was always on and a lending hand
was always extended.”
The video shows water-covered
roads and bridges, fields and
farmsteads, both from the air and
the ground, as a musical medley
plays in the background.
“It wears on you. How can you
measure the toll on the families?
Some say that these people out here
are in their 70s and 80s, and it’s
time to move into town,” Blegen
said. “But losing your home like
this, watching all you’ve worked for
all your life, it takes a toll.”
They’re still moving. Many of
them left last spring, around the
time that the Blegens were forced
out.
Some have moved into the city of
Devils Lake or to other nearby
communities, some to other cities
in North Dakota and beyond.
The majority of the homes here
are built on land high enough to be
out of danger as the lake elevation
nears its natural spill elevation of
1,458 feet. But the farm fields and
the roads that connect them have
been disappearing for more than a
decade.
“Picturesque farmsteads that
once stood surrounded by trees,
shrubs, green grass and flowers,
where gardens flourished, children
ran and played, dogs chased the
cats and the sunsets were gorgeous
have been replaced with drowned-
out trees, muskrats and cattails,”
Blegen says in the video.
Looking back
In April 2011, it was the Blegen
family’s turn to walk away.
“When we took a motel room in
Devils Lake, we realized we were
there with some of the other
neighbors. We were all homeless,”
Blegen said. “At that time, we really
didn’t have an idea of what we were
going to do.
“It’s not only me,” he said while
standing on a hill overlooking his
old house and farmyards for miles
around, all tightly packed in a fresh
layer of ice. “It’s the people that
lived over there on that farmstead,
and the people that lived over there,
and the people that lived over there,
Devils Lake
the people that lived over there, the
people that lived over there, the
people that lived over there, and we
can continue on.”
The video had been a cry for help,
an attempt to show government
how people were suffering from
this near-two-decade-old flood.
The school bus had stopped
traveling past their farmstead in
the spring of 2010 because the
water-logged roads were unsafe. So,
students drove over fields to reach
higher roads, to get to school and
back.
“When you see your wife sitting
in the kitchen after dark, waiting
for the kids to come home, driving
through water, through the slop, it’s
tough,” Blegen said.
“During the wintertime, the way
the wind blows, we didn’t know
from morning to afternoon
whether we were going to get in or
out. The township did a good job of
plowing, for the most part. I give
credit for that. But it’s been tough
for local governments. They don’t
have much money.”
He’s not so generous with state
and federal governments.
“The government bought out
Churchs Ferry. They came in and
bought out Penn. And they’re
helping Minnewaukan. But for
those of us living in the country,
there’s been nothing,” Blegen said.
“We were going to meeting upon
meeting upon meeting, and the
only thing that was decided at
those meetings was when the next
meeting was going to be,” he said.
“We’re not all farmers in this area.
We were residents of the area, all
standing here with a hand up,
begging, ‘pick us up out of the
muck and set us on dry ground.’
We’ll take it from there. We just
needed a little help.”
In recent months, the Federal
Highway Administration allocated
about $100 million for repairs of
flood-damaged roads.
While county officials have
expressed gratitude for the aid,
they say the needs are far greater.
They’ve had to pick certain major
roads to maintain, allowing others
to deteriorate as the flood drags
on, even if it means leaving other
rural families with no way to get to
their homes or fields.
A North Dakota State University
study last year estimated the
annual agricultural cost of the
flood at nearly $200 million in the
basin, the loss coming from
decreased production and fewer
purchases from farm suppliers, as
well as other ag-related businesses.
“I’ve got an old farmstead, but it
was home. Some of these people
had beautiful places, and they had
to move away,” Blegen said.
“It didn’t have to be this way. The
government just decided that we
were expendable.”
Blegen said one federal
government representative in 2010
told him the only chance they had
Eric Hylden / Forum Communications Co.
to survive financially “was to set
fire to my house and collect the fire
insurance.”
Another, he said, told him that
his family never should have
moved to the upper basin in the
first place.
“My grandfather homesteaded
almost 140 years ago just a couple
miles away from here,” he said.
“So, what you’re telling me is that
he shouldn’t have moved here?
Along with all the other families
that moved to this community,
families that helped build this state,
they shouldn’t have moved here?
“When those stubborn
Norwegians and Germans that
settled this area and were part of
the Legislature, they would have
never allowed this to happen.”
Looking forward
When the Blegens couldn’t find
answers from the government, they
turned to their faith.
“There’s no other way to explain
it,” he said. “We realized that there
was a hand stronger than any
government agency, and we
reached up and we took that hand.
We had somehow lost some of the
faith that had been instilled in our
family. But once we grabbed hold of
that faith, of that hand, everything
changed.”
Eight days after evacuating to the
motel in Devils Lake, they found a
small, older vacant house in nearby
Leeds.
At first, the owner didn’t want to
rent or sell it, Blegen said. Then,
the next day, the owner called back
and offered the house.
“All of a sudden, things started
falling in place for us,” he said.
“Fortunately, they left the heat on,
so that helped.”
A local bank approved a
mortgage. An appliance store made
sure they had a refrigerator and a
stove and other necessities. Several
weeks later, they received a flood
insurance settlement to pay off the
mortgage on their rural home.
“Now, we’re living in Leeds. We’re
a block-and-a-half from the school,
and the kids love it,” he said.
Blegen misses the countryside.
And even though they live in a
small town less than 15 miles away,
they sometimes reminisce about
the lifestyle they left behind –
shooting their BB guns or riding
their go-carts, playing basketball in
the yard, or having cats and dogs
around.
“We’d sit on the deck in the
morning and the ponies would line
up along the fence, waiting to get
fed,” he said.
When Blegen returned to the
farmstead in November, to begin
moving more of the family’s
belongings, he was surprised by the
changes around him, the quick
evolution of the landscape.
“There’s no life. There’s no
activity,” he said. “There’s no
wildlife, no squirrels, no birds, no
rabbits. I’ve seen one coyote, no
deer.”
Then, as he reflected on his past
year’s experiences, a pair of
mourning doves flew overhead.
“They’re the first I’ve seen out
here in a long time,” he said.
“That’s a promising sign. We’ve
been through a lot, all of us who
live in this part of the basin. We’ll
be OK. Like our ancestors, me must
be survivors.”
Kevin Bonham reports
for the Grand Forks Herald.
Salt flat to fishing lake
Devils Lake has been deep, but also dry and dusty
By Kevin Bonham
Forum Communications Co.
DEVILS LAKE, N.D. – Kyle
Blanchfield has become a student
and collector of Devils Lake
history.
In addition to the mounted
walleyes, northern pike, Canada
and snow geese that decorate the
walls, his Woodland Resort
features a display of historic
photographs of Devils Lake.
Featuring the Minnie H, a
steamboat that cruised the lake in
the late 1800s and early 1900s, the
exhibit is framed by two shards of
wood that came from the boat,
perhaps from its spars or boom.
The Minnie H and the steamboat
era on Devils Lake lasted less than
20 years, partly because it was
squeezed out by the expanding
railroad industry, but also because
Devils Lake was shrinking even as
European-American settlers
started to farm and build
communities here.
From a then-recorded high
elevation of 1,438 feet above sea
level in 1867, Devils Lake declined
to just 1,400.9 feet in 1940,
shrinking to just about 10 square
miles of surface area.
Blanchfield’s grandfather, Julius
Weed, bought some farmland and
pasture along what is known as
Creel Bay in the early 1940s.
“He farmed part of Creel Bay
that’s under 52 feet of water now,”
Blanchfield said.
Although Weed likely didn’t
know it at the time, Devils Lake in
the 1940s was in the early stages of
a long-term turnaround that has
seen record-high elevations each of
the past three years, peaking in
June 2011 at 1,454.4 feet, just about
3.5 feet from the elevation at which
it will begin spilling into the
Sheyenne and Red river valleys.
The 70 years since then have seen
a general rising of Devils Lake,
along with short-term dry spells.
From 1940 to 1956, the lake rose to
nearly 1,420 feet. That was followed
by a 12-year decline, before it
started rising again. From 1983 to
1987, the lake reached century-high
elevations of about 1,428 feet.
Building a resort
In 1988, Blanchfield and his
parents started building Woodland
Resort on the family farm that
bordered the Creel Bay shoreline.
“Back then, it was pretty tough
times in farming,” said
Blanchfield, who was a 21-year-old
UND student. “It was just time to
try to diversify because the ag
economy wasn’t very good. It was
real tough.”
The North Dakota Game and
Fish Department had stocked
Devils Lake with walleye and
perch a few years earlier, and it
was evolving into a promising
fishing destination.
During high school in the mid-
1980s, Kyle Blanchfield had spent
summers working at a small
resort, The Boat Yard, across the
lake.
“There were no restaurants on
the lake. There were no cabin
rentals. There was a marina, a
couple of convenience stores with
bait shops. There were a couple of
campgrounds, but that was it,” he
said. “I’d get people coming in
every day asking: Where can I eat,
where can I stay? I had to tell them
there is no such thing. There is
nothing on Devils Lake.
“And that was when the fishery
was really starting to take off,” he
said. “It was just a no-brainer at
the time. So, we got started from
scratch back in 1988. My folks
literally bet the farm on it.”
They built a small marina, a
store and a cafe, along with a small
bar, some boat rentals and fuel. In
“ North Dakota is blessed with abundant
resources. We need thoughtful planning
to protect our communities andd
build critical infrastructure.”
–Pam Gulleson
Paid for by Pam Gulleson for North Dakota
Kyle Blanchfield runs Woodland Resort on what once was his
grandfather’s farm back in the 1940s.
1989, they added 56 campsites.
Like Edward E. Heerman, who
operated the Minnie H steamboat a
century earlier, they quickly
realized that the lake was
beginning to recede.
“I thought this is kind of like
history repeating itself,” he said.
“It was really tough then. And it
didn’t rain hardly at all in that
time.”
The driest years were 1988 to
1990.
“We built a smaller marina at the
time,” he said. “The funny part
about that story is right after we
got that marina built, the lake
started dropping pretty good, so
that marina was unusable for a
couple of years,” he said.
Those dry years, however,
worked in the Blanchfields’ favor.
“It was actually a perfect time to
get into it because it was warm and
nice, and people wanted to be on
the lake,” he said.
By the early 1990s, though,
concern spread throughout the
Devils Lake Basin that a prolonged
drought would endanger the local
fishery and the budding tourism
industry.
A Lake Preservation Committee
was established to lobby in
Bismarck and Washington for
funding to stabilize Devils Lake, by
building an inlet as part of the
Garrison Diversion project, one
that had been promised some 40
years earlier but never
accomplished.
But the rains returned, and the
lake started rising again before
federal or state money ever flowed
into the Devils Lake Basin for an
inlet.
The rising lake
From 1993 to the summer of 2011,
the lake rose by nearly 32 feet, from
1,422.62 feet to a record 1,454.4 feet
last June, with its surface area
expanding from 44,230 acres to
211,300 acres, or 261 square miles,
and its water volume growing by
more than seven times.
Because of evaporation and a
generally drier climate later in the
summer and fall, the lake normally
drops by a foot by the time it
freezes, and it was listed at 1,453.3
feet in January.
At its peak last year, the lake was
only about 3.6 feet below the
elevation at which it would begin
spilling from the connected Stump
Lake to the Tolna Coulee and the
Sheyenne River Basin. If it reaches
that point, Devils Lake will cover
about 261,000 acres.
Like farmers and rural residents
throughout the Devils Lake Basin,
Woodland Resort has fought the
water for nearly two decades.
“There’s a lot of negatives to the
p g
www pamgulleson c
www.pamgulleson.com
Eric Hylden / Forum Communications Co.
flood,” he said. “A lot of people
have lost their livelihoods, their
entire farms. And they have no
recourse to make a living. Their
land’s gone,” he said.
“Every one of our neighbors
along the bay have had to put
$50,000 to $80,000 into their places
just to hold on. They’re high, but
their banks are eroding. And this
isn’t Detroit Lakes, where they
have this multimillion-dollar
homes. This is a big deal to these
people. A lot of them are retired
people living mostly on fixed
incomes, and not expecting to have
to fork out tens of thousands of
dollars just to protect their place –
and some of them have had to do
that a couple of times.”
Taking a stand
Blanchfield uses a couple of
visual aids to explain to visitors
the scope of the lake’s rise since
1993.
He points to the 16-foot-tall peak
of the ceiling in the A-frame
Woodland Resort Lodge.
“The lake’s come up 32 feet,” he
said. “That’s twice as high. So,
people come in, and when you can
see that, you can get a sense. And
that’s pretty incredible.”
If that doesn’t register, he tells
them that the average flagpole
outside a school or post office is
about 30 feet tall.
“We’ve been operating in kind of
a five-alarm-fire mode for more
than 15 years,” he said.
In 1995, encroaching water forced
them to move the original café – for
the first time.
“We actually had to shut the
restaurant operation down for just
about a full year,” Blanchfield said.
“That was a tough time. There was
no loss-of-business coverage. You
just had to eat it.”
Since the mid-1990s, the resort
has received a Small Business
Administration loan, plus an
$80,000 grant through the state, to
help shore up the business. Today,
that $80,000 might pay for a few
days of work with a large backhoe
and scraper, he said.
“There’s a real misconception
that all of this diking and stuff has
all been done on the government
dime. But that’s not the case,” he
said. “All the dirt we’ve had to move
is money out of our pockets. I’m
very, very fortunate that we have a
very good bank, a local bank. Our
banker has been our lifesaver.”
Blanchfield and his wife, Karin,
bought the resort from Kyle’s
parents in 1996.
“The nice thing is we are on a
deep part of the lake, so we didn’t
lose a lot of acreage of property.
Luckily, we had high ground to fall
back onto, too,” he said.
PAGE 5
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SUNDAY,
But even that was becoming more FEBRUARY 5, 2012
difficult.
“About 10 years ago, I kind of
made a line in the sand against the
lake,” he said. “I said I’m not giving
another inch. I’m going to hold this
ground, no matter what it takes.”
So, instead of moving back
deeper into the woods, he has been
hauling in clay and rock by the
truckloads – so much that he
bought his own trucks and dirt-
moving equipment to save some
money.
“I was just fortunate to have
land, ground high enough to go
back into, where we could keep our
infrastructure above 1,460 feet,” he
said.
In 2011 alone, they hauled in
about 250 semi-truck loads of rock
and 100,000 cubic yards of clay. At
about $1,500 per load for rock, the
cost adds up in a hurry.
“That 100,000 yards was a new
benchmark,” he said, explaining
that the total amount of clay
hauled in during the previous 15
years amounted to about another
150,000 yards.
“We’ve been involved in 17 “Personally, my
building moves, not counting my kids have had to
own home and my parents’ home.
We’ve gotten pretty good at moving pay the price more
stuff.” than anything,
A new marina built in the past
year sits on top of about 12 feet of because I haven’t
fill. had any time to do
The new restaurant, bait shop
and marina sit back more than 200 anything with
yards from the original shoreline. them. All we
The original restaurant is now
part of a five-unit lodge located do is move
behind the new restaurant. rock and dirt.”
All of the buildings are higher
than 1,460 feet, 2 feet higher than Kyle Blanchfield,
the lake’s spill elevation. The Woodland Resort owner
campground, which has grown on Devils Lake
from 56 sites to more than 200, is
located in the woods on even
higher ground.
“Had we not done that, all of that
would be under water. So, this is
my defense, building up,” he said.
“We didn’t really have a decent
alternative. It was either give it to
the lake or fight for it.”
Looking ahead
The Blanchfields’ sons, Warren,
14, and Landen, 11, have been
sacrificing, too.
“We’ve learned how to deal with
it, but at a pretty big cost, in money
and peace of mind,” Kyle
Blanchfield said. “It’s
psychological warfare. This
summer was just sickening. You
wake up in the morning and just
get at it. You go out and just get the
work done.
“Personally, my kids have had to
pay the price more than anything,
because I haven’t had any time to
do anything with them. All we do is
move rock and dirt. To me, that’s a
pretty expensive bill to pay – loss of
time that you have to spend with
your family. They like to fish, and
tube. They’re hunters, too. We like
doing stuff outside as we can.”
Between lodge, cabins and 150
campground spots and other
facilities, Woodland can and does
accommodate up to about 500
people at a time. The resort now
entertains as many as 15,000
overnight guests annually.
“The one positive thing that the
lake rise has done is it’s giving us a
world-class fishery. We do a lot of
business with waterfowl hunting
in the fall,” he said. “So, we
manage to try to grow our
business and stay with the lake
and take advantage of the positive
parts of it the best we can.
“It would be nice to just back into
a routine, where you’re not in a
five-alarm-fire mode all of the
time.”
Kevin Bonham reports
for the Grand Forks Herald.
 Devils Lake in 1984 Devils Lake in 2009
PAGE 6 NASA Earth Observatory photos

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SUNDAY,
FEBRUARY 5, 2012

These photos show how Devils Lake in North Dakota has grown between 1984 and 2009.

A floating patchwork of roads,

fields, islands and water
Kevin Eric Hylden / Forum Communications Co.

BONHAM
Bonham has covered
water issues for the
Grand Forks Herald
for 19 of the past
24 years

he North Dakota landscape

T often is described as a
patchwork quilt of farm
fields, of crops separated by
threads of rural roads a mile apart
that stretch for mile after mile in
the same direction.
US

In the Devils Lake Basin, at least

in the summertime, that quilt
appears to be floating in a vast
swimming pool, with those long,
straight roads reduced to water-
logged lanes that rise out of the
water for short distances as if
they’re puffed up with air, only to
disappear once again beneath the
water’s surface.
OVERWHELMS

The bright green and yellow

patches of wheat, canola and
mustard fade quickly to muddy
shades of browns and grays, as the
water, sometimes trimmed with
pale lines of whitecaps, eats away
at the land.
It’s a vastly different picture from
a couple of decades ago.
In the summer of 1991, Grand
Forks Herald photographer John
Stennes and I spent 20 hours flying
over North Dakota, observing what
many people then called the end of
a mini-drought that had lasted
three or four years. The Herald
published a four-page section,
“North Dakota in Green and Gold.”
“Rain has returned to the
Plains,” I wrote back then. “In 1991,
the grass turned green. Trees grew
full. Rivers widened. Lakes rose.
“There are patches of North
Dakota that the rain clouds passed
by, where the drought of the late
1980s lingers still. And there are
others, where rain came too hard,
too fast, and drenched a promising
crop.
“But for the most part, North
Dakota is lush this year, from the
Red River Valley to the Badlands,
from the Turtle Mountains to the
Prairie Heartland. …
“It is a land worthy of picture
postcards. … Each farmer is a
landscape artist, creating
brushstrokes along shelterbelts and
rivers, around rock piles and
lakes.”
In the Devils Lake Basin, it was
the first hint that a once-promising
fishing and tourism industry – now
estimated at more than $30 million
annually – might rebound.
High to low to high
WATER

When the first European settlers

arrived in the Devils Lake Basin in
the early 1880s, the lake was at an
elevation of 1,435 to 1,440 feet above
sea level. Settlers called Devils
Lake the Inland Ocean. And
steamboats carried passengers and
freight from town to town along the A submerged road on Devils Lake is seen from the air in October 2011.
shoreline.
But the lake elevation was slowly
falling. By 1940, it dropped to 1,400.9 neighboring Stump Lake, the lake Where they’re visible, grain bins control structures while putting
feet. has been rising ever since. and barns also rise out of the sea. together a mitigation program to
Anybody who has lived in the Farmstead after abandoned ease the pain of such an
Lake from the air farmstead are isolated. Roads uncontrolled spill. Yet in the Upper
Devils Lake Basin since the 1950s
can tell stories about walking I’ve seen Devils Lake from the air leading to them have been washed Devils Lake Basin, people suffer, as
across what is now East Bay. Devils several times in the past couple of away. the water rises and spreads more
Lake was so small; its waters were years, to see how it’s changed in the Standing water is visible on every year, consuming section after
contained almost exclusively in past 20 years. virtually every section of land, section, road after road, homes and
Main Bay, south of the city. Although they didn’t have a even every quarter-section of 160 utility systems all along the way.
But the lake was slowly birds-eye perspective, those early acres. Water is everywhere in
rebounding. By the mid-1980s, it settlers were close to the mark in Entire towns are virtually northeastern North Dakota. If this
was above 1,425 feet, and local their descriptions. surrounded. Penn. Churchs Ferry. were spring, it would be one thing
residents started building a fishing If Devils Lake isn’t an inland Minnewaukan. Roads and houses because spring floods eventually
SECTION 2
WHEN

and tourism industry.
Just as quickly as a couple of
businesses opened, the lake started
falling again, dropping by about 6
feet from 1987 to 1993, in what later
was determined to be the second-
worst drought in recorded history.
A Lake Preservation Coalition
was formed to lobby the state and
federal governments to bring water
into Devils Lake, perhaps from the
Missouri River.
But nature took care of that
problem in the late spring of 1993.
It rained all summer.
The lake elevation rose by about 1
foot every two to three weeks.
By August, roads in the upper
basin began to flood.
Except for a couple of years in
2005 through 2007, when the lake
was filling up the deep,
ocean, as they described it, it is a
vast sea, stretching some 50 miles
east to west, from a relocated N.D.
Highway 1 at Stump Lake to beyond
Churchs Ferry and a relocated U.S.
281, and some 40 miles north to
south.
The lake has risen almost 32 feet
and quadrupled in size since 1993.
Portions of the basin appear to be
more like an aerial view of the
Florida Everglades than the Prairie
Pothole region.
Coulees are bulging rivers, water
spilling from their banks, drowning
once-fertile fields of durum.
Small lakes have merged into one.
It is impossible to see where one
ends and another begins.
Patches of brown and green
shelterbelts seemingly grow right
out of the water.
are swamped on Spirit Lake
Nation.
Threat of spill
The lake, at 1,454.4 feet, was just
about 3.5 feet from reaching its
natural spill elevation.
After rising by about 6 feet in the
past three years, the rising lake is
prompting emergency responses, as
local, state and federal officials try
to find a solution and avoid what
most believe could be an
uncontrolled spill from Stump
Lake, through the Tolna Coulee to
the Sheyenne River.
The potential downstream
impacts of such an uncontrolled
release of water have not been
calculated, but they are worrisome,
if not daunting.
The state is building outlets and
pass. But this water stays year-
round.
The swimming pool of the Devils
Lake Basin is full.
The emotional toll this two-
decade-long flood has taken can be
experienced on the ground by
listening to people, flood victims,
talk about losing not just their land
or the roads necessary to reach
their homes but their very
livelihoods.
What was clear in the summer of
2011 is, nature is an abstract artist.
For the landscape of the Devils
Lake Basin is painted not so much
in greens and golds of a promising
harvest but also – in both physical
and emotional terms – in abstract
swirls of muddy browns and grays.
Kevin Bonham reports
for the Grand Forks Herald.
 “Outlets are a permanent fix. When MnDOT raises the road, it’s a temporary fix.
They can keep raising the road again and again, but it’s expensive.”
High lake levels
Closed basins create ‘unimaginable’ problems
By Nathan Bowe
Forum Communications Co.
Minnesota Lakes Country has
dealt with high water for nearly 20
years now, and even the extremely
dry weather of the past few
months may not signal the end of
the wet cycle.
Drive through lakes country and
you’ll see highways that have been
built up, sometimes more than
once – and others with flooded
shoulders and driving lanes
narrowed by rising lake water.
On lakes and sloughs with
outlets, the problem runs off
downstream unnoticed, but
property owners on lakes without
outlets have to deal with steadily
rising water that destroys
beaches, cuts off driveway access,
forces outbuildings to be moved
and eventually floods out homes
and cabins.
‘It was unimaginable’
That was the situation on Turtle
Lake, which straddles the Becker
and Clay county lines, in the late
1990s, when the high-water
problem first began.
“We all wondered how high it
would have to go to find a natural
outlet – it was unimaginable,” said
Greg Anderson, who had a
summer cabin on Turtle Lake.
That was before the Buffalo-Red
River Watershed District came to
the rescue – it installed a siphon
system in 1999 to keep a lid on the
rising water.
“I didn’t personally have water
in my home at the time, but a lot of
people did,” Anderson said. “If
they hadn’t put the siphon in, I
don’t think a lot of those homes
would still be there.”
The siphon hasn’t been without
glitches, but it’s worked well
enough that Anderson – as of
December – is now a year-round
resident of Turtle Lake.
“I couldn’t be happier with the
siphon,” he said. And as a
longtime resident of Oakport
Township near Moorhead, which
is always in the thick of the spring
flood fight with the Red River,
Anderson knows what he’s talking
about.
“I know more about water than a
guy ever wants to know,” he said
with a laugh.
One crisis after another
Turtle Lake was just the first of
a chain of high-water crises in
Minnesota Lakes Country that the
Buffalo-Red River Watershed
District has been dealing with
right up to this year.
“We’ve done 10 different high-
water investigations that have
turned into project areas,” said
Buffalo Red River Watershed
Administrator Bruce Albright.
One of the more high-profile
outlet projects was Boyer Lake on
U.S. Highway 10 near Lake Park.
The Minnesota Department of
Transportation had already raised
Highway 10 once and was
preparing to raise it again, at a
cost of about $2 million.
The watershed district solved
the problem permanently, and less
expensively, by installing an outlet
there for about $400,000.
“Outlets are a permanent fix,”
Albright said. “When MnDOT
raises the road, it’s a temporary
fix. They can keep raising the
road again and again, but it’s
expensive.”
As long as an outlet merely
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PAGE 7
Bruce Albright, Buffalo Red River Watershed administrator
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restores a lake’s level to its Michael Vosburg / Forum Communications Co.
ordinary high-water mark, no
Department of Natural Resources
permit is required, which can
speed up the process, Albright
said.
The district routinely shuts the
gate on outlets during spring
flooding to avoid making matters Detroit
worse downstream. It doesn’t Lakes
noticeably affect the lake levels,
he said.
The total cost of the outlet
projects has been about
$2.2 million – and the watershed
district has footed the bill for a
quarter of that. Pelican
“That’s $550,000 that hasn’t gone Rapids
to traditional (watershed projects
such as) drainage, flood control,
water quality and things like
that,” Albright said. “But these
are emergencies,” he added, and
may be the only time the
taxpayers on those lakes receive Map by Troy Becker
watershed services.
Forum Communications Co.
Blame the glaciers
They came down into Minnesota
like gangbusters 12,000 to 15,000
years ago. Not like most people
imagine – giant, ponderous
mountains of snow moving south
and crushing all beneath their
mass.
No. The glaciers that shaped
lakes country operated more like
rivers of ice that flowed out of the
northern wastes of Hudson Bay.
“People think of glaciers as
bulldozers, but they’re not; they
act more like a conveyor belt,”
said Phil Gerla, an associate
professor at the University of
North Dakota’s Department of
Geology and Geological
Engineering.
“It’s a gravitational thing,” he
said. “Once there’s enough
accumulation of ice and snow,
there’s enough feed to keep the ice
moving in this direction over
millennia.”
As material piled up along that
conveyor belt over time, it led to
soil, rock, sand and gravel (a
moraine) piling up in areas like
Becker County.
Most lakes in Minnesota started
as depressions formed by melting
ice, he said.
“When this conveyor belt
process occurs, you get
hummocky typography – it’s not
drained very well. Like a million
dump trucks dump loads
everywhere, you end up with these
basins that form lakes.”
Some have outlets, some don’t.
The ones that don’t are lucky to
end up in the Buffalo Red
Watershed District because
counties and individual lake
associations aren’t always willing
or able to build outlets.
In 1999, Albright was called to
Perham for consultation on high-
water problems afflicting Little
McDonald Lake, between Perham
and Vergas in Otter Tail County.
Like many areas of lakes
Homes are flooded July 22, 2011, by rising lake waters in Otter
country, it is not part of any Tail County west of Perham, Minn.
watershed district.
And 12 years later, its high-water asked to join the district, seeking changed its mind – the water level
problems are much worse. help with its high-water has fallen on its own over the past
It can be politically difficult for problems. few months because of dry
a county board to approve an But the watershed board is wary weather.
outlet in the face of strong of taking on more projects – Albright says that might signal
downstream opposition, Albright especially now when it appears the end of the wet cycle, or it could
said, and that appears to be the that all the outlets that can be – as has happened in the past – a
case in Otter Tail County. feasibly be built have been built. dry period within the wet cycle,
At least one lake association And on the short term, Mother which could go on for another 10 to
located just outside the Nature may lend a hand. Already 15 years.
boundaries of the Buffalo-Red one lake association that had Nathan Bowe reports
River Watershed District has asked for the watershed’s help has for Detroit Lakes Newspapers.
houstoneng.com
As community members, we experienced
firsthand the tremendous impact of
flooding throughout our region.
We support and recognize those who
worked in flood fighting efforts.
Services
ƒ Hydraulic modeling and flood
projection mapping
ƒ Surveying, construction
management and infrastructure
recovery
ƒ Levee, floodwall, diversion, and
flood mitigation design
ƒ DSS (Decision Support Systems) -
Integrated/Interactive information
tools and applications
kljeng.com 800 213 3860
 Patrick Springer / Forum Communications Co.
PAGE 8
A FORUM
COMMUNICATIONS
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SUNDAY,
FEBRUARY 5, 2012
Susan and John Boyce,
who live in the Sandy
River Road area north
of Bismarck, were
forced out of their home
by the 2011 Missouri
River flood. The interior
of the house, which
suffered severe mold
infestation from the
floodwaters, had to be
gutted and restored.
Here, the Boyces visit
their home in October
2011 to check on the
restoration work and to
survey the flood
damage to their yard.

‘I guess this
is one in 500’
US

By Patrick Springer
Forum Communications Co.
BISMARCK – Count John and
Historic Missouri River flood of 2011
Susan Boyce among the many who
now know firsthand that the may change river channel for years to come
Missouri River can humble even
OVERWHELMS

Special to Forum Communications Co.

the gigantic Garrison Dam.
Their home, in the leafy Sandy
River Drive neighborhood north of
Bismarck, is normally a couple of
hundred yards from the Missouri
River.
The ranch-style house was built
in what was considered the 500-
year floodplain, thanks to Garrison
Dam, an earthen flood-control
fortress 70 miles upstream. For
almost 60 years, the dam kept areas
like Sandy River Drive and
numerous towns and subdivisions,
as well as farms and ranches, dry
during floods.
For the Boyces, that changed on
June 2, 2011, when a dike breached
and half a foot of floodwater
inundated their home.
“I guess this is one in 500,” Susan
Boyce, 60, said. “We never, ever
imagined that this would happen.”
Just the day before, for the first
time in history, the emergency
spillway gates of Garrison Dam
were opened for operation. The Garrison Dam during construction in 1951.
The historic flood of 2011 had
begun. It was the first significant Michael Vosburg / Forum Communications Co.
flood Bismarck-Mandan
experienced since 1952. Yet without
Garrison and the other dams, the
record flooding and resulting
damage would have been much,
much worse.
Uncontrolled, the Missouri River
flood crest in Bismarck-Mandan
would have been more than 5 feet
higher than it was – 24.43 feet
instead of 19.23 feet, according to
calculations by the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers.
The cumulative volume of water
in the 2011 flood was almost 1½
times greater than the 1952 flood,
which had the highest peak
volume. The crest of the 1952 flood
WATER

was more than 8 feet higher than

2011, 27.9 feet compared to 19.23
feet, because the dam spread the
releases over a longer period.
In the 1960s, once the six
Missouri River dams were in place
and operating, officials spoke
proudly of taming the mighty
Missouri River, which used to flood
with aggravating frequency.
Over time, as the dams withstood The Garrison Dam in 2009.
whatever nature threw their way,
public confidence in their flood- flood is so epic.” “I think it could have been much “We both started crying,” Susan
protection reliability only grew. Chased from their home by the worse,” said Cecily Fong, a Boyce said. “Sounds wonderful and
The Boyces were far from alone flood, the Boyces have been living spokeswoman for the North Dakota looks wonderful and seems to be
in believing Garrison Dam would in a condominium in Bismarck. Department of Emergency fine.”
protect their property against any They are among an estimated 1,600 Services.
conceivable flood. people in 700 residences displaced The Boyces are among those who Early warning
Todd Sando, North Dakota’s state by the historic 2011 flood in consider themselves fortunate the The first alarms of a possible
engineer, for instance, was among Burleigh County. damage wasn’t more severe. Still, severe spring flood on the upper
the many who had faith in the Across the river in Morton they had to gut the interior of their Missouri River were sounded in
Missouri River dams. County, more than 130 residences house, filling more than four roll- late January.
“I thought we solved our were damaged and about 760 away disposals with ruined An engineer for the Burleigh
SECTION 2
WHEN

flooding,” he said. “We had no
variability in river flow, really. The
dams protected us.”
In retrospect, a flood caused by
an ice jam that flooded low-lying
areas around south Bismarck in
2009 was a warning. But that flood
was minor and lasted only hours.
The 2011 flood lasted a bit more
than three months.
Freakish weather, producing the
highest runoff on record, was to
blame.
Heavy snowpack in the Rocky
Mountains, which drain into the
Missouri, was followed by
monsoon rains over a vast area of
eastern Montana and the western
Dakotas.
“It’s just the magnitude of the
runoff,” Sando said. “The system
wasn’t designed to handle it. This
people were evacuated – figures
that merely hint at the flood’s
human toll.
Evacuees scattered to rentals,
were taken in by friends or
relatives, or camped out in
recreational vehicles.
Most residences were damaged
by high ground water tables. The
high pressure buckled basement
walls, or the sheer volume of water
overwhelmed sump pumps.
As it turned out, the flood crested
almost 1½ feet short of the
prediction, sparing many
properties from even worse
damage.
Early estimates by state officials
put damage from the 2011 Missouri
River flood at $35 million, a
fraction of the $509 million
statewide total.
drywall, carpeting and belongings.
“My whole house is just one big
mold pit,” said Susan Boyce, who
teaches art in Mandan. “All our
books are ruined.”
In the scramble to prepare for the
flood, the Boyces weren’t able to
move their piano. The best they
could do was cover it, put it up on
blocks and hope the water didn’t
reach it.
The prolonged flood didn’t allow
them to even examine their
cherished piano until late summer.
When the couple unwrapped it,
they were pleased to see that it
didn’t appear damaged. But the
real test would be how it sounded.
The Boyces braced themselves,
then John, 60, a veterinarian,
played the first chord. It sounded
surprisingly good.
County Water Resource District
sent an email telling the Army
Corps of Engineers that the public
was “a bit jumpy,” and spoke of the
need to “get rid of water.”
The basin’s January runoff was
170 percent of normal, with
precipitation running 175 percent
of normal. The National Weather
Service described water stored in
the snowpack as “near historic
highs.” Much of the basin was
saturated.
In February, Jody Farhat, who
manages the Missouri River dam
system, was aware that Bismarck
lacked river channel capacity. She
warned fellow corps officials that
managing the spring runoff would
be “a tricky operation.”
MISSOURI: Page 9

Jim Volk stands outside his home in the Fox Island subdivision south of Bismarck, which was surrounded by water during the 2011 flood.
A foot of water filled the garage but didn’t reach the Volks’ main floor, which was built 2 feet higher than recommended.
Meanwhile, nature kept piling up
the warning signs – abnormally
high snowpack and high snow-
water equivalents across much of
the basin.
Still, in March, Farhat was saying
the reservoir system still had
plenty of room, if needed, to store
floodwaters.
By late March, the corps was
projecting releases from the
Missouri River dams to reflect
“slightly above normal to above
normal” runoff.
Soon, however, it would be clear
that spring runoff from the
mountains and plains would be
well above normal.
The corps began increasing dam
releases in early April to make
room for heavy runoff. Internally,
according to emails that since have
been made public, some corps
officials wondered if Farhat wasn’t
downplaying the chance of heavy
rain.
In mid-April, a corps general sent
out a mass email from
headquarters warning that all the
ingredients were in place for major
flooding.
Sando wrote a letter dated April
20 to express concerns to the corps
that its reservoir discharges
seemed inadequate for the
snowpack and possibility of heavy
rain.
Those worries proved prophetic.
The corps started ramping up its
releases in early May.
Then, in mid- and late May, it
started to rain heavily in the Upper
Missouri River Basin, with more
rain expected.
On May 21, the corps was notified
that 8 inches of rain had fallen in
48 hours in areas of Montana. It
kept raining in Montana, where a
record 3.12 inches fell in Billings,
and the western Dakotas.
There was little the corps’ dams
managers could do now but open
the floodgates. The schedule of
planned releases quickly
accelerated – and kept changing,
bewildering and frustrating local
officials.
Crews scrambled to build
emergency levees in Bismarck-
Mandan and elsewhere in a mad
race against the river.
A flood bigger than the dams,
something that once seemed
impossible, now was inevitable.
The peak releases from Garrison
Dam, a torrent running 150,000
cubic feet per second, would be
more than twice the previous
record, set in 1975.
The peak flows would be
sustained for two weeks in June,
and the river would be above flood
stage for several months.
Once protections were in place,
there was nothing to do but wait as
troubling questions nagged at
officials and homeowners.
How high will the river rise? Will
the levees hold? What should we
do?
Destructive flood
With a destructive flood on the
way, homeowners in low-lying
sections of Bismarck-Mandan
nervously read elevation charts
and compared them to the river
forecasts.
Jim and Cathie Volk knew their
home, in the fashionable Fox Island
subdivision south of Bismarck,
would flood.
Their house suffered minor flood
damage in 2009, when an ice jam
caused a flood that came and went
within hours. Little did the Volks
suspect then that the ice-jam flood,
broken up by dynamite, was a
portent of worse to come.
Based on the flood forecast, the
Volks expected the main level of
their home would have 2 feet of
water.
To prevent damage, they removed
their carpet, furniture, appliances
and cabinets from the main floor.
MISSOURI
From Page A8
Water flows into the Missouri River from the Garrison Dam.
To keep his foundation from
buckling, Jim, a semi-retired
stockbroker, flooded their shallow
basement crawlspace. “It was
terribly painful to do,” he said.
The river crested at 19.23 feet,
well below the 22 feet predicted, but
3 feet above flood stage for Fox
Island, which once actually was an
island.
A foot of water filled their garage
but didn’t reach the Volks’ main
floor. They’d built their home 2 feet
higher than their builder
recommended when they moved to
Fox Island 16 years ago.
Jim Volk’s boyhood home in
Mandan had flooded several times,
including the 1952 flood, so he
decided to take precautions, even
though he had confidence in
Garrison Dam.
Although their main floor
escaped water damage, the couple
confronted a major cleanup job.
Spiders had moved in, and walls
and other surfaces had to be
scrubbed clean or painted.
“There’s so much cleaning to do
when a house sets dormant for that
many months,” Cathie Volk said of
their five-month absence. “It’s like
building a new house.”
When the river subsided in late
summer, the Volks went to inspect
the river delta that has formed
from years of sediment buildup –
blamed as one of the culprits in the
2009 flood.
Deltas and large sandbars
exacerbate flooding because they
diminish the capacity of the river
channel.
“It’s much, much larger than it
was,” Cathie Volk said, with
dismay of the delta that has
become an unwelcome neighbor.
“It’s much bigger than anybody
thought it was.”
Enlarged delta
As the enlarged delta off Fox
Island attests, the Missouri River,
its banks and floodplain, have been
dramatically rearranged by the
flood of 2011.
It will take years for the changes
to become fully apparent, experts
predict.
Joel Galloway, a hydrologist for
the U.S. Geological Survey in
Bismarck, has been keeping a close
eye on the river during and after
the flood.
In early fall, he went up in an
airplane with colleagues for an
aerial view of the transformation.
From an altitude of 800 feet,
Galloway could see ample signs of
changes along the reach of the
Missouri below Garrison Dam to
the headwaters of Lake Oahe.
Some banks had eroded
significantly. Some sandbars were
wiped clean; elsewhere, new
sandbars have formed.
Through Bismarck-Mandan, the
record volume and high velocity of
water significantly scoured the
North Dakota State Water Commission
river channel, increasing its
capacity.
That natural dredging of the
channel, many agree, was largely
responsible for the lower-than-
expected flood crest.
But as the river’s level dropped
after the flood, and as it slowed
down, it began once again to
deposit sediment in areas,
Galloway said.
USGS has embarked on a study of
the changes along the Missouri
River from the 2011 flood, and the
North Dakota State Water
Commission also is studying the
effects.
“We’re really in the early
phases,” still compiling data,
Galloway said of the USGS study.
“Ten years down the road, we
could still be seeing the effects of
this,” he said. “Those effects are
going to be hard to overcome.”
A report by the North Dakota
Game and Fish Department
concluded that habitat along the
Missouri River has changed
profoundly as a result of the flood.
The least affected area likely is
the portion of the river including
Garrison Dam’s Lake Sakakawea
and above.
The upper Missouri River in
North Dakota experiences
sediment deposits every spring
from the free-flowing Yellowstone
River, making the 2011 flood not so
unusual.
But the 70-mile stretch south of
Garrison Dam, including the
channel through Bismarck-
Mandan, is likely the most altered
in North Dakota, in the Game and
Fish analysis.
That segment of the river
experienced unprecedented river
volumes equaling or exceeding
100,000 cubic feet per second for 68
straight days.
“Extremely high releases over a
prolonged period will greatly scour
the river bed, and hundreds if not
thousands of acres of bottomland
will erode,” the report said. “In
some cases, the main river channel
itself may reclaim some of its
former self by incising a new path
of least resistance.”
In many ways, the flood of 2011
created a new Missouri River.
Spillway problems
Garrison Dam’s spillway gates
encountered a few hitches when
they opened for the first time.
Sealant had to be reinforced in
spots and later, after water was
observed flaring on the spillway’s
apron, officials shut the gates once
again and discovered the water had
chipped some of the concrete.
Quick-curing concrete was
trucked in overnight for repairs.
Once the initial problems were
addressed, the floodgates and
spillway performed as designed in
their first real test, officials said.
In the midst of the flood, Todd
Patrick Springer / Forum Communications Co.
PAGE 9
A FORUM
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SUNDAY,
FEBRUARY 5, 2012
Lindquist, operations manager for
Garrison Dam, found himself
reminding people who were angry
over the huge releases of water that
the spillway gates had been built
for a reason.
Officials, including Gov. Jack
Dalrymple and North Dakota’s
congressional delegation, have
questioned the corps’ response to
the flood, and an independent
review has been ordered.
A major critical theme has been
that officials were too slow to react
when it was clear the basin’s
snowpack could leave little room to
maneuver if heavy rains followed.
Before winter, officials in North
Dakota asked for reassurances that
the corps would be fully prepared
for a possible spring flood in 2012.
Some, including Sando, the state
engineer, called for the corps to
release more water from the
reservoirs to create more flood
storage capacity.
But the lower Missouri still
remained above flood stage in early
fall. Later, after residents and
officials pleaded for the release of
more water from the reservoirs to
make more room for a possible
flood this spring, the corps
increased the flow.
The dams must be managed as a
coordinated system for a river that
runs more than 2,300 miles through
the heart of the country.
Although Garrison and the other
dams could not prevent widespread
damage in the 2011 flood, the corps
calculates that the dams prevented
$44.2 billion in damage throughout
the Missouri River system as of
2010. Garrison, which alone
accounts for a third of the system’s
flood storage, was credited with
preventing $13.7 billion in damage.
As for criticisms that the corps
could have avoided damaging
flooding by acting more swiftly and
aggressively, Lindquist said
preliminary calculations show
Garrison simply was overwhelmed.
Even emptying the reservoir – a
drastic step no one would
recommend – wouldn’t have been
enough given the magnitude of
runoff for the system, which was
almost 1¼ times its previous
record, Lindquist said.
“If Lake Sakakawea was empty,
we still would have filled it one and
a half times,” he said. “People don’t
understand the volume.”
And people forget how quickly
conditions can change. Just six
years ago, at the end of a prolonged
drought, Sakakawea fell to its
record low level – almost 48 feet
below its record peak in 2011.
Uncertain future
Susan and John Boyce aren’t sure
whether they’ll rebuild their
flooded home in the Sandy River
Drive area north of Bismarck.
With ground water tables still
high, and the stubborn wet pattern
showing no sign of fading, many
around Bismarck-Mandan fear
what spring has in store.
The Boyces have time for the
questions to be resolved.
“If we weren’t able to purchase a
condo, I don’t know what we’d do,”
Susan Boyce said of her temporary
Bismarck home. “We feel very
fortunate.”
Just two years after their house
was built, in 1995, homes in the
Sandy River Drive area had to be
built up an additional 2 feet. The
Boyces aren’t sure it would be
practical or affordable to raise their
home.
“We’re still trying to do it one day
at a time and do the wise thing,”
Susan Boyce said.
A lot of people along the
Missouri River, their eyes opened
by the 2011 flood, are trying to do
the same.
Patrick Springer reports
for The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead.
 Patrick Springer / Forum Communications Co.
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SUNDAY,
FEBRUARY 5, 2012

Walt Bailey stands outside his boyhood home in the Sertoma Park neighborhood of Bismarck, which was flooded in 1952. It was
the last major flood on the Missouri River before Garrison Dam provided flood protection. The current owner of the home had
placed sandbags as a precaution in 2011, but an emergency earthen levee kept the neighborhood dry.
US

Race to escape
OVERWHELMS

Bismarck man remembers the ‘52 Missouri rampage

By Patrick Springer Glenn Sorlie / The Bismarck Tribune
Forum Communications Co.
BISMARCK – Walt Bailey and
his family had just sat down to a
Palm Sunday roast dinner after
church when someone pounded on
their door.
It was an auxiliary police officer
going door-to-door to deliver a
message that remains vivid in
Bailey’s memory almost 60 years
later.
The Missouri River had jumped
its banks due to an ice jam,
spilling water 2 feet deep in the
low spots of the neighborhood –
and now was heading toward the
Bailey home.
“He said you have an hour to get
out,” Bailey said. “So we dove into
the essentials.”
The family scrambled to gather
important items to take with them:
food, cooking utensils, dishes,
clothing and bedding.
“Whatever seemed to be
important,” Bailey said. “Nobody
knew quite what to expect. We
decided to take those things that
you might need for two or three
weeks.”
Bailey’s mother and aunt, whose
family lived next door, went to a
tourist resort on high ground in
Bismarck and reserved two cabins
– their home away from home.
Before they left, Bailey’s father
and older brother hastily stacked
furniture on the living room floor,
putting the most precious pieces at
Bismarck Tribune photographer Glenn Sorlie, a staffer at the time and later owner-publisher of
the top in the hope they would stay the Tribune, was aboard one of the National Guard duck boats involved in rescue work in 1952.
dry. The rescue crew saw a dog floating on a packing crate. As a crew member reached to save the
WATER

“From floor to ceiling, they had
this stack of stuff,” Bailey said.
“The top item of all that was my
mother’s sewing machine, a
beautiful walnut cabinet. That was
about all the time we had.”
The Baileys were able to make
one or two car trips to carry
belongings to the cabins, near
where the Bank of North Dakota
now stands. Then, as time ran out,
they loaded the car for the final
trip.
“By that time, there was water in
the streets,” said Bailey, who was 8
years old at the time. “We drove
out of there as a family through
water.”
The worst in 42 years
It was April 7, 1952, a day that
remains etched not only in
Bailey’s memory but in history.
SECTION 2
dog, Sorlie snapped this photo.
The Salvation Army and the Red
“From floor to ceiling, they had this stack of stuff.
Cross.
The top item of all that was my mother’s sewing Bailey returned to his boyhood
home in July, as the Missouri
machine, a beautiful walnut cabinet. That was
River flood was receding. The
about all the time we had.” current owner, Debbie Gienger,
Walt Bailey, recalling how his brother and father stacked items still had sandbags protecting
window wells.
as his family raced to evacuate their home in 1952
The sandbags were untouched by
floodwaters. Her neighborhood
near Sertoma Park was protected
covered with 3 or 4 feet of water. years. And the last before officials
Huge cakes of ice, some as big as declared that Garrison Dam and by emergency levees.
“I knew there was flooding, but I
houses, tumbled as they were the other dams had tamed the
swept along the river. unruly Missouri. didn’t know it was that bad,”
Gienger said, when Bailey spoke of
As the flooding progressed,
many houses were chimney deep. The one dry thing his childhood experience.
Hundreds of cattle drowned. When the Baileys were able to Before the emergency levees
Debris and dead livestock floated go home, they found the high- were built, and the river rested 2
downstream. A horse breeder was water mark halfway up the living feet below early forecasts, Gienger
able to save only half his herd. room wall. It neatly bisected a and her neighbors were worried
framed mirror Bailey’s parents

The devastating flood of 1952 One Bismarck couple and their that history would repeat itself.
WHEN

would mark the last time the
Missouri River caused widespread
damaging flooding in Bismarck-
Mandan and other cities for six
decades – until the flood of 2011.
Before Garrison and five other
main-stem dams were built, mostly
in the 1950s and 1960s, the
Missouri River rampaged with
destructive regularity – 39 times in
69 years, starting with 1883, which
still holds the record crest at 31.6
feet, and 1952.
Ice jams frequently caused or
exacerbated floods, often with
little warning, as in 1952.
“The speed with which the
waters rose caught most residents
unprepared,” The Fargo Forum
reported.
Within minutes, some areas were
10 children saw their house float
off its foundation and roll down
the river.
South of Bismarck, a farmhand
spent the night in his attic and
later on the roof as the water rose
swiftly. He was rescued by
helicopter after spending anxious
hours on the roof, holding a
kerosene lamp in the dark.
“The ice was pounding the
house so hard I thought it would
fall over,” he told a reporter.
The Bailey family was among an
estimated 1,000 people who were
driven from their homes in
Bismarck and Mandan. Three
hundred homes were inundated.
The river crested at 27.9 feet,
almost 8 feet above major flood
stage. It was the worst flood in 42
had hung.
Water had reached all but the
top of the pyramid of furniture
the Baileys had stacked. Only his
mother’s prized sewing machine
had stayed dry.
“That was the only thing that
was above the water,” said Bailey,
now 67, a retired historic
preservation administrator. The
refrigerator was full of silt.
Once dried, much of the
furniture still could be used. Even
many family photos and other
mementos were salvaged.
“Nobody threw anything away
in those days,” Bailey said.
There were no government
assistance programs to help flood
victims recover. “Everybody was
really on their own,” he said.
They managed with help from
“It all started happening on
Memorial Day weekend,” she said,
recalling the first warnings of a
possible catastrophic flood. “It was
the worst Memorial Day of my life.
Nobody in the neighborhood knew
if we were going to be safe or have
1 or 2 feet of water.”
For his part, Bailey was pleased
that his boyhood home had been
well kept. He ended up working his
whole career in Bismarck. When it
came time to buy a house, he chose
a neighborhood on high ground.
But because of Garrison Dam, he
didn’t worry about floods like the
one that swept his family out of
their home in 1952, following that
unforgettable knock at the door.
Patrick Springer reports
for The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead.
 From meandering PAGE 11
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to marauding SUNDAY,
FEBRUARY 5, 2012

Terrain can do little to slow Sheyenne’s overland flooding

By Kristen M. Daum Michael Vosburg / Forum Communications Co.
Forum Communications Co.
FESSENDEN, N.D. –
Tammy Roehrich, Wells
County emergency
manager, keeps stacks of
files documenting the
damage recent floods have
wrought.
She pulls out just a single
folder, paging through
photo after photo detailing
what flooding left behind in
2011 alone after the
Sheyenne River tore
through northwestern
Wells County.
Drenched fields. Culverts “The diversion
carried hundreds of feet. allowed us to solve
Gravel roads gouged and
left with 3-foot drop-offs. the problem
“Fargo, Bismarck, Minot, without any dikes
Devils Lake. Those are
disasters. We just have an around the river. I
inconvenience,” said don’t think you
Roehrich, a lifelong
resident of central North could find anyone
Dakota. The channel of the Sheyenne River winds through flooded Cass County fields in April 2011. in West Fargo now
But that inconvenience
still packs a punch costing who would say it
hundreds of thousands – lakes and constant detours, annual flooding.
Harwood as the Sheyenne spills out “If I lived out there, I
was not a good
sometimes millions – of
dollars in repairs. over land. The sight of would probably feel the device.”
Jamestown submerged farmland same way,” he said. “It’s
The trouble isn’t confined Jake Gust, Sheyenne
to rural areas. From Harvey Valley
Valley City West Fargo
West continues until the hard to look at West Fargo
Sheyenne meets up with the high and dry, and then drive Diversion superintendent
to Sibley, Valley City to
Red River a few miles to the a mile over the diversion and former West Fargo
Harwood, riverside
communities face the same Kindred east. and it’s all water.” city commissioner
obstacles and consequences Some residents in that While communities such
Lisbon as Harwood can put up
of neighboring the stretch blame the diversion
Sheyenne River. Edgeley for the flooding, but Gust dikes each year as
Not so long ago, the said there is no proof the temporary defense, some
Sheyenne simply diversion is the cause. communities such as the
meandered through the The same amount of small towns of Wells Map by Troy Becker
Roehrich said, the waters Moving southward, the water would still flow County don’t have that
plains of North Dakota, usually linger for up to landscape varies from total Forum Communications Co.
throwing a tantrum only through the area, he said, option.
three weeks before moving flatness, generally but without the diversion, it Roehrich said dikes,
every so often. But the on and leaving the preventing the lashing of
Sheyenne has shown in would flow uncontrollably sandbagging or even a
wreckage behind. overland flooding. costly diversion wouldn’t do
recent years its new across the landscape.
But 2011 was different. But by the time high any good against the
normal is a bit more Instead, the diversion
The spring flood carried waters reach Kindred, overland flooding there.
temperamental. channels most of the
over into summer, lasting southwest of Fargo, the
Floods along the pressure, literally diverting “There’s no way you can.
into August. Sheyenne River will again
Sheyenne don’t pass it away from the It just comes through so
In July, Wells County was bulge out of its banks
through swiftly with the communities it protects. fast, takes out the roads,”
deluged by 20 inches of rain across farmland.
ebb and flow of water But Gust said he she said. “Usually it’s the
that washed out more roads The problem continues as
levels, as other rivers the river pushes northeast – empathizes with residents same spots every year, but
than the spring runoff did, some are new.”
might. The river acts more but many residents of who live outside the
Roehrich said.
like a moody teenager bent “Water makes its own Horace and West Fargo protected area and must Kristen M. Daum reports
on rebellion just to prove a way,” she said. “It takes out have been spared in recent still face the threat of for The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead
point. the culverts, the roads.” years for one reason.
When the waters rise, the For the past three years, The Sheyenne Diversion,
Sheyenne overflows its Roehrich said, spring floods constructed in the late 1980s
banks and breaks out have cut off access to every before the current climactic
across the horizon like a east-west road in three wet period began, has
glass of water spilled on a townships, forcing proven a godsend to those
table. It often takes weeks numerous detours for rural two communities, said Jake
before the floods recoil back residents, many of whom Gust, superintendent of the
into the riverbed. are farmers. project and a former West
It’s a consequence of Roehrich’s early Fargo commissioner.
topography – the estimates projected a “The diversion allowed us
Sheyenne’s riverbanks are $2 million price tag to to solve the problem
naturally higher than the repair the damage left without any dikes around
surrounding terrain. So behind by 2011 overland the river,” he said, making
when the Sheyenne note of initial opposition to Get
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Roehrich’s stomping Bob Brooks, chairman of western borders. There
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While the Sheyenne River The ground is so of farmland still succumb.
doesn’t really threaten saturated that minor The contrast is drastic
towns in Wells County, it flooding happens even after during springtime in north
wreaks havoc on the miles a quick rain shower, he West Fargo and Harwood,
of farmland and township said. north of where the
roads that crisscross the “It’s wet here. It’s that diversion ends.
prairie. way over the whole state,” Dry fields and roadways
After spring melt, Brooks said. shift abruptly into endless

We change landscapes
and lives.
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PAGE 12
A FORUM
COMMUNICATIONS
SPECIAL PROJECT
SUNDAY,
FEBRUARY 5, 2012
In this April 11, 2011, photo, Woodcrest Drive in Fargo forms a peninsula, jutting into the flooding Red River.
Oakport battles
US
Red’s annual flood
OVERWHELMS
Where ‘the plough ought to be at work, the waves roll’
By Marino Eccher
Forum Communications Co.
OAKPORT TOWNSHIP, Minn. –
Jay Leitch keeps his canoe parked
on his driveway. When the Red
River – located a cozy 200 feet away
– overwhelms its banks and
surrounds his house, the boat
ferries him to the outside world.
When Leitch moved into his
Oakport home in 1992, it was
thought to be well above the 100-
year floodplain. It’s stayed safe
since then, but not without a few
close calls. This summer, he
finished work on a small dike in
his backyard, just as a precaution.
“You can’t sandbag a deck and a
patio,” he said.
It’s a common narrative up and
down the Red River Basin, where
residents have flirted with two
catastrophic floods in the past
three years and still harbor fresh
memories of the one that
devastated Grand Forks in 1997.
Spring flood fights have become
so common that when Cass County
deployed 1.5 million sandbags in
2010 to combat a river that crested
in Fargo at 37 feet – 7 feet above
major flood stage – Fargo Mayor
Dennis Walaker called the effort
“an exercise.”
For Leitch, 63, those flood fights
have been both personal – as they
must be, for neighbors of the river
– and professional. With a
background in natural resource
management and applied
economics, Leitch has been a
consultant on water issues in some
WATER
50 countries. In the 1980s, he was
SECTION 2
WHEN
Floodwaters 3 to 4 feet deep in 1997 turned Reeves Drive into a reflecting pool for this stately white house, a Grand Forks landmark.
“There’s no one jurisdiction that can look across
the basin and say, here’s what we ought to do.”
Jay Leitch, water consultant, author and former North Dakota State
professor and dean of the school’s college of business
the science adviser to the
secretary of the Army. In 1993, he
co-authored “A River Runs North,”
a book about managing the Red.
Of course, being an expert in the
field is one thing; getting decision-
makers to listen to what he has to
say is another.
“People don’t put much faith in
the local expert,” he said.
Especially when he criticizes
policy or planned development.
When Leitch helped write a report
in 1998 with a number of flood
policy recommendations, “A lot of
people said, ‘let’s use those reports
to build dikes,’ because they didn’t
want to read them,” he said.
A former North Dakota State
University professor and dean of
the school’s college of business,
Leitch taught the two most certain
things in Fargo: water and taxes.
The trouble with those topics:
Everybody has an opinion – and
plenty of people think they know
better.
“I would’ve almost rather taught
something like nuclear physics,”
he said.
Part of the challenge is getting
any kind of consensus from all the
stakeholders along the Red. The
river affects about 1,500
jurisdictions, from townships to
states to countries.
“There’s no one jurisdiction that
can look across the basin and say,
here’s what we ought to do,” he
said.
That collection of far-flung,
disparate actors puts the river at
the mercy of what Leitch calls “the
tyranny of small decisions” – the
patchwork set of policies crafted
in the best interests of individual
municipalities that ultimately
detracts from the best interests of
the basin as a whole.
He’s seen the impact of those
decisions in his own backyard,
quite literally. In 2003, he got into a
spat with a local developer who
wanted to build six houses near
his own house at 1313 40th Ave. N.
He said the land in question was in
the floodplain, and he had video
from 1997 that showed the site
under water.
The Buffalo-Red River
Watershed District agreed, but the
township board said there was no
recourse to stop the development.
The people who sold the land to the
developer accused Leitch of sour
grapes, saying he wanted to be the
last house on the block.
The homes went up. When the
river floods, Leitch says, they are
(predictably) surrounded by water.
Michael Vosburg / Forum Communications Co.
Drowning by numbers
Flooding on the Red, of course,
is hardly a new problem. As long
as there have been Red River
settlements, there has been a
struggle to keep them dry.
The worst to date came early on,
when a mammoth flood struck
settlements near the Canadian
border and what is now Winnipeg
in 1826. It remains the most potent
Red River flood on record,
discharging perhaps 40 percent
more water than the 1997 flood.
Accounts from the time paint a
picture of widespread devastation.
Residents were blindsided by
water levels that seemed to climb
without end. A Hudson’s Bay Co.
governor said the river spilled
over “to such an extent as to give
the whole country as far as the eye
could carry, the appearance of a
lake.”
Another resident wrote: “All the
arable land is now under water
and where according to the season
of the year, the plough ought to be
at work, the waves roll by the
agitation of the piercing north-
wind.”
The same journal tells of boats
working day and night to rescue
stranded settlers from their
rooftops, as the river swept away
“houses, trees and everything else
that came in its way.”
Fifteen people died in the flood,
and most everyone else in the
region was displaced.
RED: Page 13
Forum Communications Co.

The Security Building in Grand Forks still smolders two days after it was gutted by a fire that demolished much of the flooded city
center on April 19, 1997.
Subsequent settlers weren’t so
easy to deter, and in spite of a
handful of major floods through
the mid-1800s, the basin’s
population grew steadily as Fargo
and Moorhead blossomed as
transportation hubs.
The next standard-setting flood,
1897, didn’t catch residents as off-
guard as the 1826 disaster. In
March that year, The Fargo Forum
ran a story titled “The Coming
Flood,” which predicted a high
water based on 5 feet of snowpack.
A few weeks later, the forecast
came true, and most of Fargo-
Moorhead wound up submerged.
Each day, people figured the river
must have crested, only to see it
rise again the next. The highest
point in Island Park was 5 feet
underwater, and heavy equipment
was deposited on the bridge
between Fargo and Moorhead to
keep it from being washed away.
The flood left 50,000 people
homeless up and down the basin,
and set a record crest at Fargo of
40.1 feet.
Because of differences in
measurements, that mark is up for
debate, but it’s generally agreed
that the Red didn’t reach that level
again for another century.
In the interim, a handful of
lesser floods wreaked occasional
havoc on the area:
왘 In 1943, 270 residents – most of
whom lived in what’s now
considered floodplain – evacuated,
along with 111 St. John’s Hospital
patients who left after the
hospital’s heating plant flooded.
왘 In 1982, the Red crested a
record five times in one year, the
last coming as late as July 25. A
sixth was predicted but never
materialized. By today’s standards,
none were catastrophic – the
highest was 28.44 feet – but
historians say the prolonged
Cruising through the intersection of Third and Demers, a Coast Guard skiff patrols the heart of downtown Grand Forks during the
1997 flood.
RED
From Page 12
“Every once in a while, some kind of idea
comes along to develop along the riverfront.
People see it in Winnipeg, people see it down
in San Antonio – ‘why can’t we have our
river walk somewhere along the Red?’ “
Don Schwert, North Dakota State University geologist
headache prompted city planners
to begin mulling a pullback from
the river.
왘 In 1969, the city faced its worst
flood since 1897, with a crest of
37.3 feet. One of the iconic images
of the extensive (and expensive)
battle: A group of North Dakota
State University football players –
the “Red Hats,” as they were
known – rushing from site to site
to sandbag, flanked by police
escorts.
Between the Red and the
Missouri, flooding damages that
year topped $100 million.
Then, in 1997, the so-called 100-
year flood arrived right on
schedule. Grand Forks got
swamped. Damages from the Red
totaled $5 billion. Fargo and
Moorhead, with the help of
3.7 million sandbags and a late
cold spell that slowed the water’s
advance, dodged the worst of it.
“We were nothing short of
lucky,” Fargo City Engineer Mark
Bittner said the following year.
“We’re all patting ourselves on the
back about the great job we did.
But could we have handled the
kind of water other cities had?”
It didn’t take long to find out.
Twelve years later, in March 2009,
the Red set a record crest at Fargo
of 40.84 feet. This time, the crisis
was compounded by unexpected
urgency: Six days before the crest,
city leaders were told the forecast
was a foot higher and a day sooner
than anticipated. Everyone from
students to Cass County Jail
inmates mobilized to fight the
water.
At the time, Moorhead Mayor
Mark Voxland recalled fighting a
sense of desperation as well.
“I went home that night and I
felt, ‘How can we beat this flood,
when every day they raise the
crest a foot?’”
Pulling back
In spite of the risks, convincing
people to give the Red a wide berth
isn’t always easy. The appeal of its
banks dates back to the earliest
days of settlement here, when the
trees of the riverfront offered both
a physical barrier against the
wind and a psychological barrier
against the vastness of the open
prairie, said Mark Peihl of the
Clay County Historical Society.
“It took the people a long time,
like 100 years, to figure out right
along the river is not a good place
to build houses,” he said.
Don Schwert, a North Dakota
State University geologist and
expert on the Red, said historically
it’s been difficult for the cities to
come to terms with the fact that
development near the river – an
economic boon elsewhere – is
problematic here.
Forum Communications Co.
PAGE 13
A FORUM
COMMUNICATIONS
SPECIAL PROJECT
SUNDAY,
FEBRUARY 5, 2012
FARGO
TOP FLOODS
1) 40.84 ft on 03/28/2009
(2) 39.72 ft on 04/18/1997
(3) 39.10 ft on 04/07/1897
(4) 38.75 ft on 04/09/2011
(5) 37.34 ft on 04/15/1969
(6) 37.13 ft on 04/05/2006
(7) 36.99 ft on 03/21/2010
(8) 36.69 ft on 04/14/2001
(9) 35.39 ft on 04/09/1989
(10) 34.93 ft on 04/19/1979
“Every once in a while, some
kind of idea comes along to GRAND FORKS
develop along the riverfront,” he
TOP FLOODS
said. “People see it in Winnipeg,
people see it down in San Antonio (1) 54.35 ft on 04/22/1997
– ‘why can’t we have our river (2) 50.20 ft on 04/10/1897
walk somewhere along the Red?’” (3) 49.87 ft on 04/14/2011
Schwert, who has studied the (4) 49.33 ft on 04/01/2009
river for three decades, has seen (5) 48.81 ft on 04/26/1979
his share of mind-boggling flood
(6) 48.00 ft on 04/18/1882
policy decisions. In 1989, when he
lived on Oak Street in Fargo, he (7) 47.93 ft on 04/06/2006
watched in disbelief as volunteers (8) 46.09 ft on 03/20/2010
fought tooth and nail to keep water (9) 45.93 ft on 04/21/1996
out of the El Zagal golf course. (10) 45.73 ft on 04/11/1978
“I’m watching this tremendous
Source: National Weather Service
effort to save the golf courses from
being flooded, to save the
floodplain from being flooded,” he
said. “Those of us who are
appreciative of the natural aspect
of the river think this is lunacy.”
But it’s getting better. Both cities
have chipped away at flood-prone
neighborhoods over the decades,
and have bought out hundreds of
low-lying homes since 1997. Fargo
and Moorhead have bought out
hundreds of low-lying homes since
1997, and tightened flood
protection in at-risk
neighborhoods.
After staving off disaster year
in and year out for the past decade
and a half, Fargo and Moorhead
have taken steps to accommodate
the river.
But those steps are only as good
as they are permanent, Leitch
said. And as he learned in his own
neighborhood, people have short
memories.
“We need to keep reminding
people,” he said. “One of these
years, the wet cycle will be over,
and we’ll be in a dry cycle again,
and then we’ll forget all about it
and crowd the river.”
Marino Eccher reports
for The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead.
Forum Communications Co.

PAGE 14
A FORUM
COMMUNICATIONS
SPECIAL PROJECT
SUNDAY,
FEBRUARY 5, 2012
Graphic by Troy Becker Rural Municipality of St. Laurent (Man.) Councilman Derek Johnson surveys the damage caused by the spring 2011 flood of Lake
Forum Communications Co. Manitoba, a 100 mile-long lake an hour northwest of Winnipeg. A wet spring combined with additional water diverted from the
Assiniboine River created a flood called by officials as a 1-in-400-year flood.
Devastation
north of
US
the border
Winds, high water wipe out parts
OVERWHELMS
of Lake Manitoba’s cottage country
By Brad Dokken
Forum Communications Co.
ST. LAURENT, Man. – On the
good days, Derek Johnson says,
Lake Manitoba is a sleeping giant,
a freshwater ocean 100 miles long
and 30 miles wide that seems to
extend forever from his beachfront
home about an hour north of
Winnipeg.
“The lake doesn’t look like it
could hurt a fly some days,” said
Johnson, 41, a financial adviser
who dipped his feet into the waters
of local politics in 2010 when he
successfully ran for a seat on the
Rural Municipality of St. Laurent’s
council. “I was born here, I grew up
here, and I like it here.
“It’s very peaceful, very serene.”
Beware, though, when the big
lake shows its ugly side.
That’s what happened one
fateful Tuesday afternoon in late
May, and life for Johnson and
hundreds of other home and
cottage owners along the
southeast shore of Lake Manitoba
hasn’t been the same.
And it won’t be anytime soon.
“All I can say is, thank God we got
everybody evacuated without a
single death,” Johnson said. “Boat
rescues, helicopter rescues. They
had to drive some heavy equipment
where fire and RCMP (Royal
Canadian Mounted Police) couldn’t
go in.
“We used whatever we had, and
luckily, we had no deaths,” he said.
Rough spring
WATER
The spring of 2011 already had
been bad. All seven of the
drainages that enter Lake
Manitoba from as far away as
Alberta were flooding, Johnson
said. The Portage Diversion, a
man-made drain built in the early
1970s to divert water from the
Assiniboine River into Lake
Manitoba to protect Winnipeg, was
flowing beyond its capacity.
There was little choice: The
Assiniboine had swollen to 54,000
cubic feet per second where it
entered the diversion at Portage la
Prairie, Johnson said – three
times the river’s downstream
capacity.
Johnson said the rural
municipality, similar to a U.S.
county, had learned early in May
that the province was going to
divert the extra water into Lake
SECTION 2
Manitoba.
WHEN
Officials were calling it a 1-in-400-
year flood.
That meant homes and property
along the RM’s 15½ miles of
beaches would be at substantial
risk from northwest winds.
Sandbag dikes and other
protections were hastily erected.
“We had three weeks to prepare
that the water was coming up,” he
said.
By May 31, Johnson said, Lake
Manitoba was at an elevation of
815.5 feet above sea level – 1½ feet
above flood stage and 3 to 5 feet
higher than the province’s
preferred levels.
Calm before the storm
Johnson said the southeast end of
Lake Manitoba was calm when a
wind warning for the northwest
side of the lake was issued about 11
a.m. May 31.
There wasn’t a breeze, but still
the lake was rising from the storm
brewing 100 miles to the northwest.
The reason: a phenomenon known
as “fetch,” which Johnson likens to
water sloshing in a bathtub; the
more it sloshes, the more the
momentum builds.
The sloshing is even more
pronounced on shallow Lake
Manitoba, which has a maximum
depth of 23 feet.
The wind started mid-afternoon,
and RM officials called for a
mandatory evacuation of the area
and its 900 lakeside homes and
cabins. Johnson, who rushed home
from the RM office about 4:30 p.m.
to fetch a few belongings and hitch
up his camper, said he watched the
lake rise.
“From the 15 minutes I was
home, the water was coming up an
inch a minute,” he said.
When the gale hit, it came
roaring out of the northwest at 60
mph. Johnson said the waves were
10 to 12 feet high, and the fetch
pushed the lake 5 feet higher than it
was that morning.
The sleeping giant had awakened.
“It made property disappear,”
Johnson said.
Lingering disaster
On a sunny Thursday in late
August, Lake Manitoba again was a
sleeping giant as Johnson led two
visitors on a tour of the
devastation. Security still manned
each of the seven entry points to
the beachfront properties, which
remained under mandatory
evacuation.
The lake, which peaked at 817.5
feet above sea level in mid-July and
stayed there for 10 days, finally was
receding.
South Twin Beach, which was in
the direct path of the northwest
wind, took the hardest hit. The
waves swamped roads, demolished
concrete retaining walls and swept
homes and cabins off their
foundations, in some cases washing
them away completely.
“It’s as devastating, if not more
so, than a hurricane,” Johnson
said. “And this was only with 60
mph winds.
“We had a 1-in-100-year wind
event on top of a 1-in-400-year flood
event,” he said. “The combination
of the two is what did us in.”
Nearly three months later,
backyard lawns appeared green at
first glance. A closer look revealed
the green was stagnant floodwater
covered with duckweed and algae.
Gas jugs, septic tanks, water
heaters and boathouses were
strewn everywhere.
“It looks like a junkyard,”
Johnson said. “You can’t see any of
our beautiful beaches.”
Scott Millar, 64, had made the trip
from Winnipeg for the day to survey
his property. Stopping to talk,
Millar said the cottage and land had
been in his family 65 years.
His voice quivered with emotion
when he talked about the
province’s decision to divert more
water into the lake to save
Winnipeg.
“They sacrificed us is what they
Photos by John Stennes / Forum Communications Co.
In late May 2011, Lake Manitoba stood 3 to 5 feet above normal
and by July, it had risen another 2 feet.
did,” said Millar, semi-retired after
a long career at a Winnipeg food-
processing plant. “They threw us
under the bus, and we’re stuck
with it.”
Millar said his cottage probably
can be fixed, but it’s going to be
costly.
Where, he wonders, is the
compensation?
“Buy me out,” he said. “This is a
big part of our retirement, and it’s
gone. It’s worthless. I need to be
dealt with now.”
‘Mass confusion’
Johnson said he hears similar
frustration in his position with the
RM. The government has various
disaster programs for permanent
residents, but there’s less recourse
for cottage owners.
“It’s pretty much mass
confusion,” Johnson said. “People
don’t know where to go for funding.
There are so many different boards
people are confused where to go to
access different programs.
“They saved so many homes and
billions of dollars from Portage
east to Winnipeg,” he said. “But
bring out the checkbook and help
these people.”
The local economy and tax base
also took a hit, Johnson said. With
beaches evacuated and off-limits,
no one was going to the hardware
store, eating out or buying beer.
At the same time, RM
expenditures soared. Johnson said
the RM’s check run just for July
was $4.5 million – an amount equal
to their budget for 4½ years.
The government covered the
RM’s property taxes from May 31 to
Dec. 31, he said, but bills are
relentless, and property that’s
either gone or damaged beyond
repair is worth a lot less than it was
before the storm.
“Our RM is in bad shape” for
2012, Johnson said. “We’ll be
reassessing everything, and we’ll
have our work cut out for us doing
our budget. Lowering the
assessments really hurts us.”
Johnson, whose property is on
Johnson Beach farther north,
escaped the worst of the winds, and
he was able to protect his home
with sandbags. The house never
lost power, but his patio was buried
under 3 feet of sand, and his septic
system inundated.
By late August, Johnson had
spent every day since May 31 living
in a 27-foot RV, renting a separate
camper for his teenage son and
daughter.
“It’s definitely been interesting,
he said. “Let’s put it this way – the
novelty of camping wears off
pretty quickly.”
He also put his full-time job on
hold to deal with constituents.
Quite a burden, that, for a
position that pays $325 a month.
“Every time I meet someone who
voted for me, I kick them,” Johnson
joked.
Gradually, Johnson and others
whose property wasn’t devastated
are putting their lives back
together. By early October, he was
making plans to move home –
against the advice of other local
officials.
“There has to be a time when we
can get our life back,” he said.
For now, Johnson and others are
putting their hopes on an outlet
being constructed to direct more
water during the winter months
from the east side of Lake
Manitoba through Lake St. Martin
and the Dauphin River into Lake
Winnipeg.
The outlet was supposed to have
been part of the Portage Diversion
project in the early 1970s. There’s
been lots of finger-pointing at the
current government for not acting
sooner, Johnson said, but previous
administrations also ignored the
project.
“They’ve been playing Russian
roulette with Lake Manitoba for
years,” he said. “This time, they
lost.”
Brad Dokken reports
for The Grand Forks Herald.

Homes in the Southport area of Bismarck are diked against the rising Missouri River in June 2011.
A FINAL FLOOD
By Chuck Haga
Forum Communications Co.
As he farms by the Wild Rice
River near Kindred, N.D., lovely
country where he was born 64
years ago and has worked the land
since 1967, Jerome Nipstad frets
about water: spring floods, summer
floods, but mostly the water that
may come with a Red River
diversion project designed to
protect Fargo.
“They’ve got me under 5 or 6 feet
of water,” Nipstad said on a bright
and blessedly dry summer day,
citing projections in a diversion
study.
“I don’t think there’s anything we
do that’s not affected by this
uncertainty,” he said, as neighbor
farmers Trana Rogne, 67, and Todd
Trappen, 52, nodded. “We sit in
tractors that steer themselves, and
this is all we think about.”
In Burlington, Pete McLaughlin,
48, walked through his gutted house
after the Mouse River returned to
its banks last summer. The water
was gone, but now he was in the
way of Burlington’s determination
to not let this happen again.
“I’m supposedly being bought
out,” he said. “The new dike they’re
putting in will go right through …
here. It will go right through my
living room.”
In the Sheyenne River Valley
north of Valley City, just below
Bald Hill Dam and a brim-full Lake
Ashtabula, Pete and Lori Paulson
fret, too. They fear new discharges
from Devils Lake into the Sheyenne
River will force them from land
they’ve loved and farmed for nearly
four decades.
“We felt terrible about Minot,”
Lori Paulson said. “We feel bad
about Devils Lake, too. They don’t
know what to do with all their
water. But we don’t want it.”
From the Red River and its
tributaries to Devils Lake, the
Sheyenne and the Mouse – and the
Missouri River, which bruised
Bismarck-Mandan last year and,
more than a half century ago,
forced a mass migration as it
fattened into Lake Sakakawea –
people are always in the way.
Whether their homes are swept
away by floodwaters or by society’s
efforts to fight a flood or prevent
new ones, people are always in the
way: people young and old, rich and
poor; families, neighborhoods,
communities.
On the Mouse River,
grieving a home
Pete McLaughlin’s ranch-style
house was set among oak, ash and
box elder trees on Cherry Street in
Burlington, about 8 miles
northwest of Minot.
For 19 years, since he had it built
next to his father’s house in 1992, it
had been home to McLaughlin and
his wife, Carma, and eventually
five children.
“I bought the land, an acre and a
half, from Dad for $10,” he said.
“I’ve lived in the neighborhood all
my life, and I’m living on land
that’s been in my family for 60
years.
“I liked living on the river. It was
just nice and quiet here, with a mix
of young families and people who
had been here forever. If neighbors
were outside building a deck or
something, you’d go over and help
them.”
As he prepared to walk through
the house one more time last
“We felt terrible about Minot. We feel bad about Devils Lake, too.
They don’t know what to do with all their water. But we don’t want it.”
Keeping the water out of town means
creating permanent lakes in the country
summer before it was demolished
to make way for Burlington’s new
permanent dike, McLaughlin
pointed to one of those neighbor
decks, lying at a sharp tilt now in
the barren, crusted landscape that
had been his front yard.
“I don’t know where it came
from,” he said, shaking his head.
“It just floated in here.”
He was deeply invested in this
place, and not just financially.
“About five years ago, my wife
and I ripped off the roof to the
garage and built a master suite up
there,” he said. “It took a while, but
it was well worth it. We had a
master bedroom, a bath, a sitting
room. We did it all ourselves. We
spent $13,000 doing something a
contractor would have charged
$50,000 to do.”
A woodworked sign had hung
above the garage door: “The
McLaughlins.” When the flood
came in June, the water covered a
third of Burlington and reached a
height of 5½ feet on McLaughlin’s
main floor, lapping against the
proud sign above the garage door.
“A city cop took a video of that,
and he showed it to me,” he said.
When the water receded, he tore
out ruined cabinets, sopped carpets
and doughy Sheetrock, working
around his job as a technician with
Midcontinent Communications. He
and his wife moved into a camper
parked outside his brother-in-law’s
place in Minot.
“Before the city came up with the
buyout plans, we were going to
remodel here,” he said. “I was
going to do it all myself. We had the
new bedroom and bathroom
upstairs, and I would start with
getting the rewiring done and then
live up there while we worked on it.
“I had the house 80 percent gutted
out when I stopped because of the
potential buyout. It made no sense
to continue.”
As he walked through the main
floor, the walls and flooring
stripped, he paused at what had
been his “Harley Room,” fitted with
a bar and painted orange and black
in honor of the motorcycle
company. A painted slogan, “Live,
Laugh, Love,” remained over the
party-room door.
“I’m a Harley guy,” McLaughlin
said. “We had one good party there,
and then it was gone. But I must
have built a good bar. See? It didn’t
even move.”
When he learned how badly the
house had been hit, he rushed to
his wife. “I didn’t want her to see
the house on some video on
Facebook or TV, so I went to her,”
he said. “She broke down.”
He walked into another room,
empty and scraped bare.
“This room here is where we had
all the pictures of our children and
grandchildren,” he said. “Carma
walked in here and broke down
again.”
Several weeks after the flood,
cuts and ravines showed where the
dike behind his house had failed,
and bloated, busted sandbags
remained scattered out front.
Trees, their branches broken and
leaves turned a dull brown, lay
about near the river, where new
bars of silt had formed and, a half-
block away, the approach to a
bridge was washed out.
Lori Paulson, who farms with her husband, Pete, north of Valley City, N.D.
Anyone who witnessed the flood
of 1997 and its aftermath in Grand
Forks would recognize the sights,
sounds and smells of what had
been McLaughlin’s neighborhood.
Flood junk lined the street: a
toilet, an electric fan, heaps of
ripped insulation, a copy of Taste
of Home Magazine, ruined sofas,
stoves and refrigerators. Homes lay
off their foundations. Boulevard
trees leaned with eerie uniformity,
showing the force and direction of
the water, and nearly all the grass
was gone. Mobile homes, once lined
up straight in a wooded courtyard,
lay at the odd angles where the
river’s current had pushed them.
And it was unnaturally quiet.
“It’s heart-breaking,”
McLaughlin said, walking along
“the little circle,” a roundabout
street where traffic used to be light
enough that he and other
neighborhood kids could race their
bicycles.
“I feel bad about young people
who just got in here,” he said.
“They’re not going to be able to pay
off their mortgages. What are they
going to do?”
The city is planning new
housing developments, hoping to
keep the McLaughlins and people
like them in Burlington. But that
will take time.
“I have to find a place to store my
stuff,” McLaughlin said. “I’ve
called to Mohall, Bottineau – every
place within a 75-mile radius –
looking for storage space.”
He was offered close to $150,000 in
the buyout and received an
additional $30,000 from the Federal
Emergency Management Agency.
“But with prices what they are now
in the area, we’re looking to get
into a smaller space and pay twice
what my house is priced at,” he
said. “That’s the case anywhere in
this area. I’d love to stay right
where I’m at, but …”
He is disappointed and uncertain,
but he does not come off sounding
angry or bitter that he was in the
way of the water. He accepts that he
and his family and their house
were in the way of recovery.
“I have nothing bad to say about
the city,” he said. “They fought hard
to fight the flood, and they always
let us know what they were
planning. I’ve got nothing bad to say
about FEMA, either. The inspectors
came in and did their jobs. And the
dike, I accept the fact they’re doing
it to protect the rest of the city.”
He was reassured, he said, by the
way his neighbors and the entire
region responded to the disaster.
“There was no hesitation in
people about helping other people,”
he said. “There were 4,100 homes
affected in Minot, but only 300
people went to shelters. FEMA was
amazed that so many people could
be taken in by family and friends.
“Having to leave … it hurts me. It
hurts everyone here who’s affected
by it. It’s hard to pull up everything
you’ve known and try something
else. But it supposedly will make it
so the guy across the street and
other people will be protected.”
On the Missouri,
a historic sacrifice
There had been talk of taming
the Missouri for decades when
major flooding occurred in 1943 –
John Stennes / Forum Communications Co.
PAGE 15
A FORUM
COMMUNICATIONS
SPECIAL PROJECT
SUNDAY,
FEBRUARY 5, 2012
aggravated, as in 2011, by heavy
rains and greater than expected
runoff from the Rocky Mountains.
The flood that year swamped many
farms, towns and cities downriver,
including Omaha, Neb.
The response was to build a
series of dams and reservoirs that
would hold back water at times of
heavy flows, providing protection
for downstream states and
irrigation, recreation and other
benefits for North Dakota.
But that put people in the way.
Construction of Garrison Dam
began in 1947, and the rising waters
of the reservoir forced the removal
of thousands of people from more
than 460,000 acres of wooded
bottomland. A third of that land
was home to Mandan, Hidatsa and
Arikara Indians, the Three
Affiliated Tribes of the Fort
Berthold Indian Reservation.
The tribes had long lived on this
land, and the Mandan famously
had sheltered and arguably saved
the Lewis and Clark expedition of
1804-06.
This was the land left to the
Indians through the Fort Laramie
Treaty of 1866. Eight small villages
with such evocative names as Shell
Creek, Beaver Creek, Red Butte,
Lucky Mound and Charging Eagle
had lain in the bluff-sheltered
valley, connected by the muddy and
sometimes troublesome river that
angled past old stands of
cottonwood trees. As the reservoir
filled, the villages disappeared.
“I grew up over there, under that
water,” Malcolm Wolf said,
pointing to an arm of Lake
Sakakawea as he drove along N.D.
Highway 23 in summer 2010,
guiding a reporter to an Indian-
owned and operated oil well.
Hundreds of people at Fort
Berthold today can start their
personal stories that way: “I grew
up over there, under that water.”
Born long after the reservoir
filled, Tessa Sandstrom grew up in
the area around New Town, the
“new town” created by people who
had to leave old Sanish, Van Hook,
Elbowoods and other flooded river
towns. In a thesis prepared for her
bachelor’s degree through the
University of North Dakota’s
Honors Program in 2006, she
confessed she had known nothing
of the sacrifices until she started
her research.
“Some of the state’s richest
farmland, rangeland, mineral
resources, and 370,000 acres of
‘river-bottom ecology’ would be
given over to the Garrison
Reservoir,” she wrote.
“But what the residents of the
valley would be asked to give up
were not only lands and homes but
their entire livelihood and the
places where they had grown up
and built their lives – the places
where their fondest memories were
made.”
Sandstrom quoted a
contemporary observer, a writer for
the Minot Daily News:
“There is, of course, no way to
measure the heartaches of many of
the several thousands of people
who are required to move from
chosen homes, even (though)
humble, and from a way of life that
was satisfactory to them,” Robert
Cory wrote. “But that is part of the
sacrifice and part of the
contribution North Dakota is
making to allow the Garrison Dam
project to come into existence.”
FLOODING: Page 16

PAGE 16 FLOODING
From Page 15
The contribution was made
A FORUM through tears. In a famous
COMMUNICATIONS photograph of the time, George
SPECIAL PROJECT Gillette, then chairman of the
Three Affiliated Tribes, stands
SUNDAY, with federal officials in
FEBRUARY 5, 2012 Washington, D.C., on May 20, 1948,
as contracts are signed
transferring 155,000 acres of the
reservation’s best agricultural
land. It is a celebratory moment,
but Gillette appears to be weeping.
“It is hard to explain the law of
eminent domain to people like that,
with whom the government has
made a ‘treaty,’” Cory wrote. “This
broken pledge – however justifiable
it may be in the light of changes
unforeseen – also must be weighed
and added to the loss side of the
balance sheet.”
On the Sheyenne,
a home for ever?
The Sheyenne River Valley is a
narrow but rich mosaic of
habitats: prairie, farmland, upland
forest and riparian bottomlands, a
scenic preserve supporting ducks,
wild turkeys, hawks, bald eagles
and sharp-tailed grouse. Stands of
basswood, American elm, green
oak and burr oak mark the river
and shelter the wildlife – and the
occasional canoeist.
The U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers finished work on
Baldhill Dam in 1951, and the river
eventually became a 27-mile-long
reservoir and playground, a linear
oasis. About 45 feet at its deepest,
Lake Ashtabula has a surface area
of 5,500 acres.
About two miles below the dam,
Pete and Lori Paulson farm 2,500
US
acres bordered by the river and
bluffs to the east, just beyond the
road that meanders from the dam
south to Valley City. They run 100
cow-calf pairs on grazing land and
raise wheat, soybeans, corn for
feed, alfalfa and sunflowers. Pete’s
father, George, has a place on the
farm, and an uncle, 80, also helps
with the farm work part time.
OVERWHELMS
George Paulson is 90. “Looking
out and seeing all that water this
spring was really hard on him,”
Lori Paulson, 51, said. “He said he
had never seen water like that
before.”
When the 2011 floodwaters
subsided, Lori Paulson defiantly
reclaimed her yard by planting
hundreds of snapdragons, salvia,
impatiens and alyssum plants. Told
that it almost seemed she was
flower-diking against the river, she
smiled. “I guess I’d better get busy
then behind the house, too,” she
said.
Pete Paulson, 53, farmed. It’s
what he does.
“Dad’s home farm is two miles
down the road,” he said, folding his
work-weathered hands at the
kitchen table. “Mom’s home farm
is three miles north. We’ve been on
this farm since 1972. My father
always wanted a farm on the river.
Now he doesn’t want to live here.
He’s old, and he doesn’t want to get
flooded out.”
George Paulson may move into
Valley City. But it will be a sad day.
“When you’re a farmer, the farm
is all that matters,” his son said.
“Farmers are emotionally attached
to their land. You grow up here,
work here and probably expect to
die here. It’s your home, your life,
your livelihood. You don’t build it
to sell it and make money. You
build it to be forever. I’ve never had
a paying job off the farm. I started
working when I was 10, and it’s all
I’ve ever done. I don’t want to do
anything else.
“We don’t take three days off a
year. This year, we went to
Minneapolis once to see a Twins
WATER
game. It was a good time. But I
hated being away,” he said.
Pete Paulson’s parents struggled,
he said, raising eight children on
their small farm. His wife’s parents
are farmers near Oriska, about 20
miles to the east.
“There were tough years, but
we’re doing fine now,” Pete
Paulson said.
Except for all the water.
“Usually the river here is a
trickle, and you can walk across it
in late summer,” Pete Paulson said
back in August. “Until the 2009 and
2011 floods, we never had a sump
pump in our basement. We had
three this spring, and one is still
going.”
As persistent heavy rains filled
the reservoir last spring and
summer, the Army Corps of
Engineers raised discharge levels
SECTION 2
WHEN
from Lake Ashtabula. “Water was
coming over our driveway, and we
sandbagged standing in water in
mid-April. For three weeks, the
yard was full of water. We had the
cows up in the hills, calving.”
In 2009, they had water over the
yard for the first time. “And this
year, it was 2 or 3 inches higher
than in 2009,” Paulson said.
Lori Paulson shakes her head
when she recalls the 2009 flood.
“They said that was a once-in-a-
lifetime event, and it happened
again two years later! We had to
park cars by the road and come in
and out by tractor for three weeks.
And it was a 40-mile trip to town,
instead of the usual eight miles.”
“We were interviewed three
times on TV,” her husband said. “I
said that’s not a good sign. It means
Sandbag Central in Bismarck was going full throttle in spring 2011.
“If we’re going to take their water, we need to have
some say. As it is, Richland County is to be a holding
pond for Fargo, and we don’t think that’s fair.”
Trana Rogne, a farmer who lives east of Kindred, N.D.
you’re either a criminal or you’ve
been flooded.”
Now, with talk about new outlets
from Devils Lake adding more
water – maybe 3,000 cubic feet per
second more at critical times – they
fear for their future.
“The cows we can move,” Pete
Paulson said. “But the house is 110
years old; I don’t think we could
move it. And we’ve put a fortune
into it.”
They’ve considered building a
permanent dike to protect the
farmstead, or seeking more local
control over releases from Bald
Hill Dam. Others have suggested
building more dams on the
Sheyenne and a tributary, Bald Hill
Creek. “But that would take 20
years,” Pete Paulson said, “and it
wouldn’t be enough to help us.”
Another dam near Cooperstown
“would flood more farms,” he said.
Others along the river have
organized and tried to influence
what’s done at Devils Lake,
including a group called People to
Save the Sheyenne. “It’s a good
group – people who are worried
about water quality,” Paulson said,
but he had not joined.
“I’m not angry,” he said. “It’s just
nature. I know that farmers up
there by Devils Lake have lost land.
We’ve had crops underwater here,
but we haven’t protested the Devils
Lake thing. We’re not protesters or
complainers. I just wish we could
go back to normal rainfall.”
As a farmer, he has always had to
pay close attention to weather. But
as this wet cycle continues, it
becomes more and more
frustrating.
“You think about it every day,” he
said. “Every time they say it’s
going to rain, we hope it rains
south of us, not north of us.
“We were always dry when I was
a kid. It seemed to hardly ever rain,
and an inch of rain in early August
was a blessing. It perked up your
pastures and got the hay growing.
Now it just doesn’t quit, and all
this water has to go somewhere.
Right now, it’s going right by us.”
On the Wild Rice,
a plea for a culture
Farmers must deal with
uncertainty all the time: the
weather, the markets, the decisions
of a host of local, state and federal
policymakers and bureaucrats.
But as they sat and talked near
the great old burr oak that presides
over Trana Rogne’s farmstead east
of Kindred, three farming
neighbors agreed that Fargo’s
diversion plan leaves them mired
in uncertainty.
“We’re in limbo,” Jerome
Nipstad said. “We don’t know
what’s going to happen. Do I have
any interest in planting trees in a
certain spot? Do I build dikes
around my fuel tanks? That’s
expensive. Do I spend that money
now and in 10 years it’s gone?
“Our cemetery, where my father
and grandparents are buried, will
be flooded. That’s the North
Pleasant Cemetery, at the former
site of the Hickson Lutheran
Church. What to do about that?
“I don’t think there’s anything
we do that’s not affected by this
uncertainty,” he said.
Nipstad was born on a farm by
the Wild Rice River about three
miles from the Rogne place. Leslie
Rogne, Trana’s father, was his 4-H
leader. Nipstad’s wife, Sandy, grew
up in nearby Kindred.
He started farming in 1967. “I
farmed with my dad until he died,
and then I took over,” he said. Now
his son, Scott, 41, farms with him.
They raise wheat, soybeans and
sugar beets on about 4,500 acres.
Todd Toppen, 52, lives a mile east
of Rogne on the Wild Rice River, on
a farm his parents bought in the
mid-1950s after leaving a place the
family had homesteaded a few
miles to the west.
Toppen and his wife, LeAnn, 51,
have raised three children on the
farm, and all have a stake in what
happens as the region deals with
too much water; they are all in the
way. Daughter Erin, 27, is married
to a farmer by Kindred and teaches
music in a West Fargo elementary
school. Daughter Leslie, 25, works
in flood-prone Fargo. Son Kyle, 20,
a sophomore at UND, hopes to take
over the farm someday.
These neighbors and others in
southern Cass County and
Richland County organized last
year to challenge the diversion
plan they saw coming out of Fargo,
arguing that planning should have
included more people from a
broader area. They objected that
promoters didn’t include loss of
agricultural production in
projected impacts, and they said
the cost of relocations and
acquisitions was underestimated.
Beyond economics, they faulted
the plan for not recognizing the
social and cultural impact of
turning a broad area south and
west of Fargo into a holding pond.
“Fargo feels they’re in control
and they can do as they please,”
Nipstad said. “They want future
growth to the south. We feel they
could dike up more green space
and remove houses along the river
in Fargo, just like Grand Forks
did.”
Rogne said that Fargo should use
the floodplain just to the city’s
south for water storage at times of
flooding, “instead of draining it to
build houses.” Instead, he said,
“they’re moving the flood onto
their neighbors. In the spring,
they’ll hold the floodwaters south
of Fargo and pond the water on all
these farms: 54,000 acres flooded.
And flooding from the Sheyenne
would meet up with it.”
Toppen said, “It’s a basinwide
problem that deserves a basinwide
solution.”
Leah Rogne, Trana’s sister, also
has jumped into the fight. A
professor of sociology at
Minnesota State University,
Mankato, she filed a detailed
statement of opposition to the
diversion plan with the Corps of
Engineers in June.
The area that is to become a
holding area for floodwaters “is a
rural area that, after decades of
declining social and economic
infrastructure in other parts of
rural America, has established a
level of social and economic
health, viability and equilibrium,”
she wrote.
“The removal of ‘hundreds or
thousands’ of residents and the
relocation of farm operations
threaten the health of all these
communities. … No project as
radical as this one should move
forward without community
studies that assess the impact of
the proposed changes.”
In a flier prepared by a group
called the MnDak Upstream
Coalition, people opposed to the
diversion project as designed
conceded that “there is no silver
bullet” for dealing with the very
real threat to Fargo-Moorhead. “All
valley residents need to cooperate
in basinwide planning for
reasonable solutions at a
reasonable cost,” it states, with
“alternatives that don’t require one
area to be destroyed in order to
benefit another.”
Trana Rogne is a member of the
coalition. Kyle Toppen works on
the group’s Web page.
Rogne left the area in 1966 for
college in California. He raised his
family there, but in 2000 he and his
wife, Gail, returned to the home
farm.
“Mom and Daddy needed
someone to take care of them,” he
said. “And it’s a nice place, a
John Stennes / Forum Communications Co.
familiar place to come back to.”
He rents out the farmland, 160
acres, to neighbors who raise
beans and wheat. The spacious
house he shares with his mother,
Katherine, 97, is surrounded by a
small forest of hackberry, ash and
oak, lorded over by the magnificent
burr oak his father planted in 1930.
Rogne’s grandfather, Peter, a
Norwegian immigrant,
homesteaded the land in the 1880s.
Nipstad said he’s planning to
retire in a few years. He has a dike
around his farmstead now, which
has held out the flooding Wild Rice
River every year, but the diversion
may force an exit before he’s ready.
“They say they will relocate
you,” he said. “But where?”
Toppen said he waited 25 or 30
years for other farmers to retire so
he could obtain the land he farms.
He could protect his farmstead
with dikes, but he doesn’t want to
have to haul equipment for miles to
get at new land. “It’s awfully nice
to farm around where you live,” he
said. “And when you’re talking
about flooding six miles to the
north and eight miles to the east,
there’s not a lot of high spots.”
The MnDak Upstream Coalition
was formed in April and by
summer had up to 200 members
meeting monthly. A steering
committee met weekly. Other
groups organized among
homeowners in Oxbow, Hickson
and other small towns south of
Fargo.
“This project was planned by
people who benefit from this plan,”
Trana Rogne said. “They didn’t ask
us about it. They only told us about
it when they told us we would be
flooded out.”
The plan was designed by the FM
Metro Study Group, which
included representatives from the
city of Fargo and Cass County.
“We’ve asked if we could start a
new study group, to have
everybody at the table,” Rogne said
in August, but they hadn’t heard a
response.
“If we’re going to take their
water, we need to have some say,”
he said. “As it is, Richland County
is to be a holding pond for Fargo,
and we don’t think that’s fair.”
Toppen said Fargo was wrong to
continue developing into the
floodplain, including building the
new Davies High School there.
“None of us have ever done
anything that stupid,” he said.
“Fargo knew they were putting
Davies High in a low spot,” Rogne
said. “They did it to drive growth
there. They seem quite cavalier
about the impacts to their
neighbors. If the extreme event
anticipated by the plan occurred,
the diversion would flood out
Kindred, Davenport and other
towns. All you’d have left is Fargo
and the valley.
“We’re not saying we can’t
handle some water here. We’re
already handling water. But to buy
us all out on the 0.02 chance of a
500-year flood is wrong.”
There is pretty country here,
these residents say, and history
that spans generations – with more
on the way.
“People come into my yard and
say, ‘God, this is beautiful!’”
Nipstad said. “I have a 13-year-old
granddaughter who comes to visit
and says, ‘This is where I want to
live.’ It’s a 60-year-old house, and
she says it’s her favorite house. I
joke about selling it as lake
property. I could guarantee that
every spring there will be water all
around it.”
Kyle Toppen was home from
UND and working at a farm
equipment dealership last summer.
“Before I started at the
dealership, I think the chances that
I’d go back to the farm were maybe
50-50,” he said. “But as I worked
there, I missed it. That’s when I
realized I wanted to farm. I didn’t
realize how much I enjoyed doing
it until I wasn’t doing it.
“I would love to go back and farm
after college. But this diversion
plan has created a lot of
uncertainty.”
Chuck Haga reports for The Grand Forks Herald.
SECTION 3
Water shortages threaten area as frequently as water surpluses
ater supply has not been a
W problem in our region in the
past few years – but that will
change.
As I write, the National Weather Service
reports that the region is in moderate
drought and that the chance of flooding
this year is very low.
This is a reminder that too little water is
as great a problem as too much water – and
that the region needs to deal with shortage
as well as surplus.
That’s the point of this third installment
of our “Living with Water” series. It
explores water for drinking, for
agriculture, for industry, for recreation
and for wildlife, and it looks at a critical
new issue – water to sustain the oil boom
in western North Dakota.
Discuss this series at water.areavoices.com
series wraps up Feb. 26 with reports about
William C.
MARCIL
Forum
the challenges of managing water across
drainage basins and political boundaries.
The series is great reading, and we
believe it has significant historical value
as well. The series is distributed in Forum
Communications newspapers and broadcast on our
Co. chairman television and radio stations. It also
appears on Forum Communications Co.
websites.
We welcome your comments. Please
email them to Mike Jacobs, the project
coordinator at mjacobs@gfherald.com.
Forum Communications Co. has invested Back copies are available by completing
hundreds of hours in developing this the coupon printed in today’s section.
comprehensive “Living with Water” series. Thanks again – and good reading.
We hope you continue to enjoy these William C. Marcil
articles. Chairman
Next week’s topic is water quality. The Forum Communications Co.

PAGE 2
A FORUM
COMMUNICATIONS
SPECIAL PROJECT
SUNDAY,
FEBRUARY 12, 2012
The 74-mile long McClusky Canal is a popular spot for recreation.
ON THE COVER
Water: beautiful, useful
An irrigation system
in Park Rapids, Minn.
Mikkel Pates/ Forum
Communications Co.
and often problematic
CORRECTION
The steamboat Far
West did not carry the
Seventh Cavalry to
Little Big Horn as a
ack in 1971, the Chamber of
B
photo caption on
Page 6 of the first Commerce in Dickinson,
N.D., sponsored a town and
section of Living with
Water said. Instead,
country tour. The idea – a
familiar one in ag country – was to
the Far West brought take businesspeople out to the
news of the battle country so they could see growing
back to Bismarck, crops and grazing cattle.
That year, sponsors of the tour
where Tribune editor placed special emphasis on water,
Clement Lounsberry and the group visited a variety of
telegraphed the news irrigation systems, stock
to eastern watering schemes and small
newspapers. impoundments.
The tour was in mid-summer,
and the season had been hot and
dry.
At mid-afternoon, near the
height of the heat, the tour pulled
into a ranch yard northwest of
Dickinson. The host rancher
greeted us. His wife offered
IT
lemonade.
Then the tour began.
The rancher, son of Ukrainian
immigrants, showed off his herd
of Black Angus cattle. He showed
off a couple of horses.
Then he showed off his water
development.
NEED
It was a marvel.
He’d dammed a small stream
and installed a spillway. Water
trickled over the gravel and flowed
through a pipe into a stock
watering tank below.
The rancher dipped his hand
into the cool water and let it drop
through his fingers. Then he
looked at the group and he said, “I
just beauty in water.”
I have never forgotten this man’s
passion for water nor his
delightful way of expressing it.
Water exerts a powerful pull on
human beings. Some scientists say
we came from water, and certainly
it is necessary for our welfare. We
WE
depend on it for health. We bathe
in it.
Water defines region’s differences
he word “ecotone”
T describes a transitional
zone between two regions
of distinctly different
WHEN
ecological communities. The Red
River Valley is a classic example.
The sun rises in the east over the
more than 10,000 lakes of the
Minnesota North Woods. At day’s
end, the sun goes down in the west
over the almost treeless horizon of
the North Dakota prairie. The
flora and fauna of each region is
distinctly different from the other,
and the Red River Valley forms
what appears to be a natural
borderland.
But the differences between the
North Woods and the Northern
Plains are not caused by any river.
The difference is the reliability of
water. Much of the moisture
source for the precipitation that
falls on our region is the Pacific
WATER
Ocean. Some of the moisture is
recycled from local bodies of
SECTION 3
water. But the difference maker is
moisture-laden air from the Gulf
of Mexico. Weather systems
crossing the Rockies have very
little Gulf moisture in them, but
with each eastward mile, they have
an increasing chance of
entraining more of that good,
deep moisture supply.
In upcoming sections
SECTION 1: JAN 29 FEB. 19
Water where we live: From Keeping our water clean:
drought to flood, water Quality poses challenges
bedevils us throughout the area
SECTION 2: FEB. 5
FEB. 26
When water overwhelms us:
Making water policy: A
Flooding from Minnesota
maze of agencies manage
Lakes Country to the
resources in the region
Montana line
But the
attraction is
more than
merely
physical.
It is
economic, too.
Water makes
our industrial
civilization
possible. It
drives our
turbines and
cools our engines. It nurtures our
crops. It attracts tourists and
permanent residents alike.
But this is not all.
Water exerts an inexorable
psychological attraction, too. It
gives rise to what might be called a
spiritual longing. Indeed, water
plays an important role in
religious rituals.
We humans want to live by
water. We want to play in water. We
want to be cleansed by water.
So it is hardly surprising that
ensuring an adequate supply of
water is among humankind’s
essential activities. Nor is it
surprising that achieving the goal
has led to grandiose project ideas.
Some of these have become firm
fixations through generations on
the Plains.
Minnesota’s Lakes Country has
always attracted hot and thirsty
travelers from the Plains, and
tourism and retirement are both
big business there. As a result, real
estate prices skyrocketed during
the run-up to the current
recession. Although they’ve fallen
back, a place by the lake remains a
dream.
The dream has taken other
directions on the Plains, which are
warmer and dryer than Lakes
Country. So Dakotans have created
their own lakes.
No fewer than four dams stop the
John
WHEELER
The WDAY and
WDAZ chief
meteorologist earned
his degree at Iowa
State University
Annual average precipitation in
eastern Minnesota is more than 30
inches, whereas in western North
Dakota, it is barely 12 inches. In
any given year, the actual amount
of rain and snow can vary greatly,
but the plain fact is that a forest
will grow only where there is
enough precipitation to sustain a
forest. Where there is not enough
rain for a forest, a forest does not
grow.
But weather and climate are not
static. During times of drought,
some of the forest may burn and
some of the trees along the
western edge may wither and die,
allowing the grassland to expand
slightly eastward. When rainfall
increases for a period of years, the
same shifts may happen in the
opposite direction.
Devils Lake, sitting as it does in
a closed basin, is the poster child
for the gradual swings of the
Join us at water.areavoices.com
Have a story to tell about living
with water? Then please visit our
Living with Water website at
http://water.areavoices.com/ to read
more about this project, to interact with
others who are contributing and to tell us
your own story.
Also on the site, you’ll find a library of
water-related news stories from regional
Missouri River
on its way
Mike through the
JACOBS Dakotas, and
two of these
Grand Forks
Herald publisher
are among the
and “Living largest lakes
with Water” in the world,
project editor Oahe in South
Dakota and
Garrison in
North Dakota.
Dozens of
tributary streams have been
dammed, too, in fact almost every
one.
Here’s where fixation fits in.
The dams on the Missouri River
back up huge quantities of water,
and Dakotans have dreamed for
generations about how to make
use of the water. Huge irrigation
projects were proposed for both
states. A huge canal was dug
across central North Dakota and a
massive retaining structure put in
place. In the end, Congress refused
to continue funding for the
Garrison project.
A remnant of the Garrison
project remains, however, in the
proposal to move water from the
Garrison Reservoir to eastern
North Dakota, where it would
provide water for people and
industries in the Red River Valley.
South Dakota’s Oahe project has
a similar history.
Although the major reservoirs
are no longer seen as sources for
irrigation water, the idea of water
for the land to produce larger
crops has not been abandoned.
Farmland irrigation is a major
initiative across the farm belt of
the Dakotas, especially of potatoes
and alfalfa – relatively high-value
crops that benefit hugely from
additional water and, in the case of
potatoes, from the chemicals that
can be applied with the water, a
ecotone: shrinking to a glorified
mud puddle in times of drought,
then morphing into an inland sea
when precipitation is plentiful.
The rivers of our region are
more fickle; an inch of rain causes
them to rise noticeably. But the
wider swings of the climate also
affect the rivers. During the
ongoing, 20-year wet period, rivers
have been running higher most of
the time, and flooding has become
frequent. Times of drought have,
in the past, caused some rivers to
stop flowing altogether.
During the drier times in the
past, there has been a push to
bring water from Lake Sakakawea
eastward to the Red River Valley.
The idea still has merit even
though too much, not too little,
water seems to be our singular
concern at the moment.
Indeed, too little water in the Red
River Basin, with a switch of the
weather patterns, could easily
become a concern every bit as
formidable as the recent threat of
flooding. During the 1930s, cities
up and down the Red River faced
significant water shortages, and
that was when the area’s
population was a small fraction of
what it is today.
Obviously, the agricultural
Forum Communications Co. newspapers,
and you can visit our collection of water
resource Web links, and much more.
This project’s mission is to build
understanding about water and its
impact on our lives across the region,
and your contributions will lead to a
deeper understanding of the issues
surrounding water. Discuss it with us.
Garrison Diversion Conservancy District
process called “chemigation.”
And the reservoirs draw people.
In Mountrail County, villages
have cropped up along the north
shore of Lake Sakakawea, the
reservoir behind Garrison Dam.
The old town of Van Hook – where
my parents began their married
life – is such a place. There are
many others on the banks of every
large impoundment.
Because the impoundments have
fish.
They also draw wildlife. Much
land along the shoreline is
reserved for wildlife habitat,
including a plum patch planted on
my grandfather’s homestead.
Waterfowl are abundant on the
lake.
For these reasons, and others,
the river reservoirs have become
recreational havens.
There’s another demand for
water in western North Dakota,
too – the oil industry. The processs
used to produce oil hints at the
huge quantities of water involved.
It’s called “hydraulic fracturing”
or fracking and involves pumping
a slurry of water, sand and
chemicals two miles into the earth
to apply pressure that fractures
the shale and releases the oil.
These uses and others are
explored in this section of “Living
with Water.”
Next week’s edition will consider
the quality of water. Two weeks
from today, Feb. 26, the fifth and
final section of the project will
consider the challenges of
managing water, sharing it within
and across natural drainage
basins and political boundaries
and ensuring that there’s enough
to sustain us here.
And of course enough to ensure
that all of us can appreciate the
beauty of water for generations to
come.
sector also faces water needs
during dry times. Prairie grass
may go dormant for a few years
during a drought, but a farmer
needs a crop every year. Where soil
conditions permit, irrigation can
bridge the gaps between the rains.
But when the region is in a
drought, the water needs to come
from outside the region.
Fortunately, the water in Lake
Sakakawea comes, to a large
extent, from the mountains of
Montana and Wyoming, where
average annual winter snowfall
from 150 to 300 inches can yield the
equivalent of 15 to 30 inches of
rain when it melts. While it is
certainly possible for the Rockies
to be dry at the same time as our
region is dry, the two climates are
not necessarily related. The
amount of water siphoned off the
top of Lake Sakakawea to meet the
needs of the Red River Valley
would be hardly noticeable.
A backup supply of water from
the Rockies would go a long way
toward solving the water problems
of the Red River Basin the next
time the weather goes seriously
dry. With flooding the problem on
everyone’s mind, it may be hard to
find the wherewithal for such a
project.

When Fargo
wanted to
divert water
Diversion hasn’t always
suggested a detour
By Kristen M. Daum
Forum Communications Co.
FARGO – In Fargo today, the
phrase “Sheyenne diversion” is
associated with flood protection.
Several decades ago, it referred
to a different channel with an
opposite purpose: to funnel river
water toward the city to meet
growing residential and
commercial needs. The challenge
then was the lack of water, and
tapping the Sheyenne River was
the city’s prime solution.
Severe drought in the 1930s
prompted an acute awareness of
water supply. Official discussion
began in late 1949 about building a
dam and ditch to divert the
Sheyenne toward Fargo. By then,
Fargo had already paid $150,000
toward construction of the
Baldhill Dam north of Valley City,
giving the city 52 percent of the
rights to access Lake Ashtabula’s
water in times of drought.
Fargo Water Commissioner Fred
Hagen later said, “That
investment will do us no good”
without some method to funnel
Sheyenne River water five miles
east directly to Fargo.
The Sheyenne River naturally
flows into the Red River near
Harwood, north of Fargo. But city
leaders wanted to build a water
control project southwest of Fargo
to connect the two rivers nearer to
the city, providing easier access to
a stable water supply.
After years of discussion, the
need for a Sheyenne diversion
became more urgent in the late
1950s.
Fargo engineers and the U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers
formulated plans to build a
concrete conduit to funnel
Sheyenne River water into a ditch
near what is now Horace. The
ditch would lead to Cass County
Drain 27 and ultimately Rose
Coulee. From there, the water
would empty into the Red River at
Michael Vosburg / Forum Communications Co.
PAGE 3
A FORUM
COMMUNICATIONS
SPECIAL PROJECT
SUNDAY,
FEBRUARY 12, 2012
a location then still two miles
south of Fargo, where 40th Avenue
South runs today.
The diversion was intended to
carry as many as 37.5 million
gallons of water toward Fargo
each day.
The project stalled in 1967 after
Army Corps of Engineers officials
told Fargo leaders that they
planned to make a basinwide
study of the Red River and its
tributaries, potentially rendering
the Sheyenne diversion canal
unnecessary.
A dry spell in summer 1970 was
another wake-up call for the Fargo
region, speeding up consideration
of the Sheyenne project.
“For days, the river between
Fargo and Moorhead was only a
trickle,” The Forum newspaper
reported. “Red River waters were
depleted to their lowest point
since the dust bowl days of the
1930s.”
In April 1971, Fargo’s inclusion
in the Southeast Cass County
Water Management District
cleared the final administrative
hurdle for the decades-old plans
for a Sheyenne diversion to
become reality.
Revised plans called for a 400-
foot canal starting at the Sheyenne
River in Horace that would run
east along Cass County Road 6 Drainage Ditch 27 runs parallel to 40th Avenue South in Fargo
until it met up with Drain 27 as Interstate 29 cuts through the middle of the frame in this
southwest of Fargo. Drain 27 and aerial photo looking west.
Rose Coulee would usher the
water the rest of the way to the wouldn’t be needed for a few more The canal remained in use for 10
Red River south of Fargo, but the years. months, as drought conditions
canal would only be used for Drought conditions re-emerged continued into the summer of 1977.
“emergency water supply” when in 1976 when flows on the Red and The canal has only been needed
the Red River ran low. the Otter Tail ran low. twice since – in 1984 and 1988 –
At the project’s groundbreaking “Fargo-Moorhead residents will according to the city of Fargo.
in October 1971, Fargo Mayor soon get their first taste of The wet period of the past two
Herschel Lashkowitz said the Sheyenne River water,” a Forum decades has given Fargo an
canal would “have the effect of article in August 1976 stated. abundance of water and made
more than doubling the amount of Fargo engineers, in cooperation dormant the once-desperately
water for the city of Fargo in with the corps, activated the intake needed water supply project for
critical times.” and pumping station on the North Dakota’s largest city.
One year later, the $500,000 Sheyenne River near Horace, Kristen M. Daum reports
project was complete, but it meeting Fargo’s need for water. for The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead.
PAGE 4
A FORUM
‘Normal year’ brings fun
on region’s lakes, rivers
COMMUNICATIONS
SPECIAL PROJECT
SUNDAY,
FEBRUARY 12, 2012
By Tom Lawrence
Forum Communications Co.
PIERRE, S.D. – Eric Stasch is
looking forward to a better
summer on the Missouri River.
Stasch, the South Dakota Army
Corps of Engineers’ operations
project manager for the Oahe Dam
in central South Dakota, dealt with
record flooding that plagued the
Midwest in 2011. It damaged
property, displaced people and
shifted shorelines.
The high water also impacted
recreational opportunities for
people who boat, fish and enjoy
other activities along the Missouri
River, Stasch said. The relatively
dry early winter of 2011-12 offers
Map by Troy Becker
Forum Communications Co. the promise that won’t be repeated.
“I’m hoping this is more of a
normal year for us,” he said.
“We’re all hoping for a more
normal year to get people’s lives
back to normal, to let them have
fun and not worry about flooding.”
Having fun and spending time in,
on and along the Missouri River
has been a part of human
existence in the area as long as
man has walked, swam and boated
in the area.
IT
Archaeological digs and
discoveries prove that humans
have interacted with the river for
more than 10,000 years. Numerous
American Indian tribes depended
on the river for food, travel and
pleasure. But the massive floods
that plagued the Missouri led some
NEED
to call for greater controls on the
river.
The Pick-Sloan Missouri Basin
Program was created by the federal
Flood Control Act of 1944, and
designed to create a plan for water
use in the Missouri River Basin. It
is named for Lewis A. Pick,
director of the Missouri River
office of the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers, and William Glenn
Sloan, director of the Billings,
Mont., office of the United States
Bureau of Reclamation.
While flood control was a major
concern after repeated flooding,
the program was also intended to
assist navigation, offer irrigation
to landowners, supplement water
WE
supply, generate power, provide
municipal and industrial water
supplies, and perform stream-
pollution abatement and sediment
control.
Recreation also was a part of the
plan from the start – the
preservation and enhancement of
fish and wildlife habitat, and the
creation of recreation
opportunities, were listed as goals.
Recreation got a boost nearly 50
WHEN
years ago, when the Federal Water
Project Recreation Act of 1965
directed the corps to erect
campgrounds, boat ramps and
other recreational areas and
facilities by the reservoirs.
The Missouri National
Recreational River covers 98 miles
of near-pristine river that flows
along the South Dakota and
Nebraska border. It was designated
by Congress under the Wild and
Scenic Rivers Act in 1979 and
expanded to its current size in 1991.
Overall, the Missouri River has
more than 1,500 square miles of
open water, and millions of people
take advantage of the water to do
what their ancestors did: swim,
fish, boat and enjoy life along and
in the river.
WATER
All that recreational use is a
major economic engine for the
SECTION 3
region, dumping up to $100 million
into the economy, according to
estimates.
Tom Curran, the project manager
for the Fort Randall Dam in
southeastern South Dakota, has
fished in all the reservoirs along
the Missouri River during his 25
years with the corps, the last 12 in
charge of the dam.
Curran said the corps has to take
a variety of uses into consideration
as it manages the water in the
Missouri River system.
Water supplies for downstream
communities, irrigation, intakes
for power plants that need cooling
water in the summer, navigation
for barge traffic – all must be
factored in, he said.
Boaters are warned of high-water obstacles at this Missouri River launching dock at
Chamberlain, S.D., in this July 2011 photo.
Recreation is just as important,
Curran said.
“There’s all those uses that kind
of compete for the water,” he said.
“All those uses are authorized by
Congress, and the corps tries to
balance and provide for those
authorized purposes.
“The corps is required by that
legislation to operate the project
for all those purposes. They’re all
equal except for flood control.
Protection of life and property is
first. The rest are all handled
equally.”
He said he oversees several forms
of recreation, including camping,
fishing, boating, skiing, scuba
diving and other kinds of outdoor
activity.
Curran said while flooding made
headlines in 2011, drought is a far
more common concern.
“Even though we had the high
water last year, people were able to
get in and boat and fish,” he said.
“Some stretches of river below
Fort Randall were closed by the
state of South Dakota and the
corps. There were impacts to
navigation as well.”
But in the end, the corps’
decisions are guided by rules, not
whims and personal views, Curran
said.
The Master Manual governs the
system and serves as a guide for
decisions on the release of water,
he said.
John Cooper of Pierre said
recreational facilities on and along
the river have never been better,
but it’s taken a lot of effort and
several legal battles.
Cooper served as secretary of the
South Dakota Department of
Game, Fish and Parks for 12 years
under Govs. Bill Janklow and Mike
Rounds, then spent two years as a
senior adviser on Missouri River
issues to Rounds before he was
named to the GF&P Commission,
where he has served for two and a
half years.
He said the corps has not always
fulfilled the promise of providing
adequate recreational
opportunities along the Upper
Basin of the Missouri.
“I don’t agree that it was given
the same budget priority for the
Corps of Engineers that the other
beneficial uses have received,”
Cooper said. “People from the
Upper Basin felt navigation was
given a greater emphasis.”
It took three lawsuits filed in
federal court by the state of South
Dakota during the Janklow
administration in the 1990s to
convince the corps to be fair with
the water, he said.
“We proved that the recreation
industry was not getting the same
priority, the same legal priority,
that it should be given,” he said.
“Changes were made to upgrade,
to at least put as much on the
Upper Basin as the lower,” Cooper
said. “It’s a matter of public
record.”
What was particularly irritating
during the debate and legal battles
was the marked decline of the boat
and barge traffic on the Missouri,
he said.
But he said the fact that other
states along the Missouri River
have larger populations and more
political power often was a
deciding factor.
In lean years, South Dakota and
the Upper Basin went wanting for
water, Cooper said. In wet years,
they flooded.
“The Upper Basin stores the
water during major flood events,
sometimes to the detriment of
recreation businesses,” Cooper
said. “It also covers farmland.”
He said a deal struck in 2000
turned land along the Missouri
over to tribes and the state, and
many more recreational facilities
were added, Cooper said.
“You’d have to be blind not to see
the massive improvement state
Game, Fish and Parks did with the
land turned over to us,” he said.
Boat ramps and electricity were
added, recreational facilities built
and more people and dollars came
to the areas.
He said despite winning battles
in the past, the struggle continues.
Cooper noted that Montana Gov.
Brian Schweitzer has declined to
attend meetings with the Corps of
Engineers, saying all they wanted
to do was drain his state’s
reservoirs.
“And he has a point,” Cooper
said. “The downstream states have
a lot more Electoral College votes
and more population. We’re often
given short shrift.”
Karen Kern, the executive
director of the Great Lakes of
South Dakota Tourism
Association, said while the 2011
flooding was a challenge, it was
met and will be overcome.
“The flooding this past year had
a negative impact on some areas,
and others were not affected,”
Kern said. “As for Lake Oahe, the
fishing was wonderful, lasted
forever, and flooding for the most
part was not an issue.
“But, below the Oahe Dam, there
was much destruction and loss of
income, plus the repair of damage
is huge. Campgrounds were closed,
ramps closed, marinas had to take
boats out – it varied depending on
where you were and what the river
was doing.”
Many people took a big hit, she
said, especially since the flooding
lasted for such a long time. Rather
than a flood that comes, crests and
then goes down, this one lasted for
three months.
There are three new islands,
“small little things,” he said, that
formed in the south end of Lake
Oahe.
Two other islands in Lake
Sharpe that have long been popular
recreational spots, LaFromboise
Island and Farm Island, grew
larger as soil was deposited on
them. A causeway that connected
LaFromboise to the mainland was
breached, and the island can now
only be accessed by boat.
Trail systems on both islands for
hiking and biking were
undamaged, and natural areas that
are popular destinations are still
intact, he said. Deer hunting
continued on both islands last fall.
There were other impacts.
“There were some fish that came
through our tunnels that died in
the process,” Stasch said. “But the
fishing in the river section
downstream of the dam was just
phenomenal. It was just fantastic
fishing all year long.
“On the lakes themselves, the
impacts were not that great. Like
Lake Oahe, we were only a foot
over our record high. All our boat
landings were useable,” he said.
“The biggest impacts were on the
‘river’ stretches along the river.
It was just too high and came
Chris Huber / Forum Communications Co.
up too fast.”
Kern said there are physical
reminders of the flooding.
“One of the biggest issues now is
that the river has changed from
what it was before. Channels are
different, siltation moved, there
are islands where there were none
before, and many disappeared.
Bank erosion was great from the
Oahe Dam to the south,” she said.
“Case in point – I heard a bunch of
beavers had to relocate because
their homes are now under 30 feet
of water. And there is debris from
the bank erosion.”
Fishing is a major lure for
tourists. “We’ve had calls asking
about it – whether the bait fish are
OK or if they all got shipped down
to Louisiana,” Kern said.
Fisheries experts in the state
took more sample surveys than
they normally do, Kern said, and
now they’re trying to see what
they’ve got.
The fishing is still good up and
down the river, according to Kern;
in fact, anglers have been fishing
longer this fall and winter than
most observers predicted.
Kern said water recreation is
one of the top items listed by
potential visitors to her area.
“There are many resorts along
the Missouri River that cater to
anglers and hunters,” Kern said.
“The guiding business is huge in
this region – many people depend
on the income from hunting and
fishing, and there are larger
upscale resorts to small mom and
pop businesses – all bringing in
tax money for their communities
and counties.”
Other popular forms of
recreation on and near the
Missouri River include Indian
culture sites, historical sites,
biking, hiking, museums,
canoeing and kayaking, and
birding. The Great Lakes of South
Dakota Tourism Association
invests marketing money in
promoting the region along the
Missouri River, Kern said.
The relatively dry winter has
people wondering if the reverse of
last year will be a factor for people
playing on and near the river.
Curran said while the mountain
snowpack is at a normal depth,
there is little snow elsewhere in the
region. A dry year is possible, and
even likely, he said.
It’s something that has been dealt
with in the past, Curran said.
Decisions are made every year on
how much water can be released,
and recreation has a voice in that
decision.
“Probably one of the toughest
factors we face is to make the
public understand that even in
drought, we can get to the Missouri
River – it’s a huge river, and the
bodies of water are large,” Kern
said. “The perception is that access
isn’t out there.”
As the water has receded, things
are getting back to normal for the
people who work and play along
the Mighty Mo.
The Oahe Marina in Fort Pierre,
just south of the Oahe Dam, was the
first major business or property to
be surrounded and flooded when
the Missouri River’s waters began
to rise in late May. The business
includes a restaurant, convenience
store and bait shop and four cabins
and is now re-opened.
Boat slips are available for the
summer, the marina notes on its
website.
Owner Steve Rounds has a lease
to run the business with the Game,
Fish and Parks Department, since
the marina is on state property.
Kern said she expects a good
summer.
“South Dakotans are a hardy
bunch, and we will get through
this, and tourism along the river
will be better than ever,” she said.
Tom Lawrence reports
for the Mitchell (S.D.) Daily Republic.
Wildlife generally PAGE 5
A FORUM
COMMUNICATIONS
SPECIAL PROJECT

wins in wet cycle SUNDAY,

FEBRUARY 12, 2012

Water, CRP have been a boon for ducks, pheasants, deer

By Brad Dokken “Ten years ago, that would have been unheard of. full,” Devney said. “If we
Forum Communications Co. lose that grass and it gets
Every year since the It’s driven breeding duck populations just dry, I think we’ll see the
mid-’90s, Mike Johnson off the charts here in the Dakotas.” effects at a population
has written basically the scale fairly quickly.”
John Devney, senior vice president of Delta Waterfowl, on the fact
same thing when he The only certainty,
compiles the results from the Dakotas now attract more breeding ducks than prairie Canada perhaps, is that the wet
his annual survey of cycle will end eventually.
North Dakota ducks and Floods and droughts are
Johnson said, managers species and be to the tillable acre. More native
wetland abundance. part of the dynamics of
were working to build disadvantage of those that grasslands also will be
“I’d just say the the prairie.
nesting structures, electric require more openness,” going under the plow.
unprecedented wet cycle “We could be at the end
fences and protected Svedarsky said. “In It’s happening already,
continues,” said Johnson, of the wet cycle, but who
islands and peninsulas to general, the wetland Devney of Delta Waterfowl
a longtime waterfowl knows?” Johnson said.
improve duck production wildlife is going to be said.
biologist for the North “This is all pretty new and
on tiny blocks of habitat. doing better in a wet cycle, “Lots of water like we’ve
Dakota Game and Fish enlightening to us because
“We were working hard but if it interferes with had the last three years
Department in Bismarck. we’ve never seen anything
to come up with intensive our ability to keep can whitewash duck
Much of North Dakota grasslands open, then the like this before.”
management strategies to production issues, simply
and surrounding area has grassland species are
produce enough ducks to because those temporary Brad Dokken reports
been immersed in a wet going to be and seasonal wetlands are for the Grand Forks Herald.
keep hunters hunting,”
cycle since the summer of disadvantaged.”
Johnson said. “We were
1993, and the water, on Because the wet cycle
spending huge amounts of
balance, has been a has persisted, Johnson
money.”
positive for wildlife. said some wetlands have
It couldn’t compare with
The timing couldn’t have gotten so large they’re now Assisting communities with sustainable water
grass and rain, though.
been better for ducks,
John Devney, senior vice supporting fish instead of resource management recognizing
Johnson said, because the
president of Delta ducks. Once wetlands environmental concerns.
beginning of the wet cycle become too large and too
Waterfowl, said the
coincided with peak deep, aquatic vegetation
Dakotas now attract more
enrollment of grasslands
in the federal
breeding ducks than stops growing, he said, and kljeng.com 800 213 3860
prairie Canada. bulrushes favorable to
Conservation Reserve both broods and duck
“Ten years ago, that
Program. The grasslands hunters disappear.
would have been unheard
provided ample nesting “We could have used
of,” Devney said. “It’s
cover, the abundant some drying out and re-
driven breeding duck
shallow wetlands attracted flooding with some of our
populations just off the
breeding ducks and the temporary and seasonal
charts here in the
nutrient-rich water was wetlands,” Johnson said.
Dakotas.”
ideal for rearing broods. “It affected the submerged
In terms of wildlife, at
The result, Johnson said, aquatics like wild celery
least, it’s difficult to find a
was duck numbers North and widgeon grass that
loser in the wet cycle,
Dakota hadn’t seen since swans and canvasbacks
Johnson said.
the Game and Fish rely on.
“We saw record numbers
Department began its “A lot of traditional
of pheasants; we saw
annual duck and pond canvasback and swan lakes
record deer populations,”
count survey in 1948. In a just aren’t holding birds
Johnson said. “So many of
matter of years, nesting anymore.”
our species are wetland
success for species such as At the same time, more
dependent; pheasants
mallards rose from 15 water has meant more
depend on those wetlands
percent – barely enough to flood control
in the wintertime for
sustain the population – to impoundments. That’s a
cover. It’s hard to say there
rates that now are in the 30 mixed blessing for wildlife,
were too many negatives.”
to 40 percent range. Svedarsky said, because
One exception, he said,
“It was really the the impoundments tend to
was Hungarian partridge.
combination of the water quickly become choked
“Hungarian partridge
and CRP that created duck with cattails and other
don’t do very well in wet
breeding conditions like emergent vegetation if left
years,” Johnson said. “We
we hadn’t seen before,” unmanaged.
haven’t really seen the
Johnson said. “We had no The ideal wetland, which
partridge come back like
idea CRP was able to crank Svedarsky calls a “hemi-
they were in the ’80s. You
out the ducks it did once marsh,” is 50 percent
just don’t see many
the water hit. It was water and 50 percent
partridge anymore.”
unprecedented, and we vegetation.
had no idea it could Management issues “A lot of our wetlands
happen.” The water has presented are 90 percent-plus
Johnson said the wet a few challenges, as well. emergent vegetation –
cycle also was Dan Svedarsky, a natural especially hybrid cattails,”
unprecedented, surpassing resources professor at the he said. “That’s certainly
anything North Dakota University of Minnesota- not optimum for wetland
has experienced since Crookston, said the wet wildlife.” Get
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happened.” sharp-tailed grouse and to decline. By next fall,
short-eared owls, North Dakota will be down
Few losers Svedarsky said – and not to about 1.5 million acres –
For wildlife managers so good for prairie less than half what the
such as Johnson, the wet, chickens and other birds state had at its peak just a
grassy landscape proved that do best in open few years ago.
Mother Nature had no country. As more set-aside land
substitute when it came to “If prairies are getting returns to production,
putting wildlife on the brushier, that’s going to farmers will install more
ground. Back in the ’80s, benefit some wildlife drain tile to gain every

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PAGE 6 Irrigation Q & A
Following are some commonly asked
questions about irrigation in North Dakota.
A FORUM Answers come from the North Dakota State
COMMUNICATIONS University Extension Service, the U.S.
SPECIAL PROJECT Department of Agriculture and the U.S.
Geological Survey, which keeps track of water
SUNDAY, use across the country.
FEBRUARY 12, 2012 Q. How many farms in the state have
irrigated land?
A. Roughly 800 of the state’s 32,000 farms
irrigate some of their land.
Q. Why are some crops irrigated more often
than others?
A. Irrigation is best for “long-season” crops,
those harvested in September or later. Such
crops need considerable moisture in late July
and August, when rainfall often is scarce.
Q. What’s the difference between surface
irrigation and center-pivot irrigation?
A. The former takes surface water and uses
gravity to spread it out across farmland. The
latter takes either surface water or groundwater
and sprinkles it over crops. Center-pivot
irrigation accounts for 85 percent of irrigated
land in North Dakota.
Q. Is irrigation a big source of water
consumption in North Dakota?
A. Irrigation accounts for about 16 percent of
water consumption in North Dakota. Industrial
uses account for about 70 percent.
Q. What process do farmers go through
before they can irrigate?
A. They need to make sure their soils can be
irrigated safely. They must have a readily available
supply of nearby water and a water permit from
the State Water Commission. The water source
must provide sufficient quality and quantity for
successful irrigation.
Q. How much do sprinkler systems used in
irrigation cost?
A. Prices vary, depending on the type of
system. A center-pivot system that’s used in a
160-acre field and irrigates 128 acres costs
$103.78 per acre annually to own and operate.
– Jonathan Knutson

IRRIGATION
IRRIGATION
FACTOID
About 274,000 acres are
currently irrigated in North
Dakota, less than 1 percent
of the state’s cropland.
Really? Really
Irrigation provides a ‘fail-safe’ for Valley farmers
By Jonathan Knutson
Forum Communications Co.
Jon McMahon farms
sandy land with subsoil
that doesn’t hold moisture
well – land on which
thirsty crops can run out
of water quickly.
“We’re always 10 days
from a drought,” he said.
McMahon farms in
Inkster, N.D., about 40
miles northwest of Grand
Forks.
But McMahon has what
he calls a “fail-safe.” He
began irrigating in 1990
and now irrigates about a
third of his farmland.
Irrigation doesn’t
guarantee him good corn,
wheat, dry bean and
soybean crops; weather
hazards such as hail and
early frost sometimes
IT
smaller than regional
aquifers such as the
Ogallala Aquifer, which
extends from Texas to
South Dakota, said Jon
Patch of the State Water
Commission.
Glacial aquifers in North
Dakota “have very limited
storage capacity,” calling
into question their
reliability when there’s
less rainfall to recharge
them, he said.
Here’s the rub: The dry
conditions that would
encourage farmers to
Corn needs plentiful moisture, especially on hot, windy days in July and August, to reach make greater use of
its full yield potential. Nearly one-third of an inch daily is needed at peak times. Irrigation aquifers also could reduce
can provide the moisture when nature doesn't cooperate. Below is a look at corn’s daily the amount of water that
moisture requirements, in hundredths of an inch, in North Dakota, taking into account aquifers might provide.
temperature and corn’s growth stage. Why 1973 matters
Irrigation in North
Dakota can be divided into
Weeks after emerging from the soil two main eras: before 1973

damage his fields. But

irrigation gives him a
better shot at nice yields
and profits.
“It’s really good to have,”
he said.
For more than a century,
farmers in frequently dry
NEED
and after.
Before 1973, most
60-69 degrees .02 .03 .05 .05 .06 .08 .10 .12 .14 .14 .13 .13 .12 .11 .09 .07 .06 irrigation was in the
western part of the state.
70-79 degrees .03 .04 .06 .06 .09 .12 .14 .17 .19 .19 .19 .18 .17 .17 .13 .10 .08 Gravity was used to
irrigate fields with
80-89 degrees .04 .06 .08 .08 .11 .15 .19 .22 .24 .25 .24 .23 .22 .21 .20 .13 .10 Missouri River water.

North Dakota have looked After 1973, farmers

to irrigation.
Variable weather and
crop prices, as well as
improving technology,
cloud predictions about
irrigation’s future. But by
all accounts, demand for
irrigation will grow.
McMahon and others
involved in irrigation
agree on another point:
Irrigation brings money
into the state, benefiting
both farmers and
nonfarmers.
Irrigated farmland, on
average, provides a per-
acre economic return four
WE
90-99 degrees .05 .07 .10 .14 .18 .23 .27 .30 .30 .30 .29 .29 .27 .26 .25 .16 .12 statewide began
Source and photo by: North Dakota State University Extension Service Forum Communications irrigating, often with
water from aquifers.
Why the change? Credit,
“If we hit a in part, massive U.S. grain
drought or mini- sales to the former Soviet
North Dakota’s diverse soils and variable climate cause Union in the early 1970s.
drought again, farmers in the state to grow many different crops. So-called Grain prices skyrocketed,
long-season crops, or ones harvested in September or later, which made irrigation
there’s going to be are most likely to be irrigated because they can benefit greatly
more attractive.
a lot more interest from moisture on hot days in late July and August.
Farmers at the time
in irrigation.” North Dakota total: 272,600 irrigated acres in 2010 increasingly turned to a
center-pivot system, a
Thomas Scherer, North Alfalfa: 5.4%
form of overhead
Dakota State University Other crops: 4.7% irrigation in which
Barley: 3.8%
Extension agricultural Wheat: 10.6% equipment rotates around
engineer a pivot in the center of a
Sugarbeets: field. Water from a center-

4.3% Corn: pivot system can be

to five times higher than
the return on nonirrigated
fields, said Milton Lindvig,
field representative for the
North Dakota Irrigation
Association. The
association consists of
irrigation supporters,
including irrigators and
irrigation equipment
dealers and suppliers.
WHEN
36.6% controlled much more
Relatively high crop easily than water from
prices make irrigation Soybeans:
surface irrigation, Scherer
more appealing, too, 12.9%
said.
Lindvig of the irrigation “Center-pivot irrigation
association said. really has been a driver in
A rule of thumb is that North Dakota,” he said.
North Dakota farmers, on Potatoes: 10%
From 1900 to 1973, the
average, need to gross at Dry beans: number of irrigated acres
least $100 more per acre on Field grass: 3.3% 8.4%
in North Dakota grew to

Irrigation is “a win-win irrigated land to cover 73,000. By the late 1980s,

for everyone,” McMahon
said.
Maybe not now, but …
The region’s nearly two-
decade wet period has
dampened farmers’
interest in irrigation.
The amount of irrigated
farmland in the state is
growing, on balance, by
only 2,000 to 3,000 acres
annually, said Thomas
Scherer, North Dakota
State University Extension
agricultural engineer, who
has 30 years of experience
with irrigation. In a state
with roughly 28 million
WATER
Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture's Farm Service Agency
irrigation cost. after the arrival of center-
It’s much easier to reach Forum Communications
pivot irrigation, about
that break-even point 210,000 acres were
when corn is selling at irrigated, a threefold
current prices, roughly $5 increase in less than two
to $5.50 per bushel in late decades.
2011, instead of the $2 to Potatoes gave a further
$2.50 per bushel corn had boost to irrigation in the
been bringing, McMahon late 1980s and early 1990s,
said. when poor commodity
New technology also prices limited interest in
makes irrigation more
irrigating other crops.
attractive by allowing
Processors such as
water to be applied more
Simplot were looking for a
efficiently, he said.
reliable supply of
Nobody has a good
potatoes, which led
handle on how many acres
farmers to begin growing
might be irrigated
irrigated spuds in parts of
statewide in, say, five to 10
the state where the crop
years. There are just too

acres under cultivation,
that’s a drop in the bucket.
SECTION 3
many variables. But
Lindvig described the
Source: North Dakota Department of Commerce Division of Economic
hadn’t been grown
Development and Finance
previously, said Chuck

About 274,000 acres are Forum Communications

currently irrigated, less
than 1 percent of the
state’s cropland.
Even with the wet
period, however, farmers
in relatively dry pockets of
the state are interested in
further irrigation, Scherer
said.
“If we hit a drought or
mini-drought again,
there’s going to be a lot
more interest in
irrigation,” Scherer said.
A dry fall has left much
of North Dakota in low-
level drought, according to
the U.S. Drought Monitor
Index, an Omaha-based
partnership of federal and
academic scientists.
potential as
“considerable.”
The Missouri River
could supply enough water
to irrigate an additional
80,000 to 140,000 acres, he
said. That would be equal
to 29 to 51 percent of the
acres now irrigated.
Farmers outside the
Missouri River Corridor
have the potential to
increase irrigated acreage.
Producers in northeastern
North Dakota might be
able to draw on several
rivers for additional
irrigation, Lindvig said.
Underground water, or
groundwater, is important
for irrigation, too.
Currently, groundwater
and surface water each
account for about half of
the water allocated
annually for irrigation in
North Dakota, although all
the allocated water isn’t
always used, according to
the State Water
Commission.
Groundwater typically
accounts for a little more
than half of the water
actually used in irrigation,
with the percentage
varying annually.
All groundwater used for
irrigation in North Dakota
comes from aquifers,
underground layers of
rock or soil that contain
water. They are not,
contrary to popular
imagination, vast
underground rivers.
Aquifers are found across
much of North Dakota.
The State Water
Commission issues
permits to use water from
aquifers for irrigation.
Water levels can fluctuate
in the aquifers, especially
in times of drought, which
affects how many permits
are issued.
North Dakota’s glacially
derived aquifers are much
Gunnerson, president of
the Northern Plains
Potato Growers
Association in East Grand
Forks, Minn.
Thanks in part to
potatoes, the number of
irrigated acres in North
Dakota rose to about
245,000 in 2002. Since then,
because of the wet period,
the growth in irrigated
acres has been sluggish.
Despite the current wet,
farmers and others across
the state recognize that
irrigation is important
and here to stay, McMahon
said.
“It’s accepted,” he said.
Jonathan Knutson reports for Agweek.

A tanker truck heads north on North Dakota Highway 23.
Oil boom needs
torrents of water
Army Corps says industrial users must pay
By Patrick Springer
pspringer@forumcomm.com
BISMARCK – It takes a torrent of
water to keep the oil flowing in
North Dakota’s oil fields.
Drilling a well consumes an
average of 3 million gallons of
water – most of it hauled by fleets
of trucks that pound roads and
highways, clog traffic and belch
diesel exhaust.
In fact, of the 1,200 truckloads
required to drill a single well, more
than a third, 450, are filled with
water, vital for pumping oil.
Water is mixed with chemicals
and pumped deep underground to
free oil from shale formations, a
process called hydraulic
fracturing, or “fracking.”
But an immense source of water
lies strategically in the heart of the
booming Bakken Formation in
western North Dakota – Lake
Sakakawea.
If tapped, water from the
reservoir on the Missouri River
could help reduce truck traffic and
serve as an alternative to drawing
down aquifers.
Yet that source of water is off-
limits to oil and gas development.
Alarmed by the rapid growth in
the water-intensive petroleum
industry, the Army Corps of
Engineers has placed a hold on
issuing water-use permits for the
reservoir.
The corps is studying long-term
water demand and supply to
ensure no shortage develops from
the thirsty oil and gas industry.
The corps’ position, still under
review: Industries that use water
from Lake Sakakawea must pay.
The freeze and proposed water
fee, which surfaced in summer
2010, drew angry protests not only
from the oil and gas industry but
from North Dakota’s political
leaders.
They see the move as the latest in
a litany of setbacks over decades
that have largely thwarted the
state’s efforts to tap its most
valuable water resource.
How valuable?
Consider that the total combined
yearly flow of North Dakota’s other
major rivers – the Red River at
Fargo, the Sheyenne River at
Valley City, the James River at
Jamestown and the Souris River in
Minot – equal about 4 percent of
the Missouri River’s yearly flow at
Bismarck.
“The Missouri River is a
virtually untapped resource that
presents a unique opportunity for
development and use in the state’s
future,” the State Water
Commission stated in a position
paper.
The key word is future.
Promises, promises
Massive farm irrigation projects,
as well as municipal and industrial
water supply, were promised in
return for North Dakota’s
sacrifices to enable two major
dams on the Missouri River.
North Dakota landowners lost
550,000 acres, land set aside for
Garrison Dam’s Lake Sakakawea,
which begins 75 miles north of
Bismarck, and the reservoir for the
Oahe Dam in South Dakota.
A massive permanent flood came
with the reservoirs. In return,
North Dakota has received
millions of federal dollars for
municipal, rural and industrial
water supply.
“Aquifers in that western part of the state are very
limited. They’re basically little, small bank accounts.”
Bob Shaver, hydrologist and head of North Dakota’s water appropriations
But the state still waits for water
projects that were to be the
keystone payoff for Garrison.
After waiting for more than five
decades for Missouri River water
to augment local supplies in times
of prolonged drought, Red River
Valley communities such as Fargo
and Grand Forks still wait for a
project to be approved.
Meanwhile, a project to carry
Missouri River water to the Minot
area is stalled, held up by a
Canadian lawsuit alleging
environmental harm would result
in the Souris River watershed.
Oil and gas, the roaring engine
driving North Dakota’s robust
economy and job growth, have now
joined the list of users waiting for
Missouri River water.
The rationale for the corps’
proposal to make users pay for
water drawn from Lake Sakakawea
is that it costs money to store water
in the reservoir. It calculates the
cost at $2 million a year.
North Dakota officials find that
argument galling.
The state asserts that the water
that would be drawn from Lake
Sakakawea flows naturally in the
Missouri River, so no stored water
would be tapped.
“We have a right to the natural
flows,” says Todd Sando, the state
engineer for North Dakota.
“There’s enough natural flow
that we should be able to take the
water out,” he adds.
A 2010 report for the North
Dakota Petroleum Council, the
voice of the industry, said water
the oil and gas industry would take
from the Missouri River is
miniscule.
It estimated the maximum
amount of water consumed per
year for oil development would
equal about one-tenth of 1 percent
of the Missouri River’s daily flow
past Bismarck.
Also, a series of congressional
acts stemming from the 1944 law
that provided for Garrison Dam
have recognized North Dakota’s
right to Missouri River water and
the state’s need for water
development, state officials argue.
The corps ended up agreeing
with that argument, state officials
note, when it concluded last June
that a water project in Emmons
County was authorized by a 1986
law reauthorizing the Garrison
Diversion Project.
Therefore, the corps’ policy of
charging for stored surplus water
didn’t apply – a decision North
Dakota officials contend should
extend to the Lake Sakakawea
dispute.
The issue is significant because
only 79 miles of free-flowing
Missouri River remain in North
Dakota.
The rest of the river runs within
Lake Sakakawea and Lake Oahe,
where access to the water is
controlled by the corps.
“We need to get to the Missouri
River, and our federal government
is blocking us,” Sando says.
More is at stake than oil and gas
development.
Almost half of the Lake
Sakakawea water used in the past
two decades has been for farm
irrigation, Sando says.
But many of the easements
allowing the use of that water
expire in the next 10 years,
meaning those farmers then could
be charged $20.91 per acre-foot of
water – an amount Sando says
would have “tremendous impacts
to our agricultural economy.”
The corps adopted the storage fee
policy in 2008 – just when North
Dakota’s Oil Patch really started to
boom, state officials note – but
didn’t move to impose the fee until
two years later.
The possibility that North
Dakota users would have to pay
almost $1 billion over time for Lake
Sakakawea water, Sando’s
estimated total, is an outcome he
finds bitter.
That would be many times the
$59 million the corps paid property
owners in relocations, land
purchases and damage costs when
the dam was built in the early
1950s.
All for Missouri River water the
state points out exists regardless of
whether any of it happens to be
stored by Garrison Dam.
Growing demand
One large water supply project is
charging ahead in North Dakota’s
Oil Patch despite the feud over
access to Lake Sakakawea.
West Area Water Supply, with a
price tag of $150 million, is on the
fast track to deliver Missouri River
water to four northwestern
counties starting in 2013.
The pipeline project is backed by
$110 million in financing from the
state, but ultimately will be paid
for by delivery fees charged to the
petroleum industry.
The project can proceed because
it will draw water from the intake
for the city of Williston, which taps
the free-flowing Missouri River,
and therefore is not under the
control of the corps.
Pipelines branching from the
Williston water treatment plant,
which will double in capacity, will
deliver water to locations in
McKenzie, Williams, Mountrail
and Divide counties.
“We’ve always considered water
to be an economic development
piece,” says Gene Veeder, economic
development director for McKenzie
County, which includes Watford
City.
Homes, ranches and businesses
dotting the region’s semi-arid
rangeland often rely on
groundwater, usually high in
minerals, that must be treated.
But the need for water suddenly
became urgent with the oil boom.
In fact, the rapid growth – as oil
field roustabouts, construction
workers, truck drivers and others
flock to the area – makes it
difficult to predict how much
residential water will be needed,
Veeder says.
“It’s one of those things, it’s
growing so fast we’ve
underdesigned everything for the
past three years,” he says.
Once operating, West Area Water
Supply will help reduce the heavy
truck traffic in the Oil Patch.
The corps acknowledges the
environmental benefit of reducing
Eric Hylden / Forum Communications Co.
PAGE 7
A FORUM
COMMUNICATIONS
SPECIAL PROJECT
SUNDAY,
FEBRUARY 12, 2012
Lake Sakakawea is strategically
located in the heart of the
Bakken Formation.
Lake Sakakawea
Minot
Fargo
Bismarck
Bakken Formation
Source: N.D. State Water Commission
Forum Communications
truck traffic by using a water
pipeline.
The rapid and unpredictable
growth in oil development,
however, is the corps’ justification
for a detailed study of the
petroleum industry’s future water
demand.
State oil and gas officials predict
2,500 new oil wells will be drilled
yearly for the next 15 to 25 years.
The state estimates the Oil
Patch’s annual water demand to be
the equivalent of a lake 1 foot deep
spread over 22,400 acres.
Lake Sakakawea, with a surface
covering 368,000 acres, can hold
24 million acre-feet of water.
Alone, it holds almost a third of
all of the water in the chain of six
Missouri River dam reservoirs.
Finding water
So far oil drilling has gone
unhindered by the squabble over
Lake Sakakawea water.
The unusually wet weather,
which produced the historic flood
of 2011 on the Missouri River, has
made more surface water
temporarily available from ponds
and sloughs.
The State Water Commission has
issued permits allowing oil firms
to tap water from those sources.
In a few cases, with careful
monitoring, water officials have
allowed oil firms to tap aquifers in
northwest North Dakota.
“Aquifers in that western part of
the state are very limited,” says
Bob Shaver, a hydrologist and head
of the state’s water appropriations.
“They’re basically little, small
bank accounts.”
Aquifers were formed by glacial
melt waters thousands of years
ago.
Excess pumping can deplete an
aquifer or degrade the water
quality by drawing in water from
surrounding bedrock.
“We have to develop it in
increments, and we have to
monitor it,” Shaver says. “It’s a
conservative approach to water
development.”
Piping or hauling water from
Lake Sakakawea would be a far
better solution, he adds.
“The oil companies will pay for
it,” Shaver says. “That’s not a show
stopper.”
Ron Ness, president of the North
Dakota Petroleum Council, agrees
the industry will be able to find
water.
“I don’t think it slows
development,” he says. “What it
does is, it creates a lot more truck
traffic and a lot more impacts.”
Of Lake Sakakawea, he adds, “If
you were able to tap that water, it’s
less than an inch a year off that
lake.”
The corps, originally expected to
make a decision before the
Missouri River flooded last
summer, still is weighing public
comments before making a final
decision.
Ness isn’t the first to note the
irony of the dispute coinciding
with a time of catastrophic water
surplus – some of which ended up
in homes in places like Bismarck
during the flood.
“If they want to charge us for
storing water in Lake Sakakawea,”
he says, “maybe we should charge
them for storing it in our
basements.”
Readers can reach Forum reporter
Patrick Springer at (701) 241-5522

PAGE 8
A FORUM
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SUNDAY,
FEBRUARY 12, 2012
LOWEST
RED RIVER
LEVELS IN FARGO
(1) 0.00 ft on 01/01/1932
(2) 0.00 ft on 09/30/1970
(3) 0.00 ft on 10/01/1970
(4) 0.00 ft on 10/10/1976
(5) 5.30 ft on 12/02/1910
LOWEST
RED RIVER
LEVEL IN
GRAND FORKS The Red River in 1910, showing the railroad bridge connecting Fargo and Moorhead, taken from below NP Avenue.
0.10 ft on 09/02/1977
Source: National Weather Service
By Marino Eccher
and Patrick Springer
Forum Communications Co.
FARGO – When it surges beyond
its banks and clashes with levies
and sandbag walls, the headlines
call the Red a “river on the
rampage.” But for a few drought-
baked months in the 1930s, it was a
river in retreat, dwindling to a
trickle and for a stretch coming to
a halt altogether.
Fish were trapped in scattered
pools. Pedestrians crossed between
Fargo and Moorhead via planks set
in the mud. Water scarcity defined
weekly routines.
It may seem like a foreign
concept for a region that’s been
besieged by wet weather for nearly
two decades, but it’s only a matter
of time before it happens again.
Droughts like those that
devastated America’s heartland in
the “Dirty Thirties” are not at all
unusual for the region. And one
study determined a repeat could
IT
strike before 2050.
Officials in the region say that
could be harder on the region than
the record floods of recent years.
“It’s always been a question of, do
we have too much water or not
enough?” said Pat Zavoral, Fargo
city administrator. “We have to
NEED
give equal time to not only our
flood protection but also what
happens if we don’t have adequate
water.
With that in mind, Red River
Valley communities have long been
trying without success to line up a
supplemental water supply.
Before the 1997 flood, water
supply was a bigger concern than
flood control in Fargo. A severe
drought in 1988 that slowed the Red
to a crawl – after another in 1976
that halted the river altogether –
had officials thinking about
backup plans.
Flooding swept those efforts to
the back burner but didn’t stop
them completely. The Lake Agassiz
WE
Water Authority, a consortium of
local governments in 13 Red River
Valley counties, has been working
since 2003 to solve the water supply
problem.
The preferred solution: a
$660 million project that would use
a canal and pipeline to divert
Missouri River water to the
Sheyenne River.
The proposal has the state’s
backing and has been endorsed by
WHEN
the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
But it’s been stalled since 2007,
stymied by the federal budget
crisis and bureaucratic inertia.
A dam, a plan, a canal
The Red River Valley Water
Supply Project, as the proposal is
officially called, is an offshoot of
the now-defunct Garrison
Diversion Project, which has its
origins in the 1944 law that
authorized Garrison Dam and
other dams on the Missouri River.
“That’s one item that’s been on
North Dakota’s agenda since the
dams were constructed,” said Dave
Koland, general manager of the
Garrison Diversion Conservancy
District, which is administering
the water supply project.
WATER
Actually, North Dakota has eyed
diverting the Missouri eastward
SECTION 3
even longer – since it became a
state in 1889.
The Garrison Diversion Project
was designed to divert water from
the Missouri to central and eastern
North Dakota for a number of
uses, including irrigation, water
supply, and fish and wildlife
conservation.
Work on the project started in the
1960s. It stalled in the face of
disputes and environmental
opposition, and was abandoned
altogether in 2000.
But a few key components were
completed. The new water supply
project would use two of those
components: the Snake Creek
Pumping Plant on the east side of
Lake Sakakawea and the McClusky
Canal, which loops east from Lake
Audubon.
A man uses a board to cross the Red River between downtown
Fargo and Moorhead in this 1936 photo.
When Red
runs dry
Sometimes the river retreats,
leaving its cities to scramble
The project would pump water
out of Lake Sakakawea, bringing it
59 miles east in the canal, then
another 123 miles via underground
pipeline to Lake Ashtabula on the
Sheyenne River.
The lake, which is already the
backup source for Fargo and other
cities, would serve as a reservoir
for participating cities to draw on
in dry times.
“It’s an insurance policy,” said
Hazel Sletten, superintendent for
water utilities in Grand Forks.
Worse than a flood
Sletten remembers the 1988
drought well. Grand Forks had just
expanded the capacity of its water
treatment plant to 16.5 million
gallons per day, but pushed the
plant to treat 17.5 million – all
while the city was using 22 million
a day.
Given the city’s growth since
then, a shortage could affect
critical operations ranging from
industrial users to firefighting
services, she said. Grand Forks
has about 3,500 more residents
today than it did during the last
drought.
“You don’t want to be running
100 percent every day for an
extended period of time,” she said.
“You’re right on the edge.”
A prolonged, major drought, she
said, “would be worse” than a
flood.
It would be even more of a strain
on Fargo, which has about 22,000
more residents than it did during
the 1988 drought. Moorhead has
about 6,000 more.
For Fargo, which draws all of its
water from the Red, a drought of
the magnitude of the 1930s would
mean hauling in about 1,200
truckloads of water every day to
meet basic needs, according to one
study.
Zavoral, the Fargo city
administrator, said the city has
kept the possibility of a drought in
mind even as flood protection has
dominated the conversation.
“There’s an awareness that at
any time, we could have to shift,”
he said, pointing to last year’s dry
fall and early winter. “We have to
give equal time to not only our
flood protection but also what
Clay County Historical Society
That left the state and water
authority to mull trying to go
happens if we don’t have enough
water.”
But a solution like the proposed
Missouri transfer won’t
materialize overnight. Even if
everything fell into place
tomorrow, Zavoral said, it would
take about four years to complete.
“We couldn’t wait four years if
the Red River were to run dry,” he
said.
Funding challenges
And everything has not yet fallen
into place.
In some respects, the project has
moved along. Federal, state and
local governments have spent
about $26 million so far in
developing the project, including
an environmental impact
statement, engineering studies and
right-of-way acquisition. More
than three-fourths of the right-of-
way easements for the pipeline
have been obtained.
Officials won’t go further until
the project gets the go-ahead from
federal officials.
The federal government has yet
to issue a critical document called
the record of decision. Initially,
North Dakota officials were told
the obstacle was the Bush
administration’s Office of
Management and Budget, which
blanched at the project’s
$660 million price tag.
At the outset, state and local
officials thought the extensive
environmental impact study,
completed in December 2007, would
be the biggest hurdle.
Canada and Minnesota have for
years opposed the transfer of
Missouri River water to the Red
River watershed, fearing transfer
of non-native invasive species. The
review concluded that water from
the Missouri River and transferred
to the Red River, would not spread
organisms if filtered and treated.
But new obstacles have arisen –
the federal budget crunch, and the
prospect that any project would
have to win congressional
authorization.
Plans called for the $660 million
cost to be divided roughly equally
between the federal government,
state and local governments, or
$220 million at each level.
Institute for Regional Studies, NDSU, Fargo
Then-Gov. John Hoeven pledged
to work to provide the state’s share.
The city of Fargo, the biggest user,
would pay about half of the local
share, and would use about half of
the water.
The federal contribution,
however, has collided with a
ballooning federal deficit and a
renewed push for budget austerity.
In 2009, then-Sen. Byron Dorgan,
D-N.D., warned state and local
officials that he could not press for
both the water supply project and
the proposed $1.7 billion metro
diversion project.
Fargo Mayor Dennis Walaker
said the choice put the city
“between a rock and a hard place,”
but permanent flood protection
emerged as the consensus top
choice.
Going it alone
forward with the project without
federal help.
“We’re thinking, are there other
ways to do this?” Zavoral said. He
said the city is working with
Garrison Diversion and the
governor’s office to come up with a
workable plan.
The project’s backers have
weighed alternatives such as
groundwater from the Red River
Basin or from Minnesota. Koland
of the Garrison Diversion
Conservancy District said those
options are hampered by a lack of
quality groundwater in the region
and high costs of treatment.
The Dakota Sandstone aquifer
north of Fargo, for instance, was
considered as a source. But the cost
of treating the aquifer’s water
pushed that option’s total
estimated cost to $1.1 billion.
“We’re going to go back and look
at these things,” Koland said. “Did
we look at everything? Is there new
information?”
However, based on earlier
studies, “I think we will find most
of these other options are cost-
prohibitive,” he said.
At minimum, state and local
officials believe the federal
government should at least pay the
estimated $120 million cost for a
treatment plant.
“Ultimately, we’re going to have
to ask Congress to fund that
project,” Bruce Furness, former
Fargo mayor and chairman of the
Lake Agassiz Water Authority, said
of the treatment plant.
He said the plant is needed to
meet boundary water treaty
obligations the U.S. government
has with Canada.
The project is also trying to cut
through a catch-22 of red tape: The
Bureau of Reclamation maintains
it needs congressional
authorization to use Missouri
River water, for a project that
doesn’t yet have the
administration’s final OK.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers announced in
December 2010 that it wants to
charge a storage fee for water
taken from Lake Sakakawea.
The state of North Dakota
opposes the charge, insisting the
water it proposes to draw for water
supply uses is from the Missouri
River’s natural flows, which state
officials assert North Dakota has a
legal right to use without charge.
And the project must remain
affordable for water users in Fargo,
rural Cass County, Grand Forks
and elsewhere in the valley – who,
in the case of Fargo and Cass
County, might also have to help pay
for the $1.7 billion diversion
channel.
“Are they going to have enough
for this project?” Furness asked.
“It’s really up in the air at this
point.”
Amid the questions without
answers, one thing is certain,
Furness said:
“We’ll have another drought at
some point.”
Marino Eccher and Patrick Springer
report for The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead.
SECTION 4
Region faces water quality challenges
ere is the fourth installment of our
H series called “Living with Water.”
This week, we look at a critical
issue, the quality of our water.
Stories and photographs in this section
consider the quality of the water that we use
in our homes – and how it’s kept fresh and
safe. We also consider the water that we play
in – and how the lakes we enjoy so much are
kept clean.
Also in this section are articles about such
issues as water on the land and safe disposal
of water used in industry, including the
booming oil industry in western North
Dakota.
There’s also an informative page about
Canadian concerns for Lake Winnipeg, which
receives water from much of our region.
Earlier sections of this special project have
presented background on the lakes, rivers and
groundwater resources of our region and
examined flooding and drought.
Next week’s fifth and final issue will draw
Discuss this series at water.areavoices.com
William C.
MARCIL
Forum
Communications
Co. chairman
all of this together in a far-reaching
discussion of how we manage our water
resources across river basins and state and
national boundaries.
More than two dozen journalists at Forum
Communications Co. properties in three
states have contributed to this special series.
The series appears in all Forum
Communications Co. newspapers in North
Dakota – The Forum, Grand Forks Herald,
Jamestown Sun and Dickinson Press – as well
as in the Daily Republic in Mitchell, S.D., and
the Detroit Lakes Newspapers in Minnesota.
FCC broadcast outlets in Fargo, Grand
Forks, Bismarck and Minot have aired
material from this series.
And of course, “Living with Water” appears
on our company website.
Next week, we’ll include some observations
from Forum Communications Co.
management about what we’ve learned from
this project and what might be done to help us
live with our water resources.
We welcome your comments by email to
Mike Jacobs, the project director
(mjacobs@forumcomm.com) or by U.S. mail
to Living with Water, PO Box 6008, Grand
Forks, ND 58206.
Copies of the complete series are available
by returning the coupon in today’s section.
Thank you and good reading.
William C. Marcil
Chairman of the Board
PAGE 2
A FORUM
Protecting area’s water
quality of top importance
COMMUNICATIONS
SPECIAL PROJECT

SUNDAY,
FEBRUARY 19, 2012

here are few things more David Samson / Forum Communications Co.

T essential to our lives than

water. Our very survival
depends on it.
So it stands to reason that when
it comes to the water we drink and
the water we rely on for recreation,
quality matters.
But just how clean is the water
you drink? More to the point, how
safe is it?
Answering that question may not
be as simple as you might think.
Sure, there are government
standards and regulations in place
to ensure that our water is worthy
of consumption. But when it comes
to measuring quality, the issue can
ON THE COVER get a bit muddy.
Inner workings of the When water quality testers go
ozone generator show about their business, there is no
the corona discharge clear-cut, “yes” or “no” answer to
activity that breaks the the question of “Is this water
clean?”
oxygen molecules In fact, the water you drink
apart to reform as almost certainly contains a
ozone that is used for miniscule concoction of chemicals
disinfection at the – arsenic, nitrates and chloramine,
Fargo Water to name a few. But, when water
treatment is done right and done
Treatment Plant. well, none of those chemicals are
David Samson / Forum enough to harm you.
Communications Co. And yet for some people, it’s still
a scary proposition. That’s partly
why home-filtration systems and
bottled water have become so
popular.
People want to drink clean water;
they want their children to drink
clean water. They’ll go to nearly
any length to assure that happens.
Mary Jo
HOTZLER
Forum
deputy editor
That’s ultimately why we felt the
issue of water quality was so
important to explore here today.
But to really dive into the issue,
you must go to the source: the
rivers. It’s important that you
understand how our daily activities
affect the quality of water flowing
into our rivers. It’s important that
you then understand how the The Fargo Water Treatment Plant processes 4 billion gallons of
contents of our rivers have an water each year.
effect on the water our cities are
responsible for treating. And Dakota and South Dakota’s farm upside down.
finally, it’s important to understand country, and there are potential The lesson from all of this:
the role these treatment plants play water quality issues there as well. Protecting our water quality is
in determining the quality of water Potential pollutants that result critical. Unfortunately, it’s often an
that flows out of the tap in your from farming and ranching include expensive proposition.
kitchen sink. sediment, nutrients, pathogens, In the end, we know it’s worth it.
Throughout Minnesota, North pesticides, metals and salts. There are people in countries
Dakota and South Dakota, the In cities such as Fargo, Moorhead throughout the world who would
issues are different and complex. and Grand Forks, municipal runoff sacrifice everything they own for a
In western North Dakota, the has the potential to diminish water sip of the quality drinking water
practice of hydraulic fracturing, or quality. we have here in the Upper Midwest
fracking, continues to cause In Minnesota’s lakes country, the – even on our worst days.
concern for some who question quality of our recreational waters It may not be perfect, it may not
whether it may have a negative also is under attack by invasive come to us easily, but by and large,
impact on that region’s water species that, from an ecological the water we drink is clean and
quality. standpoint, have the potential to safe. And for that, we’re thankful.
Head east and south, into North turn our freshwater ecosystems Let’s keep it that way.

When oil, water collide

Western ND drilling practices prompt water quality concerns
By Teri Finneman
Forum Communications Co.
BISMARCK – As oil activity
increases in western North
Dakota, concerns about the
environment and water protection
are growing as well.
State regulators take concerns
CLEAN
“We’ve had no instances where we’ve ever had a full-time employee who received
part-time help.
fracture into any potable waters in the state.” When there are issues like
Bruce Hicks, assistant director tanker rollovers or pipeline
of the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources breaks, these employees work to
ensure releases are contained and
cleaned up, he said. Once the new
The state also has casing (pipe) recommends people with concerns employees are in the field, the

about water quality in the Oil
Patch “very seriously” and have
safeguards in place to protect
potable water, the assistant
director of the state Department of
Mineral Resources said.
The Environmental Protection
Agency is conducting a national
study to identify potential impacts
of hydraulic fracturing on
drinking water resources. Killdeer
is one of the case study sites.
But state officials insist the state
“has proven more than capable” of
regulating the oil and gas industry
and ensuring drilling and
fracturing operations “are
conducted in an environmentally
sound manner.”
“We believe United States
Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) regulation of any hydraulic
fracturing processes is
WATER
and concrete regulations that oil
companies must follow so water
sources are protected during
fracking, said Bruce Hicks,
assistant director of the state
Department of Mineral Resources.
The department is not concerned
about contamination from the
actual act of fracking, he said.
Mechanical problems and casing
failure could cause contamination,
but the State Industrial
Commission has approved rules
that require testing to ensure
casing can handle the pressure, he
said.
“We’ve had no instances where
we’ve ever had a fracture into any
potable waters in the state,” Hicks
said.
Water testing
Bismarck attorney Derrick
Braaten said his office gets calls
obtain a water sample and get it
analyzed to establish a baseline.
“So, if you have any questions as
to some activity that has degraded
the quality of your well, then
you’ve got hard data to negotiate
with,” he said. “If you don’t have
any of that upfront, then it’s all
speculation as to: Has the quality
changed from activity in your
area?”
Southwestern District Health
Unit in Dickinson has received
calls to collect water samples for
testing, said Kevin Pavlish, head
of environmental health.
The health unit works with the
state Health Department, which
provides the collection containers
and runs tests on the samples, he
said.
“The intent is not necessarily to
show that there’s any current
department will determine if the
extra help is enough, he said.
“If it’s not, we’re going to have to
reprioritize and maybe pull people
off of other areas and focus on
this,” he said. “You have to set
your priorities in this day and age
of limited budgets. Right now, this
is our highest priority that we
need to address.”
Spills can’t be eliminated in any
industry, and the Health
Department has had “very good”
cooperation with the oil industry,
Fewless said.
“Once they do have a spill, they
are very proactive to clean it up
and do it to our satisfaction,” he
said. “That has been a good thing.”
North Dakota is ahead of the
curve nationally as far as states
that require fracking information
to be posted on fracfocus.org, a

unnecessary, especially in North
Dakota because of our own
statutes, rules and programs that
are already in place to regulate the
full life of hydraulic fracturing,”
the state Industrial Commission
said in a November letter to the
federal Office of Ground Water
and Drinking Water.
Gov. Jack Dalrymple, Attorney
General Wayne Stenehjem and
Agriculture Commissioner Doug
Goehring serve on the commission
and signed the letter.
The North Dakota Health
Department does not see or
anticipate the potential problems
with hydraulic fracturing, or
fracking, that have been reported
in other states, said Dennis
Fewless, director of the Division of
Water Quality.
Fracking is a technique long
KEEPING
with concerns about contaminants
from the oil industry making their
way into the water system. His
practice focus includes oil and gas
law for landowners and mineral
owners, as well as environmental
law.
“It’s really difficult to establish
that there has been water
contamination,” he said. “It’s very
easy for the companies to stand
back and say, ‘There’s no problem
with water contamination here.
You can’t prove it was us.’”
Hicks said there could be many
reasons for well contamination
that aren’t oil and gas related.
“We had huge amounts of
snowfall and runoff and rain, so
there’s a lot of moisture in the
ground, and it could be moving
contaminants that are already in
the system from livestock or
contamination but to get baseline
information about the chemical
quality of those wells, so at some
point in time down the road, if the
quality does change, it might
indicate that change was caused
by something in the area,” Pavlish
said.
Pavlish doesn’t get a lot of
requests for testing, which he
attributes partly to the cost. A
routine chemical test used to be
$20 years ago but is now more
than $100, he said.
In addition, oil activity has been
in the area long enough that
collecting water samples in some
areas now wouldn’t provide a
baseline to note any potential
difference pre- and post-oil
activity.
However, some people in Dunn,
Stark, Golden Valley and Billings
chemical disclosure registry, said
Mike Paque, executive director of
the Ground Water Protection
Council in Oklahoma City.
The State Industrial Commission
approved this rule last month.
Visitors to the site can look up
fracking reports for specific wells
and see the chemicals used.
Some oil companies doing
business in North Dakota already
voluntarily post this information.
The mandatory requirement is
expected to take effect April 1.
Companies will need to post their
reports on the website within 60
days of pumping.
Donald Nelson of Keene,
spokesman for the Dakota
Resource Council, called the
required disclosure “a step in the
right direction.”
If people are going to test for

counties who want to make fracking fluid contamination, they

used by the oil and gas industry to
free oil and gas from rock.
“We’ve got deeper formations,”
he said. “I think our Oil and Gas
Division does a very good job of
controlling and regulating and
monitoring the drilling and
fracking practices in the state.”
SECTION 4
whatever into it,” he said.
He advised people with concerns
to have testing done.
“If it is from some kind of oil
and gas activity, we want to know
about that, too,” he said.
The Health Department has
received calls from people
comparisons are in luck.
In the 1980s, county water
resource boards received funding
to do well registrations, and
chemical analysis tests were done
on a number of wells, Pavlish
said. The health unit has these
files and, therefore, some baseline
need to know what to test for, he
said.
FracFocus is managed by the
Ground Water Protection Council
and Interstate Oil and Gas
Compact Commission. The website
includes information on hydraulic
fracturing, chemicals used and

Fracturing fluids – water, sand
and chemicals – are injected as
much as two miles below the
ground, said Monte Besler, a
Williston-based hydrologic
fracturing consultant.
In between that and fresh water
aquifers near the surface is “a lot
of geological protection,” he said.
concerned about their water
quality, but it hasn’t found a
situation where there is a direct
connection between the wells in
question and oil activity, Fewless
said.
There’s always debate about
what the water quality was before
oil activity moved in, he said, so he
information already.
Oversight
The Health Department has
recently hired three staffers to
work full time on oil field
activities as environmental
scientists or engineers, Fewless
said. Previously, there was one
groundwater protection.
The EPA is expected to release
an initial report from its study of
hydraulic fracturing and drinking
water resources by the end of this
year, with a final report released in
2014.
Finneman is a multimedia reporter
for Forum Communications Co.

About this series Join us at water.areavoices.com

SECTION 1: JAN 29
Water where we live: From
drought to flood, water
bedevils us
SECTION 2: FEB. 5
When water overwhelms us:
Flooding from Minnesota
Lakes Country to the
Montana line
SECTION 3: FEB. 12
Water when we need it:
From recreation to
irrigation, water plays
large role in region
FEB. 26
Making water policy: A
maze of agencies manage
resources in the region
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with water? Then please visit our
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http://water.areavoices.com/ to read
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water-related news stories from regional
Forum Communications Co. newspapers,
and you can visit our collection of water
resource Web links, and much more.
This project’s mission is to build
understanding about water and its
impact on our lives across the region,
and your contributions will lead to a
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 LIVING WITH WATER PROFILE: GUS CRONQUIST PAGE 3
John Brose Photography

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SUNDAY,
FEBRUARY 19, 2012

Gilby
man
knows
need
for clean Gus Cronquist, manager of the Agassiz Rural Water Users District, has been with the
cooperative full time for more than 34 years.

By Ann Bailey
Forum Communications Co. Cronquist Jr., and others in the Three wells west of the town of conducted to make sure that the
area started searching for other Inkster pump water out of the water isn’t causing the minerals to
GILBY, N.D. – Gus Cronquist
options, and in the late 1960s, Inkster aquifer. The Inkster leach out of the pipes, Cronquist
doesn’t take turning on the tap for
founded the Agassiz Rural Water aquifer is classified as “undefined” said.
granted.
System, a not-for-profit because its exact boundaries are
A lifelong resident of the Gilby
cooperative. unknown, Cronquist said. Education
area, Cronquist knows what it was The North Dakota Department of
“The construction started in ’71, After the water is treated, it
like to grow up in a home without travels through 350 miles of Health helps the district meet
and the system was fully
running water. Meanwhile, as pipeline to Agassiz Water Users water quality standards, Cronquist
operational in 1973,” Cronquist
manager of the Agassiz Water District customers. The district noted. The department requires
said. He worked part time for the
Users District, he also is well adds, on average, eight to 10 water district operators to attend
water system as a “jack-of-all-
aware of the amount of work that customers each year. The new schools before they are licensed
trades” for the first few years.
goes into delivering water through customers are people who already and holds continuing education
“Whatever needed to be done,
a rural water system. helping fix water leaks, changing live within the boundaries of the classes. Operators must take 30
Cronquist grew up on a farm meters and diaphragms within district, Cronquist said. hours of classes every three years,
near Gilby in a family of eight homes,” Cronquist said. After “Our boundaries are set by the he said. Classes include
that, like their neighbors, relied on working part time for the water state.” innovations in treatment
a delivery truck for their water system for a few years, Cronquist programs and updates on testing.
supply. became operator in 1978 at age 24. Water quality “It’s very comprehensive,”
“I grew up in a house that we “I figured I’d stay there till I was The water drawn from the Cronquist said.
had to be careful what we used for 30 and go do something else.” aquifer is treated in a plant at the Each March, the Agassiz Water
water,” Cronquist said. “The He didn’t, though. well’s site for iron and manganese
problem in the Valley is, you can’t Users District sends its customers
Thirty-four years later, and is chlorinated and fluorinated. a consumer confidence report that
have a well you can drink from” Cronquist, 58, continues to work The water also is routinely
because the taste, odor and the documents the results of its
with the rural water system, now tested to ensure its quality,
amount of salt in the water makes previous year’s testing.
as manager. Cronquist said. For example, each
it undrinkable. Cronquist supports the testing
“I still like it. I don’t like 3 month, water from four wells is
“I don’t think it would have and the paperwork he is required
o’clock in the morning in tested for coliform bacteria.
killed you, but boy it was nasty,” to do.
February and up to your knees in “We also test because there’s
Cronquist said. “Everybody had a “Our main job is to deliver
mud, but I enjoy the people and the irrigation. Our source water is
cistern.” People also collected tested for organic and inorganic quality, safe water in a timely
job,” he said. manner … I enjoy working with
rainwater off of their roofs and compounds, volatile inorganic
used it for things like clothes Agassiz Water Users District compounds.” the members, and I enjoy the fact
washing and showering. Some The Agassiz Rural Water system, So far, the testing has revealed we’re able to deliver them a
even used the rainwater for now called the Agassiz Water no problems with water quality. dependable supply of water.
drinking water, Cronquist said. Users District, serves 1,350 “We’ve never found any ‘action’ “It’s the minimum we can do to
customers who live on farms and levels,” Cronquist said. make sure this water is of good
Rural water in the North Dakota towns of The district also tests samples of quality and safe. I drink this water
Because the water supply was Gilby, Inkster, Ardoch, Johnstown, water, collected from inside every day. My mother drinks this
unreliable and expensive, Forest River, Manvel and customers’ homes, for lead, copper water every day.”
Cronquist’s father, Clark Mekinock. and aluminum. The tests are Ann Bailey reports for the Grand Forks Herald.

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PAGE 4
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2012

Cattle drink water provided by the Kingbrook Rural Water System in South Dakota.
Primed sources
Residents more reliant on rural water systems for quality water
By Mikkel Pates
Forum Communications Co.
In recent decades, rural
residents in the Dakotas
and Minnesota have largely
replaced wells with rural
water systems as sources of
drinking water for
themselves and their
animals.
This is so even when
there is an abundance of
groundwater and few
incidents of pesticide and
fertilizer contamination.
Today, 33 systems supply
an estimated 25 percent of
North Dakota’s population,
including some 200 small
towns. South Dakota has 26
systems in operation and
another coming on line in
July, supplying together
some two-thirds of the
state’s residents.
“We’ve found we’re
literally plumbing the state
with regional water
systems,” said Dennis N.
Davis, executive director of
the Madison-based South
Dakota Association of
Rural Water Districts.
Minnesota has six rural
water systems, all on the
state’s western border.
For some rural residents,
water from the ground
tastes bad and their
animals don’t like it either.
For others, there isn’t
much water and it tastes
bad, too.
Good water rare
“In North Dakota, our
groundwater sources are
abundant, but we do have
high iron and manganese
in the water,” said Eric
Volk, executive director of
the North Dakota Rural
Water Systems Association
in Bismarck. “There is a
band from the northwest to
the southeast that is high
in arsenic. And in the
southwest it’s pretty ‘salty’
– plenty of it, but the cattle
won’t drink it. You can’t
cook with it.”
In Minnesota, most rural
residents continue to use
well water for drinking
purposes, except along the
western border.
There residents have
similar problems as rural
North Dakotans with iron,
manganese or sulfate in the
water, which aren’t a
health threat but are
“pretty unpleasant” and
harsh on bathtubs and
other household appliance,
said Ruth Ann Hubbard,
executive director of the
Elbow Lake-based Rural
Water Association.
She said livestock,
especially young animals,
are heavily dependent on
rural water.
In the state’s northwest,
along the Red River, heavy
clay soils don’t yield
sufficient water, and the
deeper soils have the old
sea-bed water that is salty.
In the southwest, the issue
“We’ve found we’re literally plumbing the state
with regional water systems.”
Dennis N. Davis, executive director of the South Dakota Association of Rural Water Districts
whether there’s water
available at all, or
sometimes nitrate
problems related to “land
use issues.”
In South Dakota, the
majority of the state’s
dairy cows, beef cattle and
other livestock are now
watered through rural
water.
“We have more livestock
drinking rural water than
people,” Dennis said.
“If we’d have had this
discussion 15 years ago, I’d
have said this isn’t going to
pay out for the cow-calf
guy,” he said. “But we have
droughts. Dams dry up.
The quality of water that
runs into stock dams can
be pretty atrocious, and
guys can have vet bills they
couldn’t stand if the cattle
aren’t doing well. The
additional weight gain of
the calf more than
compensates.”
Late start
Rural water systems in
the northern Red River
Valley were among the
region’s first.
First in North Dakota
was the Grand Forks-Traill
system, based in Clifford,
in 1969. First in Minnesota
was the Kittson-Marshall
system, based in
Donaldson, that went on-
line in 1975.
The first systems in
South Dakota were the
Butte-Meade system, based
in Newell, and the Rapid
Valley system, based in
Rapid City, in the state’s
western side, both of
which began in 1972.
Many systems rely on
groundwater, but some pull
water from rivers or dams,
such as the Langdon, N.D.,
system that uses water
from the Mount Carmel
Dam on the Pembina River.
Some serve not just
residents of remote rural
areas but those living near
urban areas, removing
nuisance minerals and
bacteria.
Rural water systems
would have happened
earlier than 1969, Volk said,
but several technologies
made it possible – the
development of large plows
that could place pipe in the
ground miles at a time,
instead of backhoe
trenches, and new
inventions with PVC pipe,
as well as engineering
techniques to move pipe.
Rural water systems
continue to advance today.
In South Dakota, the Lewis
& Clark system is near
completion in rural areas
near Sioux Falls, the state’s
biggest city. In North
Dakota, the state’s growing
northwest is also in need of
rural water.
“With the oil activity in
the western half of the
state, some of our systems
have been approached to
serve ‘man camps,’” Volk
said. “And around Minot,
with the flooding, people
are having to build homes
on the outskirts of town
and need a source for
water.”
Fertilizer, manure
Groundwater
contamination in the
region is not unusual,
according to several state
regulators, but
contamination levels are
often very low.
Trace amounts of
nitrates, found in fertilizer
and animal manure, is
common.
In North Dakota, they are
the most common,
according to Norene
Bartelson, an
environmental scientist
with the state Health
Department.
“We find that in many
wells, but generally in low
levels,” she said. “That may
not be due to field
application of fertilizers.
More often it’s associated
with a livestock feedlot.”
The Health Department
monitors shallow aquifers
that are sensitive to
contamination, primarily
in the eastern and central
parts of the state.
In 2011, a typical year,
seven of 111 wells sampled
had nitrate levels
exceeding 10 parts per
million, the federal
standard for municipal
drinking water. The levels
were, for the most part,
high enough to harm
infants but not adults.
Nitrate levels also exceed
federal standards in some
vulnerable Minnesota
aquifers, according to Dan
Stoddard, assistant
director of the Minnesota
Department of
Agriculture’s Pesticide and
Fertilizer Monitoring
Division, which monitors
wells and surface water.
One department report
indicated that 10 to 13
percent of wells in
vulnerable aquifer areas
are above the 10 ppm
standard.
“I wouldn’t pin it on
livestock,” Stoddard said,
noting that it could involve
other practices.
South Dakota ground
water can have similar
problems.
Davis, the rural water
association head, said
farmers generally apply no
South Dakota Association of Rural Water Systems
PAGE 5
A FORUM
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SUNDAY,
FEBRUARY 19, 2012
Pesticide contamination,
in particular, is dropping
though at different rates in
the state, he said. “The
most vulnerable areas are
the central sand plains, and
more fertilizer and in southeast Minnesota in
pesticides than they need, the shallow bedrock.” The
but sometimes runoff can northwest part of the state
create problems for has less shallow
groundwater. “I don’t know groundwater and is less
that we notice huge areas
vulnerable.
of farming practices that
Stoddard isn’t willing to
are causing us consistent
say why pesticide levels
water problems.”
have been declining but
Pesticide said the promotion of best
management practices for
Pesticide contamination
pesticides as well as label
is also present, but not at
changes have had some
harmful levels.
impact.
Bartelson said the most
common pesticide Rural residents are
contaminant is “picloram,” working to reduce
contamination.
an active ingredient in the
The Wellhead Program,
herbicide Tordon used
primarily on leafy spurge. part of the federal Safe
The chemical is very Drinking Water Act, helps
mobile in the soil, and states educate the public,
stays a long time but is not including farmers who
very toxic to humans. may be farming close to
North Dakota’s major outlying wellheads used for
river systems are tested by public supplies.
the state Department of In some cases a local
Agriculture for more than rural water system will
180 pesticide compounds, purchase some property
but none have shown up in around the wellhead and
significant amounts. lease it back to farmers
“Most of what we find is with stipulations on the
very low parts per billion types of crops, amounts of
compared to its toxicity,” chemicals or number of
said Jessica Johnson, an animals on the land, to
environmental scientist avoid contamination.
who works with the In other cases, farmers
program. work together.
Stoddard said it “isn’t “They may work with an
really surprising” to find adjacent landowner to see
pesticide in water, but if they might put
considering the number of something into
pesticides the agency is Conservation Reserve
looking for and how Program or limit the
sensitive tests can be, it is amount of fertilizer near
“impressive and the wellhead,” Volk said.
surprising” how few are
Mikkel Pates reports for Agweek.
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PAGE 6
A FORUM
High water levels pose
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SUNDAY,
FEBRUARY 19, 2012
threat to Sheyenne River
By Kristen M. Daum
Forum Communications Co.
VALLEY CITY, N.D. – The
Sheyenne River is one of the
healthiest rivers in North Dakota,
but at least one biologist fears that
vitality could diminish as
residents seek relief from bloated
water tables.
“The Sheyenne River is a North
Dakota natural resource. … Some
of the things we find there we
don’t find many other places,” said
Andre Delorme, a Valley City State
University professor. “The
Sheyenne really is a gem in this
state.”
Delorme has been studying this
aquatic jewel for more than 15
years and serves as director of the
Prairie Waters Education and
Research Center in Kathryn, about
18 miles south of Valley City.
With North Dakota’s climactic
wet cycle raging on, Delorme said
he continues to see “unbelievable”
water levels coming down the
Sheyenne, including the late
summer flood that inundated the
lower river valley last August.
Delorme said the high water by
itself doesn’t necessarily harm the
Sheyenne’s aquatic residents, but
he fears other long-lasting effects –
such as erosion and chemical
imbalance – could have far-
reaching consequences.
Continued releases from Devils
Lake into the Sheyenne River are
the biggest threat to the
Sheyenne’s vitality, Delorme said,
and the consequences could start
appearing in the tiniest of places.
Among 60 river sites across
North Dakota, Delorme’s research
has found the Sheyenne River to
have the best mussel population in
the state, he said.
Mussels depend on good water
quality to survive, and they help
promote continued quality by
filtering river water through their
bodies, Delorme said.
While many species of mussels
are endangered across North
America, the healthy quality of
the Sheyenne River allows mussels
a place to thrive.
Of the 15 species of mussels
found in North Dakota, 11 reside in
the Sheyenne River, Delorme said.
The river’s health also attracts
unique diversity in its aquatic
population, including various
species of fish, leeches, crayfish
and insects, he said.
But the Sheyenne’s natural
balance is slowly deteriorating
because of relentless floods and
continued releases from Devils
Lake.
With massive amounts of water
rushing through the river valley
during floods, the Sheyenne
riverbed is slowly eroding.
While that may benefit residents
by broadening the river channel
over time, Delorme said it’s
potentially bothersome to aquatic
life.
Erosion churns up the soil and
scours out the natural riverbed, he
said.
The onslaught of Devils Lake
water sparks greater concern for
both biologists and residents along
the Sheyenne River.
Even though the upper Sheyenne
River passes just south of Devils
Lake, the two bodies of water are
inherently separate and do not
naturally interact.
But because of the threat of an
uncontrolled spillover at Devils
Lake, North Dakota officials
devised the solution of slowly
emptying the lake by way of
man-made drainage outlets into
the Sheyenne River.
Delorme and others fear possible
damage to the Sheyenne’s natural
water quality, especially as
officials prepare to open more
outlets on the east end of Devils
Lake this year.
Devils Lake water contains
varying levels of sulfates, a
natural mineral that isn’t
dangerous in small doses but can
cause problems at higher levels.
Officials at the North Dakota
Department of Health have said
residents who use water from the
Sheyenne could see minimal
digestive impacts from the higher
sulfate levels brought on by the
Devils Lake outlet.
To maintain taste quality,
drinking water would also need to
be purified more thoroughly to
compensate for the sulfates.
But on a biological level,
Delorme said the increased
sulfates could potentially be
devastating to the Sheyenne’s
inhabitants, depending on
organisms’ tolerance to higher
doses of the mineral.
For instance, various species of
fish would likely survive against
the sulfates, but the minerals
could impede their ability to
reproduce, eventually diminishing
the river’s fish population,
Delorme said.
The sulfates could also target the
Sheyenne’s unique mussel
community.
Delorme said three of the 11
mussel species in the Sheyenne
will likely be tolerant enough to
withstand the sulfates.
“The other eight, I really worry
about,” he said. “Some you only
find in the Sheyenne; that’s their
main home in the state.”
The well-being of mussels and
other aquatic in the life is a
notable indicator of the
Sheyenne’s water quality, one that
the valley’s residents shouldn’t
overlook, Delorme cautions.
“If these organisms are dying,
that’s telling you something is
wrong with the water quality,” he
said. “As a citizen of North
Dakota, the Sheyenne River is a
natural part of our state that we
need to protect.”
Kristen Daum reports
for The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead.

Photos by David Samson / Forum Communications Co.

CLEAN

The Baldhill Dam at Lake Ashtabula north of Valley City, N.D. The Sheyenne River forms the lake behind the dam.

Costly challenges ahead

WATER

to handle Devils Lake water

By Kristen M. Daum
Forum Communications Co.
FARGO – Communities along the
Sheyenne River don’t dispute that
a solution is needed to abate rising
Devils Lake.
But the answer of choice –
drainage outlets into the Sheyenne
River – presents a costly challenge
that carries Devils Lake concerns
into southeastern North Dakota.
In order to keep using the
Sheyenne for water supply in the
years to come, several cities in the
river valley are upgrading their
water treatment processes to cope
with the addition of Devils Lake
KEEPING
discussions years ago on how to
obtain better purification systems
and keep the extra minerals out of
the public water supply.
Valley City, like West Fargo,
draws its primary water supply
from groundwater via a system of
wells, but the Sheyenne is an
emergency source the cities also
use.
Fargo draws water mostly from
the Red River but taps into the
Sheyenne 40 percent of the time.
Because of the higher sulfate
levels present in Devils Lake
water, these downstream
communities must adapt to stay

water. within health regulations and

Valley City officials recently
completed multimillion-dollar
upgrades to their water treatment
plant, and Fargo and West Fargo
are studying options to do the
same.
All the fuss stems from minerals
found in Devils Lake water that
SECTION 4
keep water quality within
acceptable levels.
The sulfates standard for the
lower Sheyenne is 450 milligrams
per liter, which likely would be
exceeded with higher releases
from Devils Lake, state health
officials have said.

have infiltrated the Sheyenne The standard on the Red River –

River since state water officials
built a man-made outlet from
Devils Lake in 2005.
By this summer, officials plan to
build two more outlets and a
control structure to increase the
releases from the lake and
mitigate a potential catastrophic
overflow.
However, Devils Lake water
contains higher levels of sulfates
than are naturally present in the
Sheyenne River.
At the least, those extra sulfates
could be a distasteful nuisance to
residents and, at the worst, could
spark digestive problems since
sulfates are a natural laxative.
Preparing for the onslaught of
sulfates, officials in Valley City,
Fargo and West Fargo began
which the Sheyenne drains into –
is 250 milligrams per liter, a
concentration that has been
exceeded a number of times since
Devils Lake’s west-end outlet
began operating seven years ago.
A generous boost from federal
and state funding allowed Valley
City to install $21 million in
upgrades to its treatment plant
last year.
The new features include ultra-
filtration and nano-filtration to
remove extra sulfates and keep
mineral levels within health and
aesthetic standards.
The facility treats 4 million
gallons of water each day for Different filtration methods are being tested at the Fargo Water
Valley City’s 6,600 residents.
Treatment Plant as it prepares for the release of Devils Lake
SOLUTIONS: Page 7 water that will flow into the Sheyenne River.

A trio of shore fishermen cast into the waters of Devils Lake from a spit of land.
New developments offer hope
for concerns in region’s basins
By Kevin Bonham
Forum Communications Co.
DEVILS LAKE, N.D. – While
people living downstream of the
chronically flooding Devils Lake
Basin and other areas of the Red
River Basin express concern over
potentially harmful effects of
poorer-quality water flowing
through the Sheyenne and Red
River basins, a couple of recent
developments might offer some
hope.
First, a three-year study
commissioned by an international
organization concluded this past
fall that water being transferred
from Devils Lake poses a low risk
to downstream fish and fisheries.
Secondly, the same group – The
International Red River Board of
the International Joint
Commission – endorsed a plan to
develop a comprehensive nutrient
management strategy that will
focus on reducing nutrient
contributions throughout the
watershed.
The new committee is the result
of a meeting in 2010 of
representatives from the U.S. and
Canadian federal governments, the
state of North Dakota and the
province of Manitoba to discuss
issues associated with the Devils
Lake flooding situation.
Fish study
The Devils Lake-Red River Basin
Fish Parasite and Pathogen
Project, Qualitative Risk
Assessment, indicated that three
bacteria, one parasite and several
lesions identified in fish from
Devils Lake are not found
elsewhere in the basin.
An expert panel of pathologists
determined that they could be
transferred downstream through a
number of pathways, including an
existing outlet with gravel and
rock filter, by birds, bait transfer
Treatment processes change by season
By Marino Eccher
Forum Communications Co.
Many of the contaminants that
need to be removed in water
treatment – soil, clay, organic
waste, minerals – come from
natural sources. But humans play
a role, too. When rainwater and
snowmelt washes through cities
and into storm drains, it picks up a
number of contaminants.
Much of those are dirt and soil
particles. They can also include
sand and salt from road treatment,
organic material like yard waste,
and automobile fluids like leaky
oil or car-wash residue.
In cities like Fargo, Moorhead
and Grand Forks, storm water and
melt water run into storm
retention ponds that help control
the release of runoff. Those
retention ponds provide some
natural treatment: Solids sink to
the bottom, oils rise to the top and
natural processes help break down
some contaminants.
The water isn’t processed or
otherwise treated before going
back to the river.
Both rainwater and melt water
Fargo and West Fargo city
leaders want similar state and
federal aid to boost their own
treatment processes.
Both cities are still studying
their options for water treatment
and haven’t committed to a
specific remedy yet.
City leaders are discussing the
potential for a joint facility but are
also looking at independent
options.
Fargo began a pilot study in
summer 2011 to gauge what
technology might be needed to
by anglers or boats moved from one
location to another.
However, the panel also
concluded that the parasite and
bacteria in question generally are
widely distributed throughout
much of North America, that
none are foreign species and that
they could have an adverse effect
on fish health only if it was
already compromised for other
reasons.
“For these reasons, all the
experts concluded that the risk to
downstream fish and fisheries
from the parasites and pathogens
of Devils Lake is low, and the
potential for causing disease is
minimal,” the IJC said in its
report.
The U.S. and Canadian
governments requested the study
in 2005. It was conducted by the
IJC’s aquatic ecosystem committee
for the International Red River
Board.
Devils Lake has risen by almost
32 feet and quadrupled in size
since 1993, hitting a record
elevation this summer of 1,454.4
feet above sea level, less than 4 feet
below the point at which it would
begin overflowing from the
connected Stump Lake to the
Sheyenne.
According to 2005 statistics, the
Devils Lake sport fishery and
recreational industry was valued
at $56 million annually; the Red
River recreational fishery in
Canada was estimated at
$10 million to $15 million annually;
and Lake Winnipeg’s commercial
fishery, the largest in North
America, had annual revenues of
more than $15 million.
The state of North Dakota began
transferring water downstream
from Devils Lake in 2005 through
an outlet to the Sheyenne River.
While it has been expanded to a
capacity of as much as 250 cubic
are softer than normal river water,
so water treatment plants adjust
their softening processes to
account for the difference when
there’s precipitation.
Spring in particular is a hectic
time for water treatment, both
because of the constant stream of
melt water and because organic
materials can flow freely under the
surface of frozen rivers. Those
organics can contribute to taste
and odor issues in drinking water
in spring.
The same treatment processes
used to treat natural contaminants
are effective in treating man-made
pollutants. Residents can take a
few basic steps to minimize
contaminants: Collect yard waste
or use composting, deal swiftly
with automobile leaks or other
fluid leaks, and don’t let sprinklers
run amok.
Downstream cities like Grand
Forks also have to deal with
treated wastewater from Fargo and
Moorhead.
One of the newest concerns in
water quality is monitoring for
residuals from pharmaceuticals,
SOLUTIONS
From Page 6
combat the additional sulfates and
also when an expansion of the
facility would be required to
match the city’s growth.
Fargo built its $75 million water
treatment center in 1997, and a full
overhaul of Fargo’s plant could
cost another $60 million to
$70 million, city leaders said.
Meanwhile, West Fargo faces at
least a $15 million price tag to
feet of water per second during the
summer and fall, mechanical
problems this year have resulted
in average releases of about 100 cfs
or less.
By summer, the state plans to
build two additional outlets and a
control structure, increasing the
potential transfer to as much as
1,000 cfs.
Study suggestions
The IJC’s study included these
recommendations:
왘 Adopt a precautionary
approach to monitoring and
preventing the transfer of invasive
species and certain fish pathogens
into the Hudson Bay Basin.
왘 Use data from the current
study to assess the risk to fish in
the Red River Basin from parasites
and pathogens found throughout
the basin, including Lake
Winnipeg.
왘 Use innovative risk analysis
methods and techniques such as
computer modeling.
왘 Establish a program to
monitor fish parasites and
pathogens.
왘 Start a project to determine
route of transfer, rate of spread,
and distribution of the Asian
tapeworm in the Hudson Bay
Basin. The population
characteristics of the tapeworm
could be used as a model to study
invasion pathways of foreign
species into the watershed.
Nutrient strategy
The new IRRB committee that
will develop a nutrient reduction
strategy includes representatives
from North Dakota, Minnesota,
Manitoba, the Red River Basin
Commission and federal agencies
in both countries.
The committee will collect
nutrient reduction efforts already
under way and will exchange
A storm drain in Fargo. Drains can pick up a number of
contaminants, such as road salt, oil and other chemicals.
in particular endocrine disruptors
used in birth control pills. Most of
these contaminants are still in the
monitoring phase of regulation to
improve its own treatment system,
which now entails a minimal
purification of groundwater.
West Fargo’s water supply comes
from a large underground aquifer
via various wells in the city.
Once the aquifer is depleted
because of the growing demand
from a booming population,
West Fargo leaders aim to draw
their water supply from the
Forum Communications Co.
PAGE 7
A FORUM
COMMUNICATIONS
SPECIAL PROJECT
SUNDAY,
FEBRUARY 19, 2012
information on nutrient-control
technology and practices.
Nutrients such as phosphorus
and nitrogen enter lakes and rivers
from fields, discharges from
treatment facilities and other
sources, according to Lance Yohe,
RRBC executive director. Nutrients
can cause excessive growth of
algae and other plants leading to
problems with water clarity and
dissolved oxygen levels.
Paul Aasen, Minnesota Pollution
Control Agency commissioner, said
that while local jurisdictions
ultimately will make final
decisions on nutrient reduction,
the committee can help exchange
information, promote consistence
wherever possible and identify
high-priority areas.
“In Minnesota, we have
monitoring results and watershed
modeling data that show where the
highest percentage of nutrients are
coming from to help us focus our
resources on those areas first.”
“Ultimately, it will be the people
living in the Red River Basin who
will be responsible for reducing
nutrient inputs to our rivers and
lakes,” said Dennis Fewless,
director of the North Dakota
Department of Health’s Division of
Water Quality. “The committee’s
goal is to develop a strategy based
on sound science and basinwide
cooperation, while retaining the
nutrient management efforts
unique to each jurisdiction.”
“The reduction of nutrients will
improve water quality and the
health not only of Lake Winnipeg
but of all surface waters across the
international Red River
watershed,” said Nicole
Armstrong, director of Manitoba’s
Water Science and Management
Branch, Manitoba Conservation
and Water Stewardship.
Kevin Bonham reports
for the Grand Forks Herald.
Michael Vosburg / Forum Communications Co.
determine if further action is
needed.
Marino Eccher reports
for The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead.
nearby Sheyenne.
But that solution would require
a costly treatment facility because
of the high sulfate levels flowing
down from Devils Lake.
In the months ahead, a multi-
phase study should give West
Fargo city leaders a complete
picture of how much supply
remains in the underground
aquifer and how much time the
city might have before a treatment
plant is needed.
Kristen Daum reports
for The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead.
 Photos by David Samson / Forum Communications Co.
PAGE 8
A FORUM
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SUNDAY,
FEBRUARY 19, 2012

Water flows through a pre-sedimentation staging center at the Fargo Water Treatment Plant in south Fargo.

WHAT’S IN
YOUR WATER?
EPA’s strict
standards
challenge
CLEAN

area plants
By Marino Eccher
Forum Communications Co.
The goal of water treatment is
perfection, and the people who do
the job work around the clock to
wring the impurities from every
last drop. But it doesn’t always
work out that way. Drinking water
can contain trace amounts of
everything from the metals in
pipes to leftover disinfectant
chemicals to radioactive materials.
Unless something goes very
wrong, it isn’t enough to hurt you.
The most recent contaminant tests
for Fargo, Moorhead and Grand
Forks tap water all fell within
acceptable Environmental
WATER

Protection Agency limits. Usually,

it isn’t even enough for you to
know it’s there – no more than a
few parts in a million or a billion. Keith Ward monitors the control systems, such as the water tower levels, at the Fargo Water
The EPA requires monitoring of Treatment Plant. Ward is one of 10 operators who work in the control center in south Fargo.
more than 80 potential drinking
water contaminants. Most of those
never show up in regional tap
water testing. Here’s a rundown of
a few common ones that do:
Organic carbons
These come from broken-down
plants and other organic materials
that decompose in or near water
sources. In treated water in the
region, they’re typically detected
in the range of four to eight parts
per million.
Organic carbons are one of the
primary causes of taste and odor
issues in water. They can be
especially pernicious to treat
KEEPING

because some people are sensitive

to their effects even in the parts-
per-billion range. It’s difficult to
scrub water of particles that small.
The Fargo and Moorhead
treatment plants use ozone
disinfection because it’s an
effective way of breaking down
taste- and odor-causing organics.
SECTION 4

Before that, spring runoff of dead

vegetation regularly brought taste
and odor complaints.
Water is filtered through different types of media in the final stages of the treatment process at
TREATMENT: Page 9 the Fargo plant. Each of the six basins handle 5 million gallons of water per day.

Far left: One of

the secondary
softening basins
at the Fargo
plant.
Left: Ozone
generators
convert oxygen
to ozone that is
added to water
for disinfection.
 TREATMENT PAGE 9
From Page 8
Grand Forks, which uses
chlorine, is considering A FORUM
making a similar switch at COMMUNICATIONS
its next upgrade. SPECIAL PROJECT
FARGO – It comes in from the river When all was said and done last Fargo, Moorhead, and Grand Forks
Nitrates and arsenic brown and swirling with silt. It year, that suspect-looking river – plus work around the clock to monitor, SUNDAY,
High-nitrogen fertilizers leaves your tap clear and clean. And the Sheyenne, a secondary source for treat and distribute millions of FEBRUARY 19, 2012
produce nitrate runoff. that, says Bruce Grubb, is a minor the plant – wound up producing the gallons of water each day. They blend
Nitrates can also come miracle. best-tasting water in the state of water from multiple sources, keep a
from septic tanks and “It’s amazing to me that you can North Dakota – a distinction Grubb close eye on conditions upstream, and
sewage, and from natural take water out of the Red River, and calls “our Super Bowl.” Across the try to anticipate changes in water
erosion. Nitrates generally when you look at that water, it seems river, Moorhead’s water treatment quality before they reach the plant.
are not considered kind of dirty, and you can take that plant has won the same honor The treatment process varies
dangerous to most people and it ends up coming out so clean,” multiple times. slightly from plant to plant, but many
but are potentially harmful said Grubb, director of the Fargo Getting there isn’t easy. Water of the basics are the same.
to infants at higher doses. Water Treatment Plant. treatment plants like the ones in – Marino Eccher
The EPA requires no
more than 10 parts per
million. Fargo water last
tested at 1.1 parts per
million, and Moorhead and
Grand Forks were 1
comfortably below that. When water flows into the
Arsenic, meanwhile, plant’s intakes from the Red
comes from natural River and the Sheyenne, the
deposits, waste from some first line of defense is a
production processes, and quarter-inch screen that
some pesticides. It is a keeps out large debris.
potent toxin and is
measured in parts per
billion.
Fargo’s most recent
water report showed no
arsenic. Moorhead water
showed 1.2 parts per
Here, the plant again
billion, while Grand Forks
water showed about the uses chemical
same level. Both are well reactions to remove 3 To remove sediments like
below the EPA threshold of minerals that cause silts and clays from the
10 parts per billion. water hardness. The 2 water, the plant adds
process produces lime chemicals that bind with the
Bacteria sludge as a byproduct. sediments to create sludge.
Coliform bacteria The clean water moves on,
sometimes occur in while the sludge sinks and
drinking water. Rather gets trucked out to be used
than parts per million or
as landfill cover.
billion, bacteria in
drinking water is
measured in positive tests
of monthly samples.
A positive test does not
necessarily mean harmful
bacteria are present, but it 4
does trigger extensive The plant vaporizes and breaks apart
follow-up testing to be sure. liquid oxygen, some of which reforms
The EPA requires as ozone. The plant then pumps tiny
positive tests in no more bubbles of ozone into the water, which
than 5 percent of monthly breaks down organic materials.
samples.
Fargo and Grand Forks
both had the occasional
positive test but were well
below that guideline.
Bacteria was not a factor in
Moorhead’s latest report.
5
Disinfectants
In one of the most basic but important
and additives steps in the process, the plant runs
Chlorine disinfection water through a 42-inch filter filled
produces byproducts that
with a mix of coal, gravel and sand.
can be harmful in Graphic by Troy Becker
The filter traps foreign particles and Forum Communications Co.
sufficient doses. These are
sweeps the water clean.
measured in parts per
billion, and regional water
treatment plants all
measure below EPA
thresholds.
Tap water also contains a
few parts per million of
chloramine, the As a secondary disinfectant, the plant
disinfectant added to keep adds chloramines, a mixture of
water clean while it travels chlorine and ammonia. It’s not much
from the treatment plant to – fewer than four parts per million –
users. but it’s enough to keep the water
Fargo, Moorhead and clean while it travels from the plant
Grand Forks all add about 6 to users.
1.2 parts per million of
fluoride to drinking water
for dental health.
Residue from plumbing
Tap water sometimes
contains small amounts of David Samson / Forum Communications Co.
copper or lead. That comes
from corrosion of pipes
and plumbing. In fact,
treatment processes leave
some hardness-causing
WATER BY THE NUMBERS
minerals from water Snapshot of area municipalities that made their data available on things such as capacity, budgets and even how much sludge is produced
because those minerals
Fargo: Moorhead:
create a protective film on Customers served: 27,752 water service connections
the insides of pipes. Overly Customers served: About 42,000 residents
(about 105,000 residents) Annual operating cost: About $4.8 million
soft water is corrosive to Annual operating cost: About $6.2 million
exposed metal. Maximum daily capacity: 16 million gallons
Maximum daily capacity: 30 million gallons Average daily output: 4.25 million gallons
Elevated levels of lead Average daily output: 11 million gallons Annual output: About 1.5 billion gallons
can be hazardous to some Annual output: 4 billion gallons Annual byproduct (sludge): About 4,500 tons
people, especially pregnant Annual byproduct sludge: About 32,000 tons
women and young
children. To minimize Grand Forks:
exposure, treatment Customers served: 14,100 meters (about 53,000 residents)
experts recommend Annual operating cost: $3.8 million
running the tap until the Maximum daily capacity: 16.5 million gallons
water turns cold to ensure Average daily output (gallons): 8 million gallons
flushing out of water that’s Annual output: About 2.9 billion gallons
been sitting in the pipes. Annual byproduct (sludge): About 7,500 tons per year
Other contaminants
For monitoring and data Detroit Lakes, Minn.:
collection purposes, Customers served: 4,000
treatment facilities test for Annual operating cost: $105,000
Maximum daily capacity: 4 million gallons
a number of contaminants
Average daily output: 1.2 million gallons
that are not regulated by
Annual output: 370 million gallons
the EPA. These include Annual byproduct (sludge): 7 million gallons per year of
iron, nickel, calcium, iron residual
magnesium, sodium and
sulfate. They sometimes
appear in drinking water
in amounts ranging from a
fraction of one part per
million to a few hundred
parts per million. There
are no current EPA
standards for these
contaminants.
Drinking water can also
contain small amounts of
soil runoff, measured by
the cloudiness of the water.
This measure is known as
turbidity. It has no health
effects, but it can interfere
with disinfection and aid
microbial growth. Large transfer pumps move water to the storage
Marino Eccher reports
for The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead.
reservoir at the Fargo Water Treatment Plant.

PAGE 10
A FORUM
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SPECIAL PROJECT
SUNDAY,
FEBRUARY 19, 2012
The buildup of sediment greatly increased in areas along the Missouri River following the record 2011 flood. This area, visible
from the Double Ditch Village historic site north of Bismarck, shows a vast sandbar in the aftermath of the flood. Water leaving
Garrison Dam, upstream of Bismarck, is clearer than in the pre-dam era, allowing capacity to pick up and later deposit sediment.
By Patrick Springer
pspringer@forumcomm.com
MANDAN, N.D. – Chuck Mork’s
farm on the high bottomland along
the Missouri River saw almost nine
quarters of land submerged by the
record flood in the summer of 2011.
Altogether, almost a third of his
crop acres were flooded – all
planted before the flood warnings
came in late May.
After the floodwaters receded in
the fall, he was pleasantly
surprised to find most of his land
survived the ordeal in pretty good
shape, despite the massive crop
loss.
The worst damage involved the
loss of land along a half mile of
riverbank, where the surging river
nibbled away between 2 feet and 10
feet of pasture, also taking a dozen
trees, mostly old cottonwoods.
“We did have some erosion,”
Mork says. “Not super bad. Our
situation is not near as bad as
some.”
Riverbank erosion along the
Missouri River can be a significant
problem, an issue that has a
surprising connection to water
quality.
Garrison Dam, 75 miles
upstream of Bismarck-Mandan,
regulates the river’s flows. But the
water coming out of the dam is
clearer than the “Muddy Missouri”
that preceded Garrison, giving it
the capacity to pick up and
redeposit sediment.
The riverbank along the area
near the Mork farm suffered severe
erosion in the late 1950s and early
CLEAN
1960s after the dam was closed in
1953.
The late Andy Mork, Chuck
Mork’s father, was an outspoken
advocate of riverbank stabilization
downstream of the dam.
The stabilization projects,
involving placement of a protective
shield of rip-rap rocks, were the
first on the Missouri River in
North Dakota.
A neighbor north of the Mork
farm, eight miles north of
Mandan, was also among
landowners spared from
significant riverbank erosion –
thanks in large part to the efforts
years ago of Mork’s late father,
The upstream neighbor’s flood-
prone fields, protected by more
than a mile of rip-rap laid in the
1960s, survived without noticeable
erosion, Mork says.
WATER
“Without that bank protection,
the flows we had last summer, it
would have eaten away the ever-
living heck out of them,” he says.
Actually, Mork adds, hundreds of
acres of his neighbor’s fields
already would have been gobbled
up by the river if the bank hadn’t
been protected by rip-rap.
Officials of the Army Corps of
Engineers, which built and
operates Garrison Dam and the
other Missouri River dams,
maintain that riverbank erosion
has been reduced as a result of the
regulated river flows.
Still, the erosion of the riverbed
and banks and deposition of
sediment downstream remains a
significant problem in areas.
Sedimentation, as the process is
called, is an aggravating factor in
KEEPING
areas as diverse as flood control
and hydropower generation.
The exacerbation of flooding is
most evident a few miles
downstream from the Mork farm,
around Bismarck and Mandan and
nearby housing developments.
One culprit is a delta formed by
silt deposited by the Missouri
SECTION 4
River as it encounters the still
headwaters of Lake Oahe, the
reservoir of Oahe Dam near
Pierre, S.D., and extending almost
to Bismarck-Mandan.
The delta has created a
bottleneck, narrowing the river
channel to a width of 30 or 40 feet,
resulting in ice jams that can
exacerbate flooding, as happened
in a brief 2009 flood.
State and local officials have
complained about the flood risk
posed by the delta for years. It
caused the federal government to
raise the elevation of the 100-year
flood by one foot in 1999 for an area
of south Bismarck and south of
the city.
The flood risk from the
continued buildup of sediment was
again acknowledged in a 2009 study
ROBBING
THE BANKS
Riverbank erosion along
Missouri River can affect
water quality in region
for the corps, but state and local
officials complain that so far no
action has been taken to alleviate
the problem.
“We’re just building up bigger
and bigger headaches,” says Todd
Sando, North Dakota’s state
engineer and top staff official of
the State Water Commission.
“Having a delta in a shallow area is
just inviting ice jams.”
A study by the U.S. Geological
Survey in 1999 concluded that more
than 90 percent of the sediment in
the Missouri River running
through North Dakota comes from
the river’s banks and bed.
Less than 10 percent of the
siltation originates from
tributaries, including the Heart
River and Knife River.
Ironically, the sedimentation
problem partly stems from the
clearer water that flows out of
Garrison and the other dams along
the Missouri River.
It’s the downside of the
Missouri’s relatively clear water,
among the highest-quality water in
North Dakota, according to the
State Water Commission.
Here’s a simplified explanation of
how the dams have altered the
Missouri River’s ability to carry
and deposit sediment.
Almost all of the sediment
suspended in the river settles in
the dam reservoirs before moving
farther downstream – leaving the
water with the capacity to pick up
more silt and sediment as it flows.
“It’s a hungry river,” Sando says
of the Missouri downstream from
Garrison Dam. “It’s looking to pick
up its bed load and sediment load.”
Pick up, then deposit, as eroded
riverbed and riverbank soils are
transformed into sandbars and
deltas.
The heavier sediment settles to
form sandbars. The lighter silt
remains in the river, however, until
reaching a slow zone, notably the
still, upper reaches of Lake
Sakakawea or Lake Oahe, and
deposits, forming deltas.
Williston, upstream along the
headwaters of Lake Sakakawea,
has sedimentation headaches
similar to those plaguing Bismarck
and Mandan.
Siltation forced the abandonment
of a nearby agricultural irrigation
project in the early 1970s. Buildup
of the Williston delta raised the
river bottom more than 17 feet by
the early 2000s, resulting in a large
swampy section of the river rife
with mosquitos.
Andy Mork saw it coming in the
summer of 1953, when he took the
family on a drive to see Lake
Sakakawea as it was forming from
the closure of Garrison Dam.
After driving over the divide, he
peered down into the Missouri
River Valley and was surprised by
what he saw – beautiful blue water,
not the tan-brown “Old Muddy”
river he had known since boyhood.
It was just starting to cultivate
the appetite Sando would later
describe as a hungry river.
Filling with sediment
Garrison Dam’s Lake
Sakakawea, a colossus that ranks
as the nation’s third-largest
artificial reservoir, is slowly filling
with sediment.
Every year, the lake collects silt
and sediment that reduces its
storage capacity by a volume
estimated to equal a lake one-foot
deep covering 25,900 acres.
That amounts to 0.11 percent of
its storage capacity, needed for uses
including flood protection, water
supply and recreation, every year.
Engineers project that Lake
Sakakawea will be completely
filled with sediment in 900 years.
Most of that sediment comes
from upstream on the Missouri
River and Yellowstone River.
Most of the sediment is deposited
on the lake’s upper reaches, but
some of it accumulates at the base
of the dam.
As of 2009, Sakakawea’s
permanent pool had been reduced
by 3.5 percent as a result of
sedimentation.
The problem is much more
severe – and pressing – for the
smaller Missouri River reservoirs
downstream in South Dakota.
For instance, Gavins Point Dam’s
Lewis and Clark Lake, near
Yankton, S.D., has lost 30 percent of
its storage from sedimentation.
The reservoir is projected to lose
half its capacity by 2045, according
to a 2009 study by the corps.
The Missouri River system of six
reservoirs, with total storage
equaling 73.1 million acre-feet, has
lost 5 million acre-feet, or 6.8
percent.
The loss adds up at a yearly rate
that equals storage equaling a flood
100 miles long, 10 miles wide, with
an average depth of more than 7
feet, according to the Missouri
Sedimentation Coalition, an
advocacy group based in South
Dakota.
Put another way, the yearly loss
to the Missouri River system’s
water supply from sedimentation
would provide more than 800,000
people with more than 100 gallons
of water a day for an entire year,
according to the coalition’s
figures.
The advocacy coalition was
formed in 2001, spearheaded by
officials from the city of Pierre,
S.D., who were forced to buy out
homes near the river that were
threatened by water tables driven
up by sediment buildup.
Bismarck’s water table also has
increased because of
sedimentation, but faces a more
immediate problem from the threat
of ice-jam floods exacerbated by the
delta.
So far, no long-term plans have
been devised to deal with the
growing problems caused by
sediment accumulation along the
Missouri River.
But the corps is studying near-
term steps to better protect areas
around Bismarck-Mandan.
Severe erosion at a bend in the
river by Hoge Island north of
Bismarck caused a bank collapse
that damaged several homes,
including one washed away in the
2011 flood.
The corps is considering rip-
rapping the area, a half-mile stretch
of riverbank flanked by areas that
have protection that worked well in
the flood but must be repaired.
Officials also are looking at
dredging an area of delta to prevent
a large drainage canal in south
Bismarck from backing up from an
ice jam.
A sandbar at the mouth of the
Heart River in Mandan poses
another problem. The corps will
work with state and local officials
to monitor and mitigate ice buildup
at the sediment sites.
As for a permanent solution to
the sandbar problems bedeviling
Bismarck-Mandan and nearby
subdivisions, the corps maintains
it lacks authority to tackle the
issue.
“That is an issue for the locals to
address if they feel they need to,”
says John Remus, the corps’
Omaha District chief of hydraulic
engineering.
A federal program to provide
Patrick Springer / Forum Communications Co.
bank stabilization projects might
help reduce riverbank erosion,
Remus said. A task force will meet
early in 2012 to explore the
possibility.
Any project funding would
require state and local matching
funds, and would have to obtain
environmental permits.
“Nothing is in the works at this
time,” Remus says.
Questions remain
More than five decades after
Garrison Dam began operations,
its effects on downstream river
dynamics have not been studied in
depth.
Prompted by the record flood of
2011, the U.S. Geological Survey is
proposing a major three-year study
to explore issues including
riverbank erosion and sediment
accumulation.
Has the Missouri River reached a
steady state, in terms of the
sediment load it can carry? Or is
the river, following the massive
flood, still seeking to reach that
balance?
“It’s something that’s been
needed for a long time,” Joel
Galloway, a research hydrologist
for the USGS in Bismarck, says of
the study.
“Streams are always trying to
reach some kind of equilibrium,”
he says. Garrison Dam altered the
river’s natural equilibrium,
including Lake Sakakawea’s
capture of sediment.
“If we choke off that sediment, it
will find other places,” Galloway
says. “It still may be adjusting
itself.”
The study will focus on the 70-
mile, free-flowing reach from
Garrison Dam to the headwaters of
Lake Oahe.
The study’s findings, expected in
2014, could help guide steps, such
as bank stabilization or delta
dredging.
Otherwise, Galloway says,
“They’re kind of going in blind,
not knowing what to do. We hope to
answer some good questions.”
Chuck Mork is among those who
complain that it has become too
difficult to obtain a permit for
riverbank stabilization projects.
North Dakota officials believe
that river management to create
sandbars to provide habitat for
endangered or threatened bird
species, such as the least tern and
piping plover, impede flood
control.
Flushing water to create
sandbars, Sando and others
maintain, increases riverbank
erosion, and therefore contributes
to delta formation, which can
exacerbate ice-jam flooding.
But officials with the corps and
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
argue that managing the river to
benefit birds does not sacrifice
riverbanks or aggravate flooding.
“Flows out of the dam have very
little if anything to do with
endangered species protection,”
says Carol Aron, a biologist with
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
in Bismarck.
Nonetheless, Sando and Mork
say, riverbank stabilization
projects have stalled in the past
decade as permits have become
hard to obtain.
As of the late 1990s, less than a
third of the 170 miles of riverbank
from Garrison Dam to Lake Oahe
were rip-rapped. The estimated
cost of protecting the 10 percent of
shoreline vulnerable to erosion
was $13.8 million in 1997, or
$19.45 million in 2011 dollars.
“We’ve got plenty of sand and
Fish and Wildlife wants more
sand,” Sando says. “That’s why
people love the river. It’s great for
recreation.”
As for Andy Mork, who died in
2010, his son believes he would
have been pleased to see how the
rip-rap withstood the test of the
record flood of 2011.
“He would have been very happy,
with the results of the areas where
the stabilization was done,” Chuck
Mork says.
Patrick Springer reports
for The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead.
Fight intensifies against PAGE 11
A FORUM

invasive species in lakes COMMUNICATIONS

SPECIAL PROJECT

By Nathan Bowe
Forum Communications Co.
DETROIT LAKES, Minn. –
Living in Minnesota’s Lakes
Country, it’s easy to watch the
spread of invasive zebra mussels
from lake to lake and feel like a
victim: They are already in more
than 50 Minnesota lakes and
rivers, after all.
Can anything stop their spread?
“A lot of people want to give up
on invasives because it only takes
one boat to move them,” said
Moriya Rufer, a lake specialist
with RMB Environmental
Laboratories in Detroit Lakes.
“But the better educated people
are about them, the better the
chance of lessening their spread.”
A small group of Becker County
lake enthusiasts are doing
everything they can to keep zebra
mussels out of the county.
One of them is Terry Kalil. The
efficient, hard-working vice
president of the Becker County
Coalition of Lake Associations
can’t stand the thought of
everybody sitting on their hands
waiting for the inevitable.
“I truly believe we’re in a crisis,”
Kalil said. “This is the moment –
our last, best and perhaps only
chance to prevent it – because we
aren’t infested yet (in Becker
County), but it may be too late as
soon as next year.”
She and a handful of others see
the need for action so clearly that
they won’t wait for government to
catch up: They say that, up until
now, the Department of Natural
Resources’ response has been slow
and cumbersome, and county
officials haven’t indicated they are
willing to fund the fight at the level
that will really make a difference.
That would require at least a
part-time county employee to lead
the effort and the purchase of a
decontamination unit, Kalil said.
And it needs to happen before this
summer.
What they do
So what’s so bad about zebra
mussels? They multiply like
tribbles – an adult female produces
30,000 to 1 million eggs per year,
and about 2 percent survive – and
Baby zebra mussels were discovered in Rose Lake near Vergas, the DNR says it is done giving
Minn., in 2011.
filter up to a quart of water a day
as they feast on tiny animals and
algae in a lake.
“In the short term, that makes
the water clearer,” Kalil said. “The
only reason it’s clearer is the
plankton is gone and the plankton
is what the little fish eat so they
can grow up to be big fish and
people can go fishing.”
Some fish species, like
smallmouth bass and bottom
feeders, thrive on zebra mussels,
but they can’t put a dent in the
population, and an infestation is
bad news for most popular game
fish species.
That leads ultimately to empty
hooks being pulled up by anglers.
Populations of some fish species
have declined by as much as 90
percent in the Great Lakes, where
the infestation first came to the
United States in 1988 via
freighters.
Zebra mussels are usually about
the size of a thumbnail, but they
jam pipes and infrastructure and
pile onto native clams and mussels
so thickly that the natives can’t
open their shells to eat.
“Zebra mussels change the
Paula Quam / Forum Communications Co.
warnings, Kalil said.
whole lake dynamic,” said Tera
Guetter, administrator of the
Pelican River Watershed District.
An infested lake will look clear
and clean in the middle where it’s
deeper, but in the shallower water,
the infestation may have caused
algae bloom to line the shore, she
said.
Trying to stop them
Zebra mussels infested Pelican
Lake in 2009. They were found last
summer in Rose Lake near Vergas.
Both lakes are right across the
Becker County line in Otter Tail
County.
Zebra mussels can hitchhike
from lake to lake on fishing boats,
docks and boatlifts.
Desperate to stop them, and with
a big fishing derby coming up,
Kalil and a friend, Barb
Halbakken-Fischburg, last
summer got their hands on one of
the first decontamination units in
the state, driving to the Twin
Cities themselves to pick it up and
haul it back to Detroit Lakes.
The locals also organized
volunteer lake monitors to man
public accesses at popular lakes on
SUNDAY,
FEBRUARY 19, 2012
weekends, talking to boaters about
the threat posed by zebra mussels
and why they should follow state
rules designed to prevent their
spread.
Containing the striped Eurasian
invaders isn’t easy to do: They are
sent out into the lakes as tiny,
invisible free-floating larvae
(called veligers) that are most
easily detected by touch – they
make a boat hull feel like
sandpaper.
They travel blissfully along with
the current, attaching themselves
to aquatic plants, boats, docks,
lifts, water intake pipes, you name
it.
That’s why it’s essential that
boaters remove aquatic plants from
their boats after they leave a lake –
zebra mussels attach to them.
No more Mr. Nice Guy
Because of the threat to lakes,
“The new roadside inspection
law passed last year gives the DNR
authority to inspect any watercraft
anywhere – inside and out,” she
said. People hauling boats without
first pulling their plugs can expect
to get a ticket.
It’s part of a massive DNR
upgrade this year of its efforts to
stop zebra mussels and other
aquatic invasives.
Motorists pulling boats or other
marine equipment may now be
routed into road check stations,
where their boats may be
decontaminated, and they may be
ticketed for violating laws
prohibiting the transportation of
aquatic invasive species.
The DNR will purchase 20 high-
pressure, hot water
decontamination units that will be
operated at zebra mussel-infested
waters, high-use destination lakes
and at DNR enforcement
checkpoints. There are now just
three such units in the state.
The DNR will also hire 150 new
watercraft inspectors and three
new invasive-species specialists to
be deployed around the state.
Finally, the activists in Becker
County aren’t feeling so lonely.
Nathan Bowe reports
for Detroit Lakes Newspapers.

LIVING WITH WATER PROFILE: MORIYA RUFER

Passion for clean water turns into profession

RMB Environmental Laboratories
By Nathan Bowe
Forum Communications Co.
DETROIT LAKES, Minn.
– Moriya Rufer came by her
passion for the cold-water
lakes of Minnesota
honestly: scrabbling along
the shore of Leech Lake as
a child, looking for water
bugs, splashing on the
beach, boating with her
parents and catching frogs.
The Detroit Lakes woman
is still water crazy, even
though she’s all grown up.
Now, at age 34, she’s
working for RMB
Environmental
Laboratories.
When it comes to water
quality, Rufer tends to find
herself in the thick of the
fight, whether it’s
flowering rush on the
Detroit Lakes city beach,
zebra mussels in Otter Tail
County, or working with
Becker County on its tough
new lake septic system
ordinance.
Some of her volunteer
time is paid by her
employer, much of it is
Moriya Rufer, director of client services for RMB Environmental Laboratories in Detroit Lakes, collects a
donated. sample to test for zebra mussels on Pelican Lake.
Rufer’s love of lakes and
concern about the the volunteers aren’t nearly the water volume to Lakes from the Twin Cities
environment found a good Water plants and bugs
careful, results can be absorb and process Some of Rufer’s work five years ago. He is an
match in her job as contaminated – via an contaminants. attorney with the
director of client services began with her on-the-job
improperly cleaned “Landlocked” lakes training at age 2: Looking Pemberton, Sorlie, Rufer
at RMB Environmental container, for example. without inlets and outlets and Kershner Law Firm.
Laboratories, where she at water plants and bugs.
Those volunteers take have a similar problem – They have a 2-year-old
specializes in aquatic An aquatic plant survey
their jobs seriously, Rufer contaminants have daughter, Marielle.
insects and water quality involves “going out and
said, in part because they nowhere to go. And shallow “I work all over the whole
in lakes. about and identifying all
know the Minnesota lakes – 15 feet or less at state, but I really like the
the plants in a lake,” she local stuff because that’s
“People ask me all the Pollution Control Agency their deepest point – have said. “It’s really good for where I can see we’re
time ‘how are our lakes appreciates the help. problems of their own. finding out if you have making a difference,” she
doing?’ You can’t “The reports are being If people clear off too invasive species.” said.
generalize. It depends on used by the state instead of much of the natural She also does macro And yes, her family still
the area and the lake itself: sitting in a drawer aquatic vegetation, algae invertebrate collection and
A lot of elements come into has that cabin on Leech
somewhere,” she said. takes its place, and “you get identification. These little Lake.
play – the lake size, depth, pea soup,” Rufer said. Once guys are at “the bottom of
setting, location, Lake shape matters “I have been there every
that happens, it’s very the food chain in lakes,” summer since birth,”’ she
watershed,” she said. “You Some Minnesota lakes difficult to turn it around, she said. “The variety and
need about 10 years of data said. “It is my mental and
are in danger of “being she added. abundance of invertebrates spiritual retreat – my place
to get a real analysis, so loved to death,” Rufer said, In other words, lake can tell you about the of renewal.”
you can tell if a lake is and she has helped Becker management matters – a variety of the fish And having a daughter of
getting better or worse.” County determine which lot. population.” her own now will make the
Rufer and her colleagues major lakes are most Over time, lakes Rufer grew up in experience all the better.
train volunteer lake threatened: A lot of it has naturally fill up with Northfield and earned a “I can’t wait to teach her
monitors to do Secchi disk to do with the shape and sediment and become bachelor’s degree in all the names and roles of
testing for water clarity depth of the lake. shallower and greener, biology from the College of the different creatures that
and show them how to take A long, skinny lake may with more plants and algae, St. Benedict and a master’s rely on the lake for their
proper water samples. have just as much Rufer said. degree in entomology at existence, and how
They test for phosphates shoreline development and “It takes thousands of the University of important it is to respect
and chlorophyll A (which recreational activity as a years for the natural Minnesota. them and their habitat.”
indicates algae large, round lake, but the process, but humans can do She and her husband, Nathan Bowe reports for
concentration) because if skinny lake doesn’t have it in decades,” she added. Sam, moved to Detroit Detroit Lakes Newspapers.
PAGE 12 LIVING WITH WATER PROFILE: MARK PETERSON
A FORUM
COMMUNICATIONS
SPECIAL PROJECT
SUNDAY,
FEBRUARY 19, 2012
Mark Peterson is the operations manager for the city of Fargo water purification plant.
Meeting water challenges head on
By Marino Eccher
Forum Communications Co.
FARGO – Whenever you turn the
tap here, the water that comes out
has Mark Peterson’s fingerprints
all over it.
Not literally, of course –
Peterson spends all day making
sure the city’s drinking water is
free of contaminants and fit for
consumption. But as the
operations supervisor for Fargo’s
Water Treatment Plant, he goes to
work every day knowing he has an
impact on everyone who uses city
water.
He’s not doing it alone. Peterson
manages a team of 10 operators
who work around the clock in
12-hour shifts to make the sure the
plant is producing enough clean
water to meet the city’s needs.
Those operators monitor water
quality and adapt to
environmental changes that
require tweaks in treatment –
more of one chemical or less of
another, for instance.
Peterson, who’s going on 16
years at the plant, was an operator
himself for many of those years.
The Williston native came here
from what was then North Dakota
State University-Bottineau, where
he graduated with a degree in
water treatment (the school is now
Dakota College at Bottineau). It
was a new program when he
arrived, and Peterson recalls
“someone handing me a brochure
for it.”
Peterson wasn’t quite sure what
he wanted to do with his career,
but was drawn to the program
because of its focus on lab work in
biology and chemistry – areas in
which he enjoyed working. He also
figured water treatment would be
a stable career because the
demand wasn’t going away
anytime soon.
“There’s always a need for
water,” he said.
Today, he enjoys the job because
of its ever-evolving challenges,
whether that’s meeting a steady
stream of new regulations or
studying and adopting the latest
water treatment technology for
use at the plant.
In his line of work, there’s never
an end in sight: The better
treatment methods get, the more
contaminants they can detect that
have to be scrubbed. Nowadays,
technology can sniff out
contaminants in the parts-per-
billion range.
“The more they find, the more
you’ve got to remove,” he said.
And every method comes with its
own price and byproducts.
Right now, the plant is midway
through a yearlong pilot study on
removing sulfates through reverse
osmosis – essentially pumping the
water through a fine membrane.
It’s also looking into ultraviolet
disinfection, the next wave of
disinfectant technology.
People who know what Peterson
does for a living aren’t shy about
approaching him with water
treatment questions: Why is my
Michael Vosburg / Forum Communications Co.
tap water cloudy, how do I treat
the water at my lake home, and
the like. He stresses that there are
no one-size-fits-all treatment
answers.
“That’s what everybody wants to
know … what do I do?” he said.
“Water chemistry, it can really
change from one source to
another.”
The Fargo plant has won the
honor of best-tasting water in
North Dakota multiple times,
including last year. As someone
who knows more than most about
the factors that affect water
quality, Peterson can’t help but
notice subtle differences when he
travels.
“Everybody gets used to what
‘normal’ is at home,” he said. “You
definitely taste differences. Maybe
the type of disinfection they do.”
But, he added, he hopes his
expertise – and success – hasn’t
made him a water snob.
Marino Eccher reports
for The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead.
 Without proper management
SECTION 5
of water, we have chaos
oday we reach the final section of
T our project “Living with Water.”
Over the course of five weeks,
we’ve looked at the geography of our
drainage systems, at flooding and drought,
and at water quality.
Today’s final section explores and
explains the critical importance of water
management. Perhaps no issue is more
important than this one. Without proper
management, we have chaos.
Sound water management can protect us
against flood. It also ensures an adequate
supply of water for our activities, from
brushing our teeth to extracting our oil.
Today’s section takes in a lot of geography.
Reporters and photographers from Forum
Communications Co. newspapers have
considered water management in places as
far away as the Netherlands and the
Susquehanna River Basin in Pennsylvania.
They’ve looked at issues as diverse as flood
insurance and agreements between states
and countries to manage shared water
resources.
There’s an interview with Gary Doer, whose
experience as premier of Manitoba gives him
Discuss this series at water.areavoices.com
William C.
MARCIL
Forum
Communications
Co. chairman
a deep knowledge of regional water issues
and whose current job as Canada’s
ambassador to the United States, gives him a
unique position of influence over water
issues in both North Dakota and Minnesota.
This series began on Jan. 26 and has
appeared in The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead,
Grand Forks Herald, Jamestown Sun,
Dickinson Press, all in North Dakota, The
Daily Republic in Mitchell, S.D., and in
newspapers affiliated with the company’s
Detroit Lakes, Minn., newspaper group.
FCC broadcast facilities in Fargo, Grand
Forks, Bismarck and Minot and the
company’s Internet sites have also
showcased the series.
I can assure our readers that the series has
been a total effort on the part of Forum
Communications Co.
The company has had more than 30
professionals working on the series since
last summer. Mike Jacobs, editor and
publisher of the Grand Forks Herald, has
been the project leader.
The reporting in the “Living with Water”
series is thoughtful and historical. I’m
convinced it is a source of vital information.
I hope the series will be a meaningful
water diary as the residents of the Northern
Plains discuss the “life blood” of our region.
We welcome your comments by email to
Mike Jacobs (mjacobs@forumcomm.com) or
U.S. mail to Living with Water, PO Box 6008,
Grand Forks, ND 58206.
You can get a complete set of our special
editions by using the coupon in today’s
newspaper.
Thank you and enjoy “Living with Water.”
William C. Marcil
Chairman of the Board

PAGE 2
A FORUM
COMMUNICATIONS
SPECIAL PROJECT
SUNDAY,
FEBRUARY 26, 2012
ON THE COVER
A part of the Grand Forks
Public Library’s collection
of material about water
issues. The oldest piece
dates to the 1890s.
Eric Hylden
Forum Communications Co.
Map by Troy Becker
Forum Communications Co.
The view from the window of a windmill near the village of Kinderdijk in the Netherlands. The picturesque windmill-dominated
landscape is one of Holland’s most popular tourist destinations.
Yes, we can
WATER
Managing water is expensive and never-ending. But as the
Netherlands’ long history with flood control shows, it can be done.
36-mile-long diversion
A ditch around Fargo. A
network of 100-plus
artificial lakes for
retaining water, many of them a
square mile or more in size. An
effort to forestall a disastrous
breakout by draining the brimful
Devils Lake. Manipulating Lake
Sakakawea’s water level in hopes
of avoiding massive Missouri
River floods.
These and other projects you’ll
find detailed in today’s “Living
with Water” section, which is
devoted to water management.
FOR
But together, they beg this
overarching question:
Is it worth it?
Really, is it? Twenty years ago, 50
years ago, 100 years ago, North
Dakota and Minnesota newspapers
could have found plenty of flood-
and-drought stories to fill pages
with. The Souris-Red-Rainy River
Basin Commission’s study of
regional water issues ran eight full
volumes, and that was in 1972.
The Tri-State Waters
Commission was set up “to
POLICY
correlate plans and prevent
duplication of efforts” – in 1937.
Yet even after a century of our
best efforts, even after studies,
commissions, dikes and dams, the
only safe prediction remains this:
Water will win in the end.
So, what’s the point?
Don’t we remember the ultimate
lesson of the story of King Canute
– the fact that the good king tried
but failed to hold back the tide?
For an answer, start by looking
at the photos on this page.
The photos show windmills in
the Dutch town of Kinderdijk. The
network of windmills is the
largest in the Netherlands; they’re
one of the country’s biggest
tourist attractions.
And they remind us that not
only do humanity’s efforts to
manage water go back a long, long
way, but also those efforts can and
MAKING
do get things right.
That is, if “getting things right”
means enabling people to live
comfortably in conditions that
range and sometimes swing
radically from “too wet” to “too
dry.”
SECTION 5
The Netherlands, of course, has
been battling “too wet” for more
than 1,000 years. For example, the
Kinderdijk windmills date back to
1740. That was when residents
built the structures to pump water
out of the perpetually flooding
“polders,” the diked-and-drained
lands that make up so much of the
About this series
SECTION 1: JAN 29 SECTION 3: FEB. 12
Water where we live: From Water when we need it:
drought to flood, water From recreation to
bedevils us irrigation, water plays
large role in region
SECTION 2: FEB. 5
When water overwhelms us: SECTION 4: FEB. 19
Flooding from Minnesota Keeping water clean: Water
Series print designer: Rob Beer
Online designer: Ryan Babb Lakes Country to the treatment is important to
Forum Communications Co. Montana line our everyday lives
Photos by Jessica Ludy / Special to Forum Communications Co.
story after the delegation’s return.
“Ten million people and 60
percent of The Netherlands would
be flooded every day if the
country let nature have its way.
“North Dakota is flat. But The
Netherlands are flatter, if such a
thing is possible. A full third of
the country’s tabletop-flat terrain
actually sits below sea level. On
the far side of Dutch seawalls is
the ocean, and waves crash
against the barricades 24 hours a
day.
“No wonder one of the country’s
national heroes, honored in statue
and song, is a boy – the legendary
boy who kept his finger in the dike.”
These windmills sit near Kinderdijk, a village located near the The cat-and-the-cradle of
Kinderdijk is the same, another
confluence of the Lek and Noord rivers.
favorite Netherlands folk tale.
As these examples show and as
Netherlands. Holland, the the delegation learned, flood
Now, go back name pays control has forever been a part of
an additional Tom Swedenhomage to the the Netherlands’ character and
lore.
300 years, this
time to 1421.
DENNIS country’s centuries-long So, has it been worth it?
That was the Grand Forks battle against Absolutely. Without a doubt. As
year of the St. Herald opinion floods. the Dutch experience shows,
Ireland U.K. page editor Poland managing water can be a costly
Elizabeth In 1998, the
flood, which Germany Grand Forks and eternal struggle. But the
flooded the Herald was Netherlands – one of the most
polders near part of a prosperous and respected
where the Minnesota, democracies on Earth – learns
photos on this France NorthRomania
Dakota from its mistakes, improves its
page was taken. and Manitoba
Italy delegation that systems over time and recovers
According to Dutch legend, visited the Netherlands. A few from the inevitable setbacks.
villagers spotted a cradle floating months earlier, the 1997 flood had America’s Upper Midwest can do
far off on the flooded area. As it ravaged Grand Forks and other and is doing the same.
approached, they also saw a cat
Spain communities, and the delegation Sure, water will win in the end.
jumping back and forth to keep hoped to study and learn from the But that won’t happen for a long,
the cradle from capsizing. Closer Dutch experience. Greece long time, if Netherlanders have
still, and the villagers saw in the The country’s situation their way. Major cities such as
cradle a baby, sleeping, smiling astounds observers to this day. Amsterdam and Rotterdam are
Morocco protected against storms that take
and dry. “Grand Forks frets about its
Hence the name, “Kinderdijk” – swollen river for a few weeks in place on the order of once every
“Children’s dike.” Like so much in the spring,” the Herald noted in a 10,000 years.
And as for King Canute, all he
did was bring his throne down to
the water’s edge, lift his scepter on
Sweden high and issue a command. The
tide kept rolling in.
Netherlands Perhaps he should have left his
scepter in his castle and instead
Ireland come armed with the control box
U.K. Poland
Germany for the Maaslantkering. That’s the
set of swinging, Eiffel Tower-sized
gates that close the waterway to
Rotterdam when the North Sea
starts to surge.
France The gates are just one part of the
Romania
Italy Netherlands’ Delta Works coastal
protection system, which the
American Society of Civil
Engineers has dubbed one of the
Spain Seven Wonders of the Modern
World.
Greece And with the Maaslantkering in
the distance and the green “close”
button in his hand, old Canute
Morocco
might have had better luck.
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 Michael Vosburg / Forum Communications Co.
PAGE 3
A FORUM
COMMUNICATIONS
SPECIAL PROJECT

SUNDAY,
FEBRUARY 26, 2012

The Red River Basin Commission, meeting in Moorhead in 2009, is one of several boards that deal with the region’s water issues.

Water bureaucracy The alphabet soup of water bureaucracy can be a bit confusing and overwhelming.
A host of government agencies are responsible for managing the region’s waterways.
Each agency has different roles and functions, which sometimes overlap.
Here’s a breakdown of which boards govern what:

Basinwide and/or international 왘 National Weather Service: An agency within the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that’s responsible for
왘 International Joint Commission: A six-member group appointed weather, hydrologic and climate forecasts. NWS data includes forecast of
by U.S. and Canadian officials. The commission assists governments in river levels, crest predictions and flood watches and warnings.
managing rivers and lakes that lie along the border between the U.S. and
Canada. It follows the 1909 Boundary Waters Treaty to prevent or State
resolve disputes. 왘 North Dakota Water Commission: A nine-member board, which
왘 International Red River Board: A 16-member board that assists Compiled by
includes the governor, that is responsible for water management issues Kristen M. Daum
the International Joint Commission to prevent or resolve disputes and regulations statewide.
involving the Red River Basin. Forum Communications Co.
왘 North Dakota Department of Health’s Division of Water
왘 International Souris River Board: An 11-member board that Quality: A state office charged with ensuring safe water quality and
assists the International Joint Commission to prevent or resolve protecting the quality of natural resources. The agency is responsible
disputes involving the Souris River Basin. for enforcing state and federal environmental laws through permits,
왘 Red River Basin Commission: A nonprofit organization governed inspection and monitoring.
by a 41-member board with representation from North Dakota, 왘 Minnesota Department of Natural Resources’ Division of
Minnesota, Manitoba and South Dakota. The commission seeks to study, waters: A state department charged with managing water supply and
research and implement projects that manage natural resources, protecting public waters from environmental hazards.
including ways to enhance basinwide flood protection. 왘 Minnesota Pollution Control Agency: A state department
왘 Red River Basin Flood Damage Reduction Work Group: A responsible for monitoring environmental quality and enforcing
group formed in 1998 to address issues related to the development of regulations.
flood damage reduction projects in a portion of the Red River Basin in 왘 Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources: Governed by a
Minnesota. It has no regulatory or funding authority. 20-member board, this state conservation agency oversees programs to
왘 Red River Retention Authority: A six-member board comprised prevent sediment and nutrients from entering waterways and
of representatives from the Red River Joint Water Resource District in protecting fish, wildlife and wetlands.
North Dakota and the Red River Watershed Management Board in 왘 South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural
Minnesota. The authority was formed in 2010 with the goal of Resources: A state office responsible for protecting public health and
coordinating basinwide retention projects to mitigate flooding. The environmental resources through monitoring, assessments and
board has limited authority. regulation.
Federal Local
왘 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers: A military agency comprised of 왘 Water resource districts (N.D.): Local – usually county-level –
civilian engineers and soldiers charged with promoting environmental boards that manage water issues along municipal boundaries.
sustainability, managing waterways nationwide and facilitating large- 왘 Joint water resource districts (N.D.): Regional boards that
scale public infrastructure projects, such as flood levees, dams and incorporate several local water resource districts with the aim to look at
diversions. water issues from a broader perspective.
왘 Federal Emergency Management Agency: An agency within the 왘 Watershed districts (Minn.): Local – usually county-level – boards
Department of Homeland Security responsible for providing support that manage water issues along municipal boundaries.
during and after natural disasters. 왘 James River Water Development District: A regional board with
왘 Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Water: A federal representation from parts of 13 counties in South Dakota that oversee
department responsible for analysis, monitoring and implementation of water issues in the James River Valley.
regulations dictated by the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking 왘 Red River Watershed Management Board: A joint powers
Water Act. agreement among eight watershed districts on the Minnesota side. The
왘 U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service: An agency within the Department of board is responsible for funding and advancing projects benefiting the
the Interior that is responsible for conservation, protection and entire basin.
management of fish and wildlife resources, including wetlands. 왘 Fargo-Moorhead Flood Diversion Authority: A nine-member
왘 U.S. Geological Survey: An agency within the Department of the board representing the cities of Fargo, Moorhead and West Fargo, Cass
Interior that provides scientific analysis and data on natural resources, and Clay counties and the Cass County Joint Water Resource District.
including water management. The USGS operates flood gauges and Members decide local decisions regarding ongoing plans to construct a
conducts studies about rivers and waterways. Red River diversion.

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PAGE 4
Retention projects already are
holding back Valley floodwater
A FORUM
COMMUNICATIONS
SPECIAL PROJECT
SUNDAY,
FEBRUARY 26, 2012 By Tom Dennis
Forum Communications Co.
GRAND FORKS – Take a look at
the picture of the retention basin
accompanying this article.
Like what you see?
Let’s hope so, because if you live
in the Red River Valley, then
similar structures likely will be
coming soon to a landscape near
you.
That’s because retaining water in
this way is turning out to be one of
the sharpest and most accurate
arrows in the region’s flood-
fighting quiver. So, the chances are
good that 100 or more of these
structures will be built and will
start retaining and slowly
releasing floodwater in the years to
come.
Fighting valley floods by holding
back water has been talked about
for decades. But over the past 10
Map by Troy Becker years, a few things have changed to
Forum Communications Co. make it more likely that actual
projects will be built.
First, the talk has moved beyond
damming streams and now
encompasses retaining floodwater
on farmland. The picture shows
one such effort: the North Ottawa
Impoundment Project, a man-made
holding pond east of Breckenridge,
Minn.
Snowmelt and other runoff from
the surrounding 75-square-mile
area can be channeled into the
3-square-mile pond and retained.
The structure can hold and then
gradually release 16,000 acre-feet of
water, “enough to reduce peak
flows on the Bois de Sioux River at
Wahpeton/Breckenridge by about 5
percent,” the Bois de Sioux
Watershed District reports.
WATER
Besides holding back runoff, the
man-made lake also serves as a
resting area for migrating
waterfowl. Then when it’s drained,
most of the land still can be
farmed.
Add it up, and you’ve got a cost-
effective flood control method that
helps communities for many miles
downstream, advocates say.
The second change in the
strategy’s favor is that flood-
fighting authorities are starting to
give their blessing. In December, the
Red River Basin Commission
released its list of long-term
recommendations to protect valley
metro areas to the level of a 500-
year flood and smaller communities
to the 200-year flood level.
Along with the Fargo-Moorhead
diversion, the strategy of retaining
water came out on top: “A 20
FOR
percent reduction of peak flows
along the main stem of the Red
River for a flood of similar
magnitude to the 1997 flood … was
Sound water management requires
good understanding of the weather
POLICY
The National Weather Service
spring flood outlooks this year
have cast an encouraging light on
flood mitigation projects
throughout the Red River Basin.
Yes, it is actually possible that
the Red River might not flood this
spring. Three years of annual
flooding has left many of us with
the mindset that it always floods in
spring. It does not.
From 12,000 to 8,000 years ago,
the Red River Valley and the Devils
Lake Basin were a small part of a
huge lake covering eastern North
Dakota, northwestern Minnesota,
along with vast portions of
Ontario, Manitoba and
Saskatchewan. It had a surface
area greater than all of today’s
Great Lakes combined.
When Lake Agassiz partially
drained to the south, it cut the
river valleys currently occupied by
the Minnesota and Mississippi
MAKING
rivers. When it partially drained to
the east, the introduction of so
much fresh water into the north
Atlantic disrupted the flow of the
Gulf Stream and caused a
thousand-year-long return to near
glacial conditions around the
SECTION 5
world.
Eight thousand years ago is an
eternity when compared to a
human life. But it is insignificant
when compared to 65 million years
ago, when the dinosaurs became
extinct, or 4½ billion years ago,
when Earth formed. In geological
time, the Red River Valley and
Devils Lake are brand-spanking-
new.
Those of us who have lost homes
to the current high-water phase of
the region may find little solace in
this knowledge, but the fact
remains that the years of one
human life are nowhere near
enough to make any sensible
judgments about what sort of
water levels are “normal.”
People talk about water “never
being this high before” as if it were
a significant observation. But the
Part of the North Ottawa Impoundment Project, which stores excess runoff and so helps control
flooding over a 75-square-mile area. It’s located in west-central Minnesota.
“Congressman Peterson strongly
encouraged the Red River Retention
Authority to get projects ready to go so as
they may be able to access more than
$50 million per year, provided there are
good projects ready to go.”
Note in the minutes of the Jan. 10 meeting of the Red River Retention Authority potential for $228 million to be
deemed both 1) achievable and 2)
effective in reducing flood levels on capable of retaining more than
both the tributaries and main
stem,” the study concluded.
So, “over the next 20 to 25 years,
Minnesota and North Dakota
should support increasing
protection to a 500-year flood level
for Grand Forks-East Grand Forks
by improving the cities’ current
200- to 250-year protection with
upstream retention that achieves
the potential minimum 20 percent
flow reduction on the Red River
main stem at Grand Forks.”
That’s the kind of official
endorsement that starts to get
things done.
The third change that works in
retention’s favor is the ascendancy Department funding. The list also
of Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., to includes such notable water bodies and the lineup of circumstances
leadership on the U.S. House
Agriculture Committee.
Peterson strongly supports the
basin commission’s broad goal,
John
WHEELER
The WDAY and
WDAZ chief
meteorologist earned
his degree at Iowa
State University
floods in 2011, 2010, 2009, 1997, etc.,
are likely quite insignificant when
a grander scale is considered.
How high could the water
conceivably go? Devils Lake is
only a few feet from overflowing
into the Sheyenne River,
something it has done at least
twice in the past 4,000 years. Devils
Lake stops rising when it flows
into the Sheyenne, but flooding
increases significantly
downstream in places like Valley
City, Lisbon, Fargo, Grand Forks
and Winnipeg.
For these downstream locations,
not only is there Devils Lake water
to contend with, but the size of the
river’s watershed will have
increased by the size of the Devils
Lake Basin. Precipitation falling
on Churchs Ferry could cause a
rise on the Red.
This grander scale also has a
reverse side. The 1930s turned the
Great Plains into the Dust Bowl.
Since then, droughts have come
occasionally but only a year or two
at a time. The geological record
ensures us that multiyear
droughts will come again. In the
distant past, there have even been
mega-droughts lasting 50 to 100
years. The great civilizations of
the Mayans and the cliff-dwelling
people of the American Southwest
may have been done in by one of
these long-term droughts.
When it comes to water resource
management, we have always had
a tendency to react to the current
problem. Garrison Dam, which
created Lake Sakakawea, was
built in the 1940s to solve the
problem of flooding on the
which is to render the valley
1 million acre-feet of water in
times of flood.
SASKATCHEWAN (Retaining
1.5 million acre-feet of water is
what’s needed to reduce theMANITOBA
Red
River’s 1997-sized flow by 20
percent, the commission
concluded. That would have been
enough to prevent the 1997 Grand
Forks-East Grand Forks flood.)
And Peterson’s Ag Committee
status means he can help secure
funding for the retention plans.
That process is well under way:
Two years ago, Peterson got the
Red River Valley onto a list of
priority conservation areas that
qualify for Agriculture
as Puget Sound and the
Chesapeake Bay; and to make a
long story short, the upcoming
farm bill is likely to make available
SASKATCHEWAN
MANITOBA
Lake Agassiz
Missouri as well as to provide a
solution to the water shortages
across North Dakota experienced
during the 1930s.
But the promise of bringing
Missouri River water to eastern
North Dakota has never been
fulfilled, in part because of
numerous, legitimate
environmental concerns. But the
absence of any long-term drought
since the 1930s has certainly
shifted public and political
concern away from the problem.
A more environmentally friendly
plan to deliver Missouri water to
the Red River Valley by means of a
pipeline began to gain momentum
in the mid 2000s, but the flood of
2009 diverted our attention.
Now, Fargo-Moorhead leaders
are hopeful that a massive
diversion channel can be built.
Bois de Sioux Watershed District
money for retention projects in the
valley.
Here’s a note from the minutes of
the Jan. 10 meeting of the Red
River Retention Authority, at
which Peterson spoke:
“The message to the Board was
that the Farm Bill will be approved
at some point and there is the
available in Fiscal Year 2013
(October 1, 2012).
“Congressman Peterson strongly
encouraged the Red River
Retention Authority to get projects
ready to go so as they may be able
to access more than $50 million per
year, provided there are good
projects ready to go.”
In an interview, Peterson
repeated that analysis and said,
“The money is going to be there
this year. If there’s anything to
worry about, it’s that there aren’t
going to be enough projects for us
to use it on.”
Building the full 1.5 million acre-
feet retention capacity ONTARIO likely will
cost about $1.5 billion, the Red
River Basin Commission reported.
That’s a lot of money, but given a
timeline that’s measured in years
described above, it’s not an
impossible dream.
Tom Dennis is the opinion editor
for the Grand Forks Herald.
ONTARIO
Legitimate controversy exists over
where to divert the water to, but
ultimately the project may have
more trouble maintaining its
momentum should the fickle
nature of our climate shift back to
drought.
Both drought and flood are hard
realities of life here in the Red
River and Devils Lake basins. The
problem is, they reach extreme
proportion only occasionally,
giving us time to forget.
Realistically, there is probably not
much we can do if it stops raining
for 40 years, or it rains for 40 days
and 40 nights.
We cannot be prepared for
everything. But better, reasonable
management of our water systems
will require that we develop a
much wider view of how our
weather can change.

The Red River drops an average of just 2.37 feet per mile in the United States, leaving very little natural boundaries during floods.
Red River Basin plan
comes at a hefty cost
Divided jurisdictions complicate political geography of Valley
By Patrick Springer
Forum Communications Co.
FARGO – The geography of the
Red River Basin, as water-weary
residents know all too well, seems
diabolically designed to flood.
The ancient glacial lakebed
forming the Red River Valley is so
flat that the river’s gradient as it
winds its way north averages a
drop of 2.37 feet per mile, a slope
that diminishes to a mere 0.2 feet
at the Canadian border.
If anything, the political
geography is even more
complicated, with three states, one
Canadian province and two
national governments to sort out
jurisdiction.
The dual complexities of
physical and political landscape
have added to the difficulty of
finding a consensus for long-term
management of the feisty Red,
especially in the controversial
area of flood control.
But now, after a decade of study
and deliberation, there is a
comprehensive plan.
The advisory Red River Basin
Commission has put forward a
framework offering long-term
flood solutions. The blueprint
comes with a price tag of
$4.6 billion, an estimate that
includes $1.77 billion for a
proposed diversion channel to
protect Fargo-Moorhead. The plan
assumes federal funding totaling
almost $1.7 billion.
Michael Vosburg / Forum Communications Co.
PAGE 5
A FORUM
COMMUNICATIONS
SPECIAL PROJECT
SUNDAY,
FEBRUARY 26, 2012
“We’ve become friends, and friends don’t hurt Dan Wilkens of Fertile, Minn., a
former chairman of the Red River
friends. But there’s so many players. You’ll have Basin Commission and a veteran
to get money out of St. Paul and Bismarck, and of water management in
Minnesota, agrees with Yohe that
you’ll need federal money, so now you have implementation will take time to
to convince the whole country.” achieve.
Dan Wilkins, former chairman of the Red River Basin Commission “This is the local people,
basically, speaking about what
they see the needs are,” he says of
the plan. “I think that’s what the
“This is really a 50-year plan,” legislatures of North Dakota and legislators want. I’d be shocked to
says Lance Yohe, executive Minnesota for consideration. death if it wasn’t well-received. Of
director of the Red River Basin It calls for increasing protection course, in the water world there
Commission, acknowledging that levels for Fargo-Moorhead and are always surprises.”
it would take years and even Grand Forks-East Grand Forks to Wilkens, who has managed
decades to fully implement. 500-year floods, with 200-year flood Minnesota’s Sandhill water
A significant portion of the plan protection recommended for many district, traces his involvement in
is devoted to temporarily storing other communities, including water management to 1974 – just
water to reduce the severity of Wahpeton-Breckenridge. before the 1975 Red River flood
flooding. By comparison, Fargo and triggered the “dike wars” between
The plan calls for storing the Moorhead lack protection against Minnesota and North Dakota.
equivalent of 1.5 million acre-feet a 100-year flood, although both In the years since, water officials
of water south of the Canadian cities have plans to reach that goal throughout the basin have gotten
border to ensure a 20 percent in the near future, and Grand to know each other and have
reduction in peak flows – enough Forks-East Grand Forks has flood shifted from confrontation to
to reduce the 1997 flood in Fargo by protection rated at 250-year floods. cooperation, he says.
2 feet. The commission’s “We’ve become friends,” Wilkens
“That’s a target to move toward,” comprehensive plan comes a adds, “and friends don’t hurt
Yohe says. Once again, he decade after the group was formed friends. But there’s so many
acknowledges that it will take time as a vehicle to forge a basinwide players. You’ll have to get money
to reach that goal. consensus for water management. out of St. Paul and Bismarck, and
If implemented, the “There’s a lot more awareness of you’ll need federal money, so now
comprehensive plan would prevent what’s going on in the basin,” Yohe you have to convince the whole
significant damage from flooding – says. “Some of that’s been driven country.”
between $10.2 billion and by the floods.” That’s an effort that’s apt to take
$12.8 billion in the basin for a The plan is purely a decades. “You’re talking a huge,
single 500-year flood. recommendation, not binding, and huge undertaking,” Wilkens says.
The commission plan will be will have to be taken up by Patrick Springer reports
presented to the governors and lawmakers and governors. for The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead.
“ North Dakota is blessed with abundant
resources. We need thoughtful planning
p g
to protect our communities andd
build critical infrastructure.”
–Pam Gulleson www pamgulleson c
www.pamgulleson.com
Paid for by Pam Gulleson for North Dakota
R001678909
 LESSONS
PAGE 6
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FEBRUARY 26, 2012
WE’VE LEARNED
WATER
Volunteers work six rows of sand in the Fargodome while filling sandbags in 2009. Improved forecasting of crest levels has helped
area cities gather flood-fighting resources in a timely matter.
Improved flood forecasting keeps cities ahead of the game
By Patrick Springer
Forum Communications Co.
FARGO – You might say that
hard-won wisdom acquired from
fighting floods flows downstream.
That’s a way of saying the record
2009 Red River flood in Fargo drew
upon lessons learned in the 1997
flood that devastated Grand Forks-
East Grand Forks.
In turn, the lessons learned in
Fargo in 2009 and 1997 helped
Bismarck fight the historic 2011
Missouri River flood.
The Red River Valley, in fact, has
FOR
become a veritable flood-fighting
laboratory. Experience has stacked
up like sandbags.
Take flood forecasting, which
provides the essential intelligence
for tactical flood fighters in the
field.
Crest forecasts for the
cantankerous Red River were
significantly changed following
the 1997 flood that devastated
Grand Forks-East Grand Forks.
The changes are so significant
that hydrologist Andrea Holz
POLICY
regards the forecasting reports
that were the norm before that
watershed event 15 years ago as
from another era.
In the past, the weather service
flood forecast consisted of two
predicted flood crests – one
assuming a spring melt with no
further precipitation and another
assuming normal precipitation.
Besides failing to account for
above-normal precipitation – a
common element of floods – the
problem with the old forecasts was
that officials and property owners
tended to regard the two
predictions as firm numbers.
In the case of the 1997 Grand
Forks flood, the crest forecast
range ran from 47.5 feet to 49 feet –
well below the record peak of 54.35
feet.
Following that disaster, which
flooded much of the city of Grand
Forks and most of East Grand
MAKING
Forks, the weather service started
SECTION 5
Sandbags are stored on pallets and readied for delivery during the sandbag production operation in 2009 at the Fargodome.
using forecasts with a range of
possible crests, each carrying a
probability of occurring.
So-called “probabilistic
forecasts,” which are issued before
water starts moving and
hydrologists can make an actual
crest forecast, convey to the public
the uncertainties that plague
forecasters.
“In the olden days, which is what
we call them now, it was just these
two numbers, and people put a lot
of stock in those two numbers,”
Holz says.
“Now it’s 60 numbers,” she adds.
That’s a reference to the 60 years of
detailed flooding data built into
Red River flood forecasts,
reflecting the full range of
recorded possibilities.
The switch to “probabilistic”
forecasts gave flood fighters an
early warning that a major flood
was on its way. But the forecasts
kept ratcheting up dramatically,
and hydrologists since have been
working to refine their
predictions.
Now the weather service’s river
forecast center has the ability to
run a forecast model developed by
the Army Corps of Engineers
along with its own model.
That helps to provide a more
detailed picture of how water
flows over the landscape, better
allowing flood fighters to pinpoint
problem areas, Holz says.
Every flood is different, as the
saying goes, and every flood
provides a new set of lessons.
The jarring necessity of
suddenly having to fight a record
flood forces communities to
identify vulnerable areas.
The Bismarck-Mandan area
provides a case in point. The cities
learned some lessons last summer
when residents found themselves
battling a record flood on the
Missouri River.
Long accustomed to the
protection provided by Garrison
Dam, residents of areas that never
had flooded since the dam was
built in the 1950s suddenly had a
flood battle on their hands.
Fargo officials lent a hand and
shared their expertise.
The city sent sandbags as well as
machines to make sandbags, and
sent along public works staff to
help operate the “spider” bagging
machines, as well as provide
advice about placement.
“Certainly that was a great
assistance,” says Jeff Heintz,
public works operations director
for the city of Bismarck. “They’ve
done it so many times in recent
years they’ve really got it down.”
A consulting engineering firm is
helping Bismarck to develop a
flood-fighting plan. It will be ready
in time for next spring, in case it’s
needed.
“I think we have a good idea now
where we’d have to move those
resources in the future,” Heintz
says.
One lesson Bismarck is learning
from Fargo and Moorhead that it
can apply to the next flood fight:
It’s better to work together, as
neighbors, on mutual flood
protection rather than erecting
individual defenses.
“I think the people in Bismarck
are seeing that,” Heintz says. That
was a lesson two of his own
children, who attended college in
Fargo and Moorhead, brought
home.
Bismarck learned other lessons
as well, such as making sure that
storm sewer outlets are covered to
prevent floodwater from backing
up into the city.
“The guys who came out from
Fargo were a lot of help,” Heintz
says. “If this ever happens again,
we’ll be able to provide a lot more
confidence for residents.”
Public safety and emergency
management officials all follow the
same protocols for managing
disasters.
The system originated in
California, where firefighters had
Dave Wallis / Forum Communications Co.
to battle major wildfires, and was
extended to fighting tornadoes,
hurricanes, blizzards and floods,
Greg Gust, a weather service
meteorologist says.
In the same fashion, other areas
of North Dakota and Minnesota
have looked to the Red River Valley
for advice and models in fighting
floods, he says.
“In a practical sense, it’s real
people having real experience,”
Gust adds. “The result is, they
know who to call for help.”
Long-term probabilistic
forecasts aren’t yet available for
the Missouri River, but
hydrologists are working on
making them available, probably
between 2015 and 2020.
The project is intricate because
it involves getting a better handle
on inflows to the six dam
reservoirs, and taking into account
complex dam operations.
Fargo-Moorhead has all sorts of
flood-fighting experience but still
is working to improve its
protection. The cities are working
to build defenses for a 100-year
flood as interim protection against
the 500-year solution a diversion
channel would provide.
“The thing that keeps lurking
out there is having a flood level
that would exceed the 2009 flood,”
says Fargo Mayor Dennis Walaker.
“That would be very, very difficult.
But that’s where we’re trying to
get.”
One of the biggest lessons comes
from watching the devastation that
occurs in places that lose a flood
fight.
Grand Forks-East Grand Forks
took years to rebound from the
1997 flood, and Minot will take
years to recuperate, Gust says.
“Certainly they learned that you
don’t want to lose the fight,” he
adds. “The human impact, the
economic impact – it takes a long
time to recover.”
Patrick Springer reports
for The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead.
David Samson / Forum Communications Co.

The Lake Darling dam in the Upper Souris National Wildlife Refuge near Minot, N.D.
Inadequate tools,
faulty assumptions
By Tu-Uyen Tran
Forum Communications Co.
LAKE DARLING DAM,
N.D. – The 5 to 7 inches of
rain that fell over vast
plains of southern
Saskatchewan and
concentrated in the tiny
Souris River last summer
was the cause of the worst
flood the Minot area had
ever seen.
A quarter of the
population of the state’s
fourth-largest city
evacuated, and thousands
of properties were
damaged.
In Kelly Hogan’s mind,
though, it might have been
a whole lot worse.
“What if 5 to 7 inches hit
Kenmare? It would’ve all
come down the Des Lacs,”
he said as he gave a tour of
the dam on a sunny day last
August, less than two
months after the flood.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife
manager oversees the
wildlife refuge complex
that includes this dam on
the Souris River, the last in
a series of dams up and
down the basin that serves
as the Minot area’s flood
protection system.
Kenmare is west of here
on the Des Lacs River,
which drains into the
Souris downstream of all
the dams but just upstream
of Minot. What Hogan
meant is, if torrential rain
had fallen there and not in
Canada, none of it
would’ve been held back by
dams and all of it would’ve
poured into Minot.
That happened in
summer 2009, though there
wasn’t quite as much rain.
Lake Darling was low
because the spring runoff
that year didn’t amount to
much, Hogan said. There
was plenty of flood storage
available, he said, but it
wasn’t used at all.
“It’s not how much rain
falls but where the rain
falls,” he said. “It all plays
into how predictable the
situation is – or is not, I
guess I should say.”
But rain is now
considered as much a
threat as spring snowmelt,
the cause of most floods
throughout the basin’s
history. So as unpredictable
as rain can be, the state of
North Dakota is working
with the province of
Saskatchewan to work it
into the operations of the
basin’s flood protection
system.
It’s also mulling the
buildup of existing dams,
including Lake Darling
Dam and the dam on the
Des Lacs, and a dike system
in the Minot area. Just
about every option that
could be on the table
appears to be on the table to
prevent what happened in
2011 from happening again.
Making sacrifices
A big push now is in
Saskatchewan.
Gov. Jack Dalrymple and
Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D.,
were there a few weeks ago
to talk with Premier Brad
Wall, and they came away
with a general agreement
on a few key issues.
One of those key issues is
the inclusion of rainfall in
the operating plan of
Rafferty and Alameda dams
in Saskatchewan. The plan
now calls for the dams to
reduce the water they hold
to account for snowmelt in
the spring but not so much
for rain in the summer.
North Dakota and
Saskatchewan officials also
agreed to study increasing
the flow of water released
from the dams, provide
real-time data from rain
gauges in Saskatchewan
and, in general, be more
“flexible and aggressive”
during flood events, said
Jeff Zent, Dalrymple’s
spokesman.
The problem last summer
was the dams had been
drawn down to deal with a
big snowmelt, but they
weren’t drawn down
enough for the torrential
rain that fell. Simply put,
the amount of rain that
flowed into the dams was
many times more than they
could contain.
Changing the plan,
though, may require the
United States to make some
sacrifices.
State Engineer Todd
Sando, who will be involved
in the negotiations,
acknowledged that the
unpredictability of rain
will be a challenge to
tackle, especially when the
dams also serve double
duty storing water in case
of droughts.
In other words, if the
dams release water to
prepare for torrential rain
and the rain doesn’t fall or
doesn’t fall where it’s
expected, there will be less
water going into the next
year. And if the next year
is a dry year, and perhaps
the year after that, water
will suddenly become
much more valuable.
Preserving that valuable
resource was the main
reason Saskatchewan built
the dams in the first place.
The 1989 U.S.-Canada
agreement, which the dams
operate under, lays out not
just how the two countries
will fight flooding but also
how they will share water.
Sando said the agreement
already requires the United
States to give up its share of
the water in some
situations. It’s not out of
the question that to get rain
included in the operating
plan, the United States
would have to give up more
water, he said, though that
could bring on other
problems.
Inadequate tools
Kelly Hogan can
appreciate the
capriciousness of rain.
Suppose it rains on a
Friday night on that hill
over there, he said. The
next day, he’s looking at a
Stoughton
SASKATCHEWAN
Rafferty Dam
Estevan
Boundary Dam
Kenmare
Alamo
Stanley
Williston
Williston
Watford City
Watford
rain gauge that says
3 inches, he said, but that’s
still not enough
information to know how
it’ll affect his stretch of the
river.
“I don’t know how
extensive that rain was. I
don’t have a gauge every
square mile,” he said.
“The way I’m going to
know is when that rain
and all the rain around it
hits a point on a stream.
So that may be 24 hours. It
may be, in the case of a
flash flood, six hours.
Depending how much
sinuosity is in a stream, it
may be four to five days.
But you can’t grasp how
that rain really affected an
area until it hits that
gauging station. There
just aren’t enough rain
gauges in the world.”
The situation isn’t much
different in Saskatchewan,
though there are fewer rain
gauges for a given area.
But it’s not rain gauges
that’s really needed there,
according to Doug
Johnson, a Saskatchewan
Watershed Authority
official who oversees
several dams, including the
Souris basin’s Rafferty and
Alameda dams. What’s
needed is better weather
radar.
Weather radar gives
water management
officials a sense of the
water content in a given
cloud formation and if rain
is falling. Rain gauges and
stream flow gauges are
used to calibrate the radar
data so officials can
connect a given radar
pattern with a certain
amount of rainfall.
Johnson said when he
looks at radar images from
the National Weather
Service office in Bismarck,
which doesn’t go very far
in Canada, he sees things
that he can’t see in
Environment Canada’s
radars, such as how much
rain is falling, how hard
it’s falling and how much
has fallen.
In Canada, he said, a lot
Christian Randolph / Forum Communications Co.
Alameda Dam
Westhope
Westhope
Lake
Darling
Dam
Burlington
Minot
Sawyer
of that has to be figured
out manually, and it’s a
huge amount of
information to calculate
during a flood emergency.
The system has worked out
fine for years when
summer rains weren’t so
threatening, he said.
Ready for summer
But changing the dams’
operating plan won’t really
be enough to fend off
another flood of the same
magnitude as summer 2011.
Hogan said there was
enough water to fill Lake
Darling 10 times, while
Johnson said Rafferty Dam,
which has the largest
reservoir of all the dams,
would’ve filled two to three
times.
And the dams would’ve
had to be empty to start
with.
Sando, like other water
management officials
involved in the flood fight,
PAGE 7
A FORUM
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SUNDAY,
FEBRUARY 26, 2012
said that with the dams as Map by Troy Becker
they are, the flood was Forum Communications Co.
inevitable. “Everything was
done that could possibly be
done.”
He said changes to the
operating plan would be
more useful for fighting
major floods that are not as
big as the one in 2011.
To fight the really big
one, the state is at work
designing a massive system
of dikes and diversion for
the Minot area. It’s also
mulling a larger flood
control system for the
entire North Dakota
portion of the Souris basin
and adding capacity to
various dams in the basin.
Sando said there have
been very early discussions
about raising the Rafferty,
Alameda, Lake Darling and
Boundary dams, and there
could be talk of raising the
dam on the Des Lacs as well.
Boundary Dam is on
Long Creek, a tributary of
the Souris, but its storage is
mostly dedicated to the
SaskPower power plant
there.
But Sando said all of that
could take a long time.
Changes to the operating
plan, for example, must
include not just the state
and provincial
governments but federal
agencies in both countries,
he said. “I can see it taking
years to make some of
those changes.”
In the meantime, he said,
officials will simply have to
do what they can to make
more room in the reservoirs
in case of rain. The goal
this year, he said, is to have
maximum flood storage
available before the start of
this summer, something
flood fighters didn’t have in
summer 2011.
Tu-Uyen Tran reports
for the Grand Forks Herald.
Empowering communities to develop
funding and planning strategies to
enhance water quality.
kljeng.com 800 213 3860
 By Patrick Springer
PAGE 8
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BISMARCK – Carolyn and
Thomas Hesford never imagined
their rural home in a subdivision a
mile from the Missouri River
would have fish swimming in the
SPECIAL PROJECT
yard.
The couple had lived in the two-
SUNDAY,
story house near the Prairie Rose
FEBRUARY 26, 2012
School for 30 years and never really
worried about flooding.
That changed abruptly during
the historic flood of 2011, when the
crawl space of their house got wet
in spite of a temporary dike that
surrounded the house.
“We were told we would only
have to worry if Garrison Dam
broke,” Carolyn Hesford says,
referring to the dam 75 miles
upstream of Bismarck on the
Missouri.
In fact, dam operators were
forced to release massive volumes
of water – confronting runoff
2½ times normal – to avoid a
possible dam failure.
“It’s unbelievable,” she says,
recalling her reaction to learning
that mammoth Garrison, the
world’s fifth-largest earthen dam,
had been humbled by a flood.
That sense of disbelief appeared
widespread, among homeowners
and officials alike, as decades of
safe protection bred a false sense of
security in the system of six dams
controlling the Missouri River.
An expert panel that reviewed
the Army Corps of Engineers’
management of the historic flood
concluded that the dams’ operators
followed proper procedures, and
that the resulting damage was
largely unavoidable given the
flood’s unprecedented magnitude.
But the experts warned that
climate extremes, which have
increased in frequency and
severity in recent decades, could
pose greater challenges in safely
managing the river in the future.
Strikingly, the chain of six
reservoirs, including North
Dakota’s Lake Sakakawea, reached
their record low levels when they
WATER
dwindled to less than half-capacity
at the peak of a prolonged drought
less than five years before their
record high in the 2011 flood.
Although corps officials
correctly followed the so-called
master manual that governs the
dams’ operations, the expert panel
recommended improvements to try
to avoid a repeat of the 2011
disaster, which caused an
estimated $2 billion in damage.
Many critics, including state and
local officials in Bismarck-
Mandan, said the corps could have
prevented some damage by acting
sooner to release water.
But the panel disagreed,
concluding the corps could not
have foreseen the flood’s severity
in time to prevent damage.
“In summary,” the report said,
“the Corps could have reduced the
FOR
impact of the flood with more
storage and higher releases before
the flood, but these actions carried
risks and consequences that did
not seem appropriate to the Corps
at the time they were required.”
Given the delicate balancing act
the corps must negotiate, operating
the dams to juggle uses as
disparate as flood control,
downstream barge navigation and
hydropower, the review panel said
better runoff forecasts are critical.
Record heavy spring rains that
POLICY
drenched a widespread area
including much of Montana and
the western Dakotas, following
above-normal mountain snowpack,
created runoff that was simply too
large for the dams to handle.
But dam managers were
hampered by inadequate
information measuring the
moisture contained in the vast
snow cover over the northern
plains in the Missouri River Basin,
the experts found.
Better runoff forecasting, the
report said, would require a
strengthened “data
infrastructure,” with more stations
reporting snowpack depth and soil
moisture. It could tap a
collaborative network of volunteer
weather observers.
Still, the science of predicting
precipitation amounts remains
very limited, the experts noted,
with accurate forecasts restricted
MAKING
to a range of five to eight days out –
a limitation dam managers must
cope with.
Also, the corps should work to
improve its communications with
the public as well as state and local
officials so they can better prepare
SECTION 5
a coordinated response to floods,
the experts said.
Jody Farhat, an engineer who
manages the six dams from a
control center in Omaha, Neb.,
welcomed the report’s
recommendations.
“We’ve been trying to improve
our collection of snowpack data,”
she says. “We have reached out and
tried to find data. We worked very
hard to make sure all of us have
the data.”
Once the 2011 flood was clearly
on its way, following the heavy
spring rains experts said were
impossible to predict, the corps
held regular telephone conferences
with officials and established a
center to quickly disseminate
information, she says.
The corps should consider
revising its master manual, a
Victims
of their
success
A sign designating private property is submerged May 23, 2011,
in the Missouri River near the Fox Island boat launch in
Bismarck.
Corps must juggle
conflicting interests
to manage reservoirs
guidance document that is both
very detailed yet allows a great
deal of flexibility for dam
managers to adapt to changing
circumstances, the review panel
recommended.
Special consideration should be
given to shifting its procedures to
reflect unusually wet or dry
periods that inevitably occur in the
Missouri River Basin, the experts
said.
The current master manual, first
written in the 1960s and refined in
the 1970s, had its last major
revision in 2004 – culminating a
review process that stretched 14
years and cost $33 million – in
response to the dam system’s first
major drought in 1989, which was
exceeded by the drought of the
early 2000s.
The master manual was last
updated in 2006, to allow for a
“spring pulse” – dam releases to
mimic spring floods that naturally
occurred on the Missouri River
that are beneficial for the pallid
sturgeon, an endangered fish
species.
The current master manual is
based 80 percent on the historical
record of river conditions, with a
10 percent allowance for unusually
dry periods, and 10 percent for
unusually wet conditions.
“I think the master manual does
have a great deal of flexibility,”
“In reality, the Corps of Engineers has tried
to dissuade development of floodplains and
have gotten pushback from local officials.
It is, quite frankly, unfortunate.”
Jody Farhat, engineer who manages six dams from Omaha, Neb.
Associated Press
Farhat says. “We also have the
ability to deviate from the master
manual.”
Still, she adds, a revision could
be in order to incorporate lessons
learned. “It can be done. It doesn’t
have to take 14 years and cost
$33 million.”
Engineers calculate that the
system of reservoirs would have to
be enlarged by 4.6 million acre-feet
of water storage – an area of water
sprawling 4.6 million acres with a
depth of one foot – to handle a flood
of the magnitude of the one in
2011.
Accomplishing that, Farhat says,
would mean raising the upper
three dams, the system’s largest
reservoirs, by 6 feet, a step nobody
has advocated.
Or, the three reservoirs,
including Lake Sakakawea, would
have had to be drawn down
another 6 feet – a step that would
have hindered hydropower, among
other uses, and made the system
vulnerable if the climate had
shifted to a drought instead of a
flood.
Floodplain construction
In some ways the Missouri River
dams are victims of their own
success.
Their long record of successfully
controlling floods, coupled with an
extended period of normal or dry
climate conditions, helped spur a
building boom along the river
bottomland surrounding Bismarck
and Mandan.
“Floodplain construction during
the past 25 years is of concern,”
the expert report said. “Damage
expected to be very high with
higher project (dam) releases.”
Development of the low-lying
areas, which are attractive because
they are close to the river and
wooded, poses problems that are
both obvious and not readily
apparent.
Property in the floodplain, unless
protected by levees, obviously is
vulnerable to damage from
flooding.
More subtly, development in the
flood-prone areas constrains the
volume of water operators can
release from Garrison Dam during
certain periods.
The capacity of releases, which
once flowed periodically at 90,000
cubic feet per second, have dropped
to about 50,000 cubic feet per
second.
That’s because the most
vulnerable areas to flooding,
including the Fox Island area just
south of Bismarck, can sustain
minor damage beginning at flows
of 59,000 cubic feet per second.
Peak flows during the 2011 flood,
by contrast, at times exceeded
150,000 cubic feet per second, more
than twice the threshold for minor
damage in the most vulnerable
areas.
Army Corps of Engineers
officials say they have warned local
officials for years of their concerns
about development in the
floodplain of Bismarck-Mandan.
A symposium about Missouri
River management held in
Bismarck in 2000, for instance,
included a floodplain management
presentation by a high-ranking
corps engineer who warned that
the corps can’t guarantee the dams
could protect vulnerable areas in a
high-magnitude flood.
“The ability of the system to
prevent flood damage can be
compromised by additional
development in floodplains along
the main stem,” a synopsis of the
presentation by Lawrence Cieslik
said. “The federal government does
not hold the power to control land
use.”
That authority, he noted, rests
with state and especially local
governments.
Jody Farhat says the corps’
warnings have largely gone
unheeded.
“In reality, the Corps of
Engineers has tried to dissuade
development of floodplains and
have gotten pushback from local
officials,” she says. “It is, quite
frankly, unfortunate.”
So far, Burleigh County, which is
more prone to flooding than
Morton County, is focusing more on
beefing up flood protection than
restricting floodplain development.
Burleigh County commissioners
have approved a master plan with
38 flood protection projects
carrying an estimated total price
tag of $30 million that would take
three years to design and build. The
projects would protect against a
100-year flood; the 2011 flood was
considered a 500-year flood.
“We’ve had a huge amount of
growth along the river,” says
Marcus Hall, the Burleigh County
engineer and prime author of the
flood-control plan. “A lot of us were
kind of in a false sense of security.”
Also, he adds, zoning officials
have been reluctant to interfere
with the wishes of developers and
homeowners.
“Property rights here are a huge
issue,” Hall says.
Those who choose to build a
home or other property in the
floodplain have to share the
responsibility, Farhat and other
corps officials say. Living along a
river bottom inevitably carries
risks.
“For folks in this basin, that is a
lesson that not only the corps
learned but a lot of other people
learned in 2011,” she says. Her
advice for those in the floodplain:
buy flood insurance.
Worries for 2012
Carolyn and Thomas Hesford
actually had flood insurance
coverage, even though their house
is a mile from the Missouri River.
Floodwaters forced them to
evacuate their home on June 3, and
they were unable to return to
inspect for damage and retrieve
items until Labor Day weekend.
The retired couple rented an
apartment in Bismarck until they
were able to return to their home
near Prairie Rose School, east of
Fox Island.
As Bismarck-Mandan and other
communities along the Missouri
looked ahead to the spring and
summer of 2012, following a dry fall
and early winter, the corps had
decided not to draw down
reservoirs below their normal
levels. But officials vowed to release
water early and aggressively if
necessary.
Despite those assurances, the
Hesfords decided to keep the
temporary dike around their home,
as a precaution. “It still seems
almost unreal,” Carolyn Hesford
said of the flood months after the
water receded. “It’s surreal.”
Patrick Springer reports
for The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead.
 PAGE 9
A FORUM
COMMUNICATIONS
SPECIAL PROJECT

SUNDAY,
FEBRUARY 26, 2012

BRIDGE At left: The Susquehanna

River as it flows through

OVER TROUBLED WATERS Bradford County, Pa.

Wikimedia Commons

An interstate compact is a powerful tool that stands

ready to be put to Red River or Missouri River use
By Tom Dennis
Forum Communications Co.
Maybe enough dams, dikes and
walls can be built to protect the Red
River Valley against a 500-year
flood. Maybe the Missouri River
governors can issue enough
resolutions to get the job done in
that basin, too.
But if not ...
If not, there is another way.
The time may come when the Red
and/or Missouri basin states need a
stronger, more centralized
authority to make decisions. If that
happens, then residents should
know that not only does the
Constitution authorize just such an
organization but there also are
working examples that successfully
have solved problems for more than
40 years.
The constitutional clause is
Article 1, Section 10, and the
arrangements it authorizes are
“interstate compacts.” Ordinary
compacts are fairly common; North
Dakota, for example, is a member of
at least 21.
But around the country, two river-
basin compacts stand out. The
Susquehanna River and the
Delaware River compacts are
agreements struck between the
states in those rivers’ watersheds
and the federal government. That’s
not unusual.
What is unusual is that the
compacts create river commissions
that have real power.
So, if you’re a natural-gas
company, and you want to frack the
Marcellus Shale, you don’t go to
Pennsylvania or New York for your
water permit. You go to the
Susquehanna River Basin
Commission. The commission
controls all significant withdrawals
from the Susquehanna and its
50,000 miles of streams.
If you have issues with water
quality anywhere between the
river’s source near Cooperstown,
N.Y., and its mouth in the
Chesapeake Bay, don’t take it up
with the three states along the
route. Contact the commission,
which is charged by those states to
“administer, manage, and control
water resources in all matters” that
have a major effect on the region.
And when the Susquehanna
threatens to flood – which it does
often, being one of the most flood-
prone rivers in America – the
commission’s headquarters in
Harrisburg, Pa., becomes flood
forecast and warning central.
Using radar and stream gauges,
the commission monitors the river
and issues flood and flash-flood
warnings, saving an estimated
$32 million in flood damage a year.
Interstate compacts such as the
Susquehanna and Delaware
agreements are much beloved by
political scientists. That’s because
they’re Grade A examples of good
or even great government. They
streamline decision-making while
protecting diverse interests, exactly
as they’re supposed to do.
That said, there’s a reason why
out of all of the river basins in the
country, only those two have such
far-reaching compacts. The reason
is that getting states and the federal
government to vest real power in
an interstate commission is
tremendously difficult.
Could Red and Missouri river
states strike the third and fourth
such agreements?
As of today, the answer probably
is no. For one thing, the various
states are “muddling through” with
arrangements that fall somewhere
short of an interstate compact.
For another, trust in government
is not exactly high these days. So,
the chances of empowering a
centralized, unelected authority to
make real-world decisions seems
remote.
But time will tell. To repeat: If
the current, more loosely organized
arrangements between the states
work, then there’ll be little
pressure to change.
If they don’t work – well, on the
East Coast, such structures didn’t
work in the 1940s and 1950s. And
that’s how both the Susquehanna
and Delaware river commissions
came to be.
Here’s a quick look at the
Susquehanna River Basin Compact
and its role. Remember this
portrait if the Red and Missouri
floodwaters continue to rise, and
the existing management
structures fail. Because that’s when
an interstate compact’s time will
have come.
A rare resort
“No State shall, without the
Consent of Congress … enter into
any Agreement or Compact with
another State.” That’s the
Interstate Compact Clause, and it
has been an influential passage for
225 years.
The clause actually is the
Constitution’s “only authorized
grant to states to work
cooperatively across state lines,”
said Crady deGolian, director of
the National Center for Interstate
Compacts, an arm of the Council of
State Governments.
So, the agreements have been
employed since Colonial days, and
most states now have signed on to
about 25. Minnesota’s include a
Driver License Compact, the
Midwestern Higher Education
Compact and the Great Lakes
Basin Compact, among several
dozen others.
Because so many rivers cross
state lines, compacts involving
rivers rank among the most
common. In fact, “show me a river
basin, and I’ll show you a
compact,” deGolian said.
But compacts that set up
regulatory authorities that cross
state lines remain rare.
Interestingly, one of the earliest
efforts actually tried to strike such
an agreement between Missouri
River states. The concept was new
in the early 1950s, so the draft
Missouri basin agreement was
weak. Even so, “the federal people
would have none of it,” wrote
William Voigt in a 1973 history of
the Susquehanna River compact.
“The huge construction agencies
considered it could lead to
interference in their spending and
building and operating” – and as a
result, the proposal died.
Enter Hurricane Diane, which
“swept across New Jersey and
Pennsylvania and on into New York
state in the summer of 1955,
causing devastating flash flooding
and loss of life,” Voigt writes.
The disaster plus chronic
pollution in the Delaware and
Susquehanna rivers amplified calls
for compacts along those rivers.
Eventually, those compacts wound
up passing the various legislatures,
then Congress, and being signed by
the president.
That summary doesn’t do the
process justice. For the
Susquehanna compact, the reality
was that it took 10 years, and it
involved such epic battles as the
fight against the Constitutional
Party. The ultraconservative party
called the compact a “Communist
constitution” that “suppresses in
power our own state constitution,
our governor and our Legislature,”
and said the compact’s supporters
should be indicted for “aiding and
abetting the Communist cause.”
No indictments followed, and
President Richard Nixon signed the
compact into law on Christmas Eve
in 1970. The Susquehanna River
Basin Commission finished its
year-long 40th anniversary
celebration a few weeks ago.
The commission’s staff now
numbers about 65. That’s up
sharply in recent years, as each
Marcellus Shale rig needs about
4 million gallons of water, and the
commission has to approve all of
those withdrawals.
The four-member commission
counts the governors of
Pennsylvania, New York and
Maryland and the president of the
U.S. or their designees as equal
members. It operates by majority
rule. So, what happens if one
commissioner vehemently
disagrees with the other three?
Conceivably, the courts might
take up the dispute; and if a state
ever felt truly aggrieved, it could
withdraw from the compact. But
the beauty of the agreement is that
it helps avoid such quarrels, said
Susan Obleski, communications
director for the Susquehanna River
Basin Commission.
Indeed, that’s the whole point.
“The commission provides an
administrative mechanism to solve
problems that cross state lines,”
she said.
Decision-makers don’t have to
engage in long-distance dickering
between capitals. Instead, they see
each other and talk every day, and
so build up a working relationship
and high level of trust.
Suggested solutions
In July, the Congressional
Research Service suggested that
Red River Valley states shake
hands over such a compact. “The
status quo is an ad hoc approach
with multiple states each
responding to its own flood
hazards, and the federal
government providing post-
disaster relief assistance,” the CRS
described.
In contrast, a Red River Valley
Interstate Compact Authority could
be “an efficient and cost-effective
approach to handling the high cost
of maintaining dams and levees,
land purchases for water retention,
diversion of the river, and reducing
the time it takes to complete water
management projects.”
Don’t be so sure, said Rep. Collin
Peterson, D-Minn.
The trouble with these high-level
efforts is that they tend to ignore
local interests.
“Sen. Byron Dorgan tried to
create a federal Red River
authority between North Dakota
and Minnesota a few years ago,”
Peterson said. “I opposed that. I
don’t trust the federal government
not to screw this up.”
Then an interstate compact was
proposed, and “I opposed that as
well,” he said.
“There are cultural differences
between Minnesota and North
Dakota that are important here.” In
particular, he said, Minnesota
Troy Becker
agencies such as the Department of Forum Communications Co.
Natural Resources have had such
an environmentalist bent that
involving them in planning often
shuts projects down. (Peterson’s
alternative – the Red River Valley Susquehanna
Retention Authority, which he River
helped create in 2010 – is described
elsewhere in today’s “Living with
Water” section.)
As for the Missouri River, North
Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple
himself in August proposed an D.C.
interstate compact between
Missouri basin states.
In December, Bob Kerrey, former
Nebraska senator and governor,
echoed that call: “Creating a 10-
state Missouri Basin Commission
with real authority would not end
the conflicts (between states),”
Kerrey said. “It would allow
conflicts to be resolved. This is
extremely important to do and next
to impossible under current law.”
But more recently, political
reality has forced Dalrymple to
change his mind.
“What I’ve learned for a really
big river that’s running through a
lot of states and has all the
multiple uses the Missouri has, is
that it (a compact) is probably the
ultimate challenge,” he said.
“What you have working against
you is, first of all, the Corps of
Engineers, which absolutely has no
interest in giving up any of its
authority along that river,”
Dalrymple said. (As mentioned
above, the same dynamic helped
kill a proposed Missouri basin
agreement in 1955.)
Furthermore, “several of the
Missouri River governors don’t
trust any of us upstream and
would immediately view it as a
conspiracy to lessen their power.
So, it would be really tough.”
How tough? States along the
Tennessee River signed a compact
in recent years, Dalrymple said. “I
met the attorney; he said it was a
career project.” In other words,
“it took him his whole legal
career.”
To sum up, don’t expect an
interstate compact to solve Red or
Missouri river problems anytime
soon. But let’s conclude with this
evaluation from the Council of
State Governments: “Interstate
compacts are one of the most
powerful, durable and adaptive
tools for promoting and ensuring
cooperative action among the
states,” a council report declared.
“As one of the oldest mechanisms
available for states to work
together, their use predates the
founding of the nation ... A
distinctly American invention,
interstate compacts promote multi-
state problem solving in the fact of
complex public policy and federal
intervention.”
As time passes in the Red and
Missouri river basins, this wisdom
of that description will grow
harder to ignore.
Tom Dennis is the opinion editor
for the Grand Forks Herald.

PAGE 10
A FORUM
COMMUNICATIONS
SPECIAL PROJECT
SUNDAY,
FEBRUARY 26, 2012
FRONT-LINE
DEFENSE
West Fargo won protection from Sheyenne River flooding
By Kristen M. Daum
WATER
Forum Communications Co.
WEST FARGO – Before the
Sheyenne Diversion was built to
protect communities west and
southwest of Fargo, flooding
plagued residents along the lower
Sheyenne River for decades.
Former West Fargo City
Commissioner Jake Gust
remembers the 1969 and 1975
floods as “especially serious.” One
person died fighting the flood of
1975, and the ’69 event alone cost
about $500,000 in protection and
cleanup efforts.
“Everyone was on board that we
had to do something,” recalled
Gust, who eventually became the
Sheyenne Diversion’s
superintendent after his 26-year
tenure in city office.
Agreeing on what that
“something” might be wasn’t easy,
FOR
but since the Sheyenne Diversion
became operational in 1992, it has
continually protected the booming
suburbs of West Fargo and Horace
from some of the highest floods on
record.
The groundwork
In the late 1960s, Congress
authorized plans to build a dam
near Kindred, which was meant to
provide residents in the lower
Sheyenne River Valley a reprieve
from flood fights.
The project never came to
POLICY
fruition.
Consistent opposition from
affected residents and vocal
concerns from environmentalists
forced numerous delays, only
prompting more impediments to
the project.
Throughout the 1970s, the Army
Corps of Engineers, along with
city and regional officials living
near the Sheyenne River, studied
various alternatives to the
unfavorable dam, according to
Forum archives.
Ultimately, the corps circled
back to a previous consideration:
building a diversion channel
around West Fargo.
The option, first devised in the
1960s, became one of the premier
solutions under review due to its
high return of protection
compared to the cost.
After a wishy-washy few years of
more debate, the corps moved
MAKING
forward in recommending the
diversion project above other
alternatives.
About two-thirds of the city
resided in the 100-year floodplain
in 1985, but a diversion would
SECTION 5
remove the whole city from that
area, providing some of the
highest benefit for flood
protection, according to Forum
archive reports.
In 1986, President Ronald
Reagan approved the $16.3 billion
water bill that included federal
funds toward building the
diversion.
Reagan’s signature cleared the
final major obstacle for West
Fargo officials to begin
construction on the project.
In June 1990, crews broke
ground to build the 6.8-mile
diversion channel and its
accompanying features.
The diversion became
operational in time for the 1992
spring flood, and the project was
deemed finished later that year at
a final cost of $27.8 million.
The Sheyenne River Flood Control Project plaque commemorates
the diversion that was completed in 1992.
“I don’t think you could find anyone in West Fargo
now who would say it was not a good device. There’s
still people that claim it impacts them to the north
and to the south, but there’s no evidence.”
Jake Gust, Sheyenne Diversion superintendent
and former West Fargo city commissioner
Technically speaking
The Sheyenne Diversion is
comprised of two parts: a West
Fargo diversion and a Horace
diversion.
According to Gust:
The Horace diversion, or the
southern leg of the project, diverts
only half the flow of the Sheyenne
into the diversion channel. That
feature kicks in automatically once
the river reaches a certain height.
In comparison, the West Fargo
leg to the north diverts the whole
river flow and is manually
operated by gates and other control
structures.
The project also uses two
pumping stations to keep drainage
water out of the natural river
channel when the West Fargo
diversion is in operation.
Diverting the Sheyenne River
was the favorable alternative to
building only levees throughout
the city, Gust said.
“If we didn’t divert, we would’ve
had to build a dike around the river
in West Fargo quite high,” he said.
“But the diversion allowed us to
solve the problem without any
dikes around the river.”
Disputed security
In its now 20-year history, the
Sheyenne Diversion has yet to fail,
David Samson / Forum Communications Co.
Forum Communications Co.
but the project still isn’t without
dissent from area residents
concerned about the diversion’s
impacts.
“I don’t think you could find
anyone in West Fargo now who
would say it was not a good
device,” Gust said, but added:
“There’s still people that claim it
impacts them to the north and to
the south, but there’s no evidence.”
Each spring during times of
high flood, the cities of West Fargo
and Horace remain protected
thanks to the diversion.
Meanwhile, their neighbors
outside of the channel’s protection
are often inundated by overland
floodwaters because the Sheyenne
River channel is naturally higher
than the surrounding terrain.
But Gust said it’s a fallacy to
blame the diversion for the
overland flooding.
“If I lived out there, I would feel
the same way,” Gust said. “It’s
hard to look at West Fargo high
and dry and then drive a mile over
the diversion and it’s all water. …
But, the same amount of water
that’s flown over them now
would’ve flown over them before
(without the diversion).”
The diversion has undoubtedly
done wonders to benefit West
Fargo, now the fifth-largest city
Michael Vosburg / Forum Communications Co.
in North Dakota.
After West Fargo withstood the
historic flood of 1997, new
residents flocked to the
community, almost doubling the
population to nearly 26,000 people.
When the diversion was built in
the early ’90s, it protected more
than 4,100 properties valued at
about $280 million, according to
the city of West Fargo.
But since 2008, those figures have
jumped to more than 7,000
properties protected, with a total
value of nearly $1.4 billion, and
the growth continues.
Lessons learned
As the cities of Fargo-Moorhead
pursue their own diversion
channel for the metro region, Gust
said he sees striking parallels
between the current struggle and
the journey he made in the 1980s
as a West Fargo commissioner
battling for flood protection.
“It’s on a bigger scale,” Gust said
of the Red River diversion plan. “It
involves a lot more people. …
You’re talking about seven times
as much water or as much as 10
times more water (than the
Sheyenne Diversion).”
But Gust said “there’s no reason
why the Fargo diversion won’t
work and won’t work very well.”
The Red River diversion will also
likely impact West Fargo and its
existing diversion, but corps
officials have said it will provide
even greater protection than the
city sees now.
According to the corps’
feasibility study finished last year,
the Red River diversion would tie
into the Horace part of the
Sheyenne Diversion, replacing and
enhancing protection there.
North of that section, the Red
River diversion would run
alongside the West Fargo leg of the
Sheyenne Diversion, allowing it to
continue diverting Sheyenne River
flows around the city.
In all, the Red River
diversion should help reduce
erosion pressures on the Sheyenne
Diversion by helping channel
larger water flows.
While generally supportive to
the Red River project, West Fargo
officials have voiced concerns
about the planned interference
with the West Fargo diversion and
the prospect of losing access
between the east and west sides of
the half-mile-wide Red River
diversion channel.
But West Fargo’s concerns are
relatively muted in comparison to
the vocal opposition of rural
residents south of the planned Red
River diversion, where a proposed
storage area threatens to flood out
some smaller communities.
Having faced such obstacles with
the Sheyenne project, Gust said
the fate of a Red River diversion is
“going to depend on if the elected
officials have the intestinal
fortitude to stay the course.”
“They need to work like the
dickens to lessen the effects and
make sure it gets done,” Gust said.
“If they weaken, it’s not going to
get done.
“The time to prepare is now,
when you can,” he added. “When
the water’s high and over the
dikes, there’s not much you can
do.”
Kristen Daum reports
for The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead.
 Saving the
Sheyenne
Dottie Werkhoven, wife of Valley City Mayor Bob Werkhoven, looks over the closed section of Main Street as the swollen Sheyenne
River creeps higher during the 2011 flood.
Downstream interests worry about the fate of their river
By Kristen M. Daum
Forum Communications Co.
VALLEY CITY, N.D. – Residents
in this area don’t disagree that
something needs to be done about
Devils Lake, but many remain
concerned about the unforeseen
impacts that the chosen solution
might inflict on the Sheyenne
River Valley.
In 2005, North Dakota water
officials began operating a man-
made outlet on Devils Lake’s west
end that empties water into the
nearby Sheyenne. Construction
on a second, larger outlet from the
lake’s east end should be complete
by sometime this summer.
Together, the outlets are capable
of releasing 600 cubic feet of
water per second into the nearby
Sheyenne, which typically flows
at capacity of 2,400 cfs in the
Valley City area.
The extra water ushered
downstream through cities, like
Valley City, Lisbon, Kindred, West
Fargo and Fargo, has some
communities on edge.
Residents, such as those
supporting the “People to Save the
Sheyenne” group, fear Devils
Lake water will not only
contaminate the Sheyenne’s
pristine quality but will also
exacerbate the river basin’s own
flood challenges by adding more
pressure to the system.
“It’s not a simple problem to
find a solution to,” Valley City
resident Sharon Buhr said. “We’re
all going to be hurt in some way.”
F-M diversion project a work in progress
By Kristen M. Daum
kdaum@forumcomm.com
FARGO – Even before the
historic flood of 2009, Fargo-
Moorhead residents knew they
needed a permanent solution to
the area’s flood problems.
The record-level events of 2009,
2010 and 2011 only solidified that
consensus, and community leaders
continue making strides this year
to make that dream a reality.
But the plans to build a
$1.78 billion Red River diversion
don’t come without significant
obstacles: federal red tape,
passionate opposition and
undetermined funding sources, to
name a few.
After working with the U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers for
three years on a feasibility study,
Fargo-Moorhead officials are
moving forward on their chosen
plan to build a 35-mile-long, half-
mile-wide diversion channel.
Of first concern, though: The
channel by itself would’ve created
consequences on the Red River
north of Fargo-Moorhead all the
way to Canada.
So, to prevent an international
dispute, corps engineers designed
elements to the project that would
shift the impacts upstream.
The corps proposes a 200,000-
acre-feet storage area that they say
The Devils Lake Basin is
naturally separate from the
Sheyenne, but historic evidence
shows the two bodies of water
have interacted in the past.
According to the State Water
Commission, Devils Lake
naturally spills into the Sheyenne
River Valley once it reaches an
elevation of 1,458 feet.
The lake has overflowed into the
Sheyenne and Red Rivers at least
twice during the past 4,000 years,
the commission states.
The most recent overflow into
the Sheyenne happened less than
2,000 years ago, still long before
modern-day communities
established their roots in North
Dakota.
In June 2011, the lake hit a
record level of 1,454.4 feet, and
state water officials hope the
continued releases from the lake
can avert an uncontrolled
disaster.
But downstream, some residents
don’t feel like state officials have
listened to their concerns or
suggestions of a solution to
reduce Devils Lake’s bulging
levels.
Valley City resident Jim Stevens
said he doesn’t trust the Army
Corps of Engineers, the North
Dakota State Water Commission
or elected politicians, all of whom
have had a hand in the crafting of
the chosen solution.
Stevens and some of his
neighbors believe the State Water
Commission cut corners and
would be used to hold back excess
water only in times of severe
flooding.
But the corps’ solution sparked a
slew of new complications for the
project, including the potential to
destroy whole communities south
of Fargo-Moorhead.
The upstream storage area could
hold as much as 8 feet of water in
some places, which would require
towns like Oxbow and Hickson to
be bought out completely.
That prospect has hundreds of
rural residents clamoring for
changes to the project, as they
foresee a not-so-distant future
when their livelihoods could be
uprooted against their will.
The Fargo-Moorhead Diversion
Authority – a governing body
that’s comprised of local city,
county and water board leaders –
has vowed to seek alternatives that
would ease the proposed impacts
and, they hope, prevent such an
outcome.
Several studies are under way
and slated to wrap up as early as
this summer, including a proposal
to increase the allowable river
flows through Fargo-Moorhead.
That solution, encouraged by
many local leaders, would reduce
how often the diversion would
need to be used, easing the impact
on upstream communities.
selected the outlet solution before
fully studying other alternatives,
such as retention.
Those like Stevens say officials
should crack down on farm
drainage north of the lake and
restore wetlands there, which
would serve as natural retention
and prevent more water from
going into the lake.
“It’s just unbelievable,” Valley
City resident Mary Ann Sheets-
Hanson said. “They won’t deal
with what’s really going on. Why
they want a disaster
(downstream), none of it makes
good sense.”
During the flood that hit last
August after several inches of
rain fell in the valley, many
riverside residents found
themselves in a flood fight.
For instance, floodwaters
backed into the fields near the
Stevens’ farm south of Valley City
and their driveway was
susceptible to going under,
potentially cutting off road access
to their home, he said.
“No one expected an August
flood,” his wife, Ginny Stevens,
said.
During that event, Valley City
residents contend the State Water
Commission delayed before
turning off the Devils Lake outlets
– a move some residents said
might have helped ease the flood
threat on the valley.
“There’s a lack of common
sense,” Valley City resident Jerry
Heib said.
Meanwhile, Diversion Authority
officials and engineers with the
corps continue to urge patience
among area residents who seek
definitive solutions about the final
project and the proposed timeline.
Local leaders have cleared
several hurdles in the process so
far, but Fargo Mayor Dennis
Walaker is among the first to
caution that the project is far from
inevitable.
In December, the top chief at the
Army Corps of Engineers signed
off on a final feasibility study, and
officials expect the chief will also
sign a “record of decision” in
April – milestones that allow
Congress to consider the project
yet this year.
Congress must both authorize
and fund the F-M diversion before
any buyouts or construction could
begin.
That process might start in a
year or later, depending on how
swiftly Congress acts on the
proposal.
At the earliest, the diversion
could be complete by 2021, and a
lot can happen in the nine years
until then.
During that time, Diversion
Authority officials said they hope
to finalize their funding sources to
pay for the $1.78 billion project, as
well as the operating and
PAGE 11
A FORUM
COMMUNICATIONS
SPECIAL PROJECT
SUNDAY,
FEBRUARY 26, 2012
David Samson / Forum Communications Co.
During that August flood, peak
inflows into Lake Ashtabula north
of Valley City measured 7,000 cfs,
the Army Corps said.
But controlled releases kept the
flows no higher than 4,000 cfs
coming out of Baldhill Dam,
minimizing the flows by about 40
percent but still unavoidably
causing flooding downstream.
Residents near Valley City
believe the Devils Lake water is
already adding to their flooding
problems, but without any way to
definitively prove it, they say they
won’t get any state or federal aid
to mitigate flood impacts.
State officials said they’ve heard
the residents’ concerns and
criticism for months, but they
maintain that the outlets are the
best option to solve the Devils
Lake crisis.
“I don’t doubt the sincerity of
the people saying we should
consider water retention and
other ideas,” Gov. Jack Dalrymple
said. “They really believe we’re
missing something here.
“We told them we’ll do
everything in our power to control
water quality,” he added. “We
know that we’re adding to the
river, but we think we can manage
it.”
Dalrymple said the dispute
comes down to a “good, ol’-
fashioned lack of trust” between
residents and the state, and the
residents don’t dispute that.
Kristen Daum reports
for The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead.
maintenance costs that will
require at least $3.6 million each
year.
The federal government, the
states of North Dakota and
Minnesota, Cass County and Fargo
are all sharing in the cost of the
project to varying degrees.
Each government entity has
different options to fund its share,
but overall, very few specific plans
exist to guarantee the project’s
funding.
With the creation of the
Diversion Authority last year,
officials hope the board will allow
for a more streamlined approach to
handling the finances of the
project, including funding sources.
In the interim, rural residents
upstream have vowed to fight the
project, potentially in the courts.
Fargo-Moorhead officials say
they empathize with the residents,
but they also stress that despite
their best efforts, no project of this
magnitude is without impacts.
Nearly 6,900 acres of prime
farmland will be taken out of
operation just for the land needed
to construct the channel.
In all, the proposed channel has a
footprint of more than 8,000 acres,
not including the area that will be
used for temporary water storage.
Kristen Daum reports
for The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead.

PAGE 12
A FORUM
COMMUNICATIONS
SPECIAL PROJECT
SUNDAY,
FEBRUARY 26, 2012
Water flows through the Baldhill Dam northwest of Valley City.
Baldhill bonus
Engineers weren’t thinking of flood control
when they dammed the Sheyenne north of Valley City
By Kristen M. Daum
Forum Communications Co.
Map by Troy Becker VALLEY CITY, N.D. – Years of
Forum Communications Co. severe flooding in the lower
Sheyenne River Valley has made
the true purpose of Baldhill Dam
somewhat of an afterthought
these days.
After all, when communities
downstream are faced with record
WATER
flood upon record flood, no one
seems to be very concerned about
a lack of water.
But when Baldhill Dam was
constructed in 1944, the
authorized purpose for the project
was all about water supply. At that
time, residents in eastern North
Dakota had more reasons to fear
long-term drought than consistent
flooding.
Only a fraction of Baldhill
Dam’s original purpose was meant
to alleviate flood threats
downstream on the Sheyenne
River.
Now, in the midst of a 20-year
wet cycle that rages on, the
function of Baldhill Dam has
shifted more toward protection
than supply, but its authorized
purpose remains in place.
For Operations Supervisor Rich
FOR
Schueneman and other Army
Corps of Engineers staff at
Baldhill Dam, they have no choice
but to do things by the book.
Baldhill background
At capacity, Baldhill Dam can
hold back up to 100,000 acre-feet of
water in picturesque Lake
Ashtabula, more than 10 miles
north of Valley City.
The man-made lake functions as
a reservoir, about 27 miles long
and tucked away in the hills and
valleys that sometimes mask the
POLICY
Sheyenne River.
The Flood Control Act of 1944
authorized construction of
Baldhill Dam as a way to ease
concerns about a limited water
supply for blossoming cities in
eastern North Dakota, like Fargo
and Grand Forks.
As a tributary to the Red River,
the Sheyenne provides convenient
access to a regional water supply.
Lake Ashtabula and the control
structures at Baldhill Dam ensure
that at least some water will
always be available if the cities
should call upon it.
Operations at Baldhill Dam, as
with other federally managed
dams, are governed by a water
control manual, comprised of
several hundred pages of
procedures and protocol that
corps staff are mandated to follow.
The manual also dictates the
priorities for which Baldhill Dam
MAKING
was constructed, Schueneman
said.
Of the dam’s total purpose:
왘 38 percent is to provide
municipal water supply for cities,
like Fargo, Grand Forks, Valley
SECTION 5
City, West Fargo and Lisbon.
왘 31 percent is for rural water
supply.
왘 23 percent is for municipal
pollution abatement to help flush
out the riverbed when needed.
왘 Lastly, just 8 percent is for
flood control.
“We operate projects according
to their authorized purposes,”
Schueneman said. “(People)
assume that this project is strictly
flood control. It’s not.”
Nonetheless, the heightened
need for flood protection in recent
years prompted the corps to
increase the available level in the
reservoir by 5 feet in 2004.
That alone roughly doubled the
available amount of water storage
that could be used specifically for
flood control, from 35,000 acre-feet
up to 70,000 acre-feet.
“Because this project was originally made to be a water supply project, we have to maintain a
conservation pool level in the summer,” says Rich Schueneman, the North Dakota flood control
supervisor at the Baldhill Dam. “You need to be able to supply that water at any time.”
Baldhill Dam
Jamestown
Valley
Valley City
Lisbon
Dam dynamics
To balance the need for flood
control with the requirements to
maintain a supply of water,
Schueneman said the corps’
operations manual dictates what
levels Lake Ashtabula should be at
throughout a given year.
The authorized levels range from
a base elevation of 1,257 feet up to
a maximum of 1,271 feet. Above
that height, an uncontrolled
overflow out of the reservoir
would occur.
“Because this project was
originally made to be a water
supply project, we have to
maintain a conservation pool level
in the summer,” Schueneman
explained. “You need to be able to
supply that water at any time.”
To that end, Schueneman said
he’s required to keep Lake
Ashtabula at an elevation level of
1,266 feet throughout the summer
after the spring melt ends.
“We’d have this water here, and
we could release it if communities
needed it,” he said.
Every Oct. 1, the corps begins to
draw down the reservoir in
preparation for winter and the
following spring’s melt.
The goal is to reduce the water
level to 1,262.5 feet, providing
about 3.5 feet of extra freeboard by
March, Schueneman said.
The corps will release water
through Baldhill Dam at levels
deemed appropriate to both draw
down the reservoir but not
unnecessarily inundate
downstream communities, he
said.
The corps can adjust releases
from Baldhill Dam, depending on
the moisture levels in the
snowpack, Schueneman said.
In cooperation with the National
Weather Service and the U.S.
Photos by David Samson / Forum Communications Co.
Fargo
Horace
Geological Survey, the corps takes
snow surveys during the winter
months to gauge how much
moisture they might be dealing
with come spring, he said.
For instance, if there are 2 to 3
inches of water in the snowpack,
procedures allow the corps to
reduce the lake level to the
authorized minimum of 1,257 feet.
“We can’t go lower because,
according to the plan, we’re not
allowed to go lower than that,”
Schueneman said. “If we want to
go lower than that, we need to seek
a deviation from our division
office (in Mississippi).”
Coincidentally, that’s exactly
what the near-record flood of 2011
required.
A moisture-filled snowpack plus
heavy spring rains led to a
significant flood threat along the
Sheyenne River Valley last spring.
For the first time in the project’s
60-year history, officials at Baldhill
Dam received approval to deviate
from their authorized operating
manual so they could lower Lake
Ashtabula beyond the approved
minimum and attempt to
compensate for the expected flood
threat.
Schueneman said officials
sought to draw down the reservoir
an additional 2 feet – down to 1,255
feet – but the spring melt began
only halfway through the process.
Because of the V-shaped features
of Lake Ashtabula, the simple laws
of science mean: The lower the
water level, the less storage is
gained from reducing that water
level further.
The benefit of drawing down the
water by an extra foot equated to
reducing the flood stage in Valley
City by one-tenth of a foot.
The Sheyenne River crested in
Valley City on April 14, 2011, at
20.55 feet, dangerously shy of the
2009 historic record of 20.69 feet.
Balancing act
As the flood threat struck Valley
City last spring and again in a rare
summer event in August, officials
at the Army Corps of Engineers
came under fire.
Residents questioned why the
corps wasn’t drawing down Lake
Ashtabula sooner during the
winter of 2010-11 and why the
releases weren’t greater to prevent
the surprise of a tough flood flight.
The answers lie in the corps’
own operating manual, which
officials cannot deviate from
without rare exception.
Schueneman said managing the
dam remains a constant challenge
for the corps.
Inflows into Lake Ashtabula
from drainage in the upper
Sheyenne Valley help determine
how much the corps should release
through the dam and how much
storage could be used up in the
reservoir instead.
Corps officials also factor in
preparation efforts downstream
and whether communities, like
nearby Valley City, have time to
put sandbag dikes and levees in
place before the floodwaters
arrive.
Under normal circumstances,
Schueneman said, it takes as little
as 12 hours for waters to reach
Valley City from Baldhill Dam.
Help or hurt
Dams don’t guarantee absolute
flood protection for downstream
communities, as the flood fights in
2011 showed in Valley City,
Bismarck and Minot.
But the control structures can
help ease the blow of the
floodwaters by taking some of the
edge off.
Take the situation at Lake
Ashtabula last spring.
“We had over 10,000 cubic feet
per second coming into the lake
that would’ve otherwise gone
downstream through Valley City
through Lisbon and all the way
down,” Schueneman said. “We
were able to reduce that to 7,000
cfs.
“Would Valley City have been
able to prepare if the dam isn’t
there to take the peak off those
inflows and reduce them?”
Schueneman said, adding: “People
have to judge that themselves.”
Kristen Daum reports
for The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead.

THE
AMBASSADOR
HOUR
WASHINGTON – Ask Gary Doer
about water issues between the
United States and Canada and he
quickly ticks off eight, east to west
across the continent.
Ask a formula for dealing with
them and Doer gives a three-word
answer: “Collaboration.
Collaboration. Collaboration.”
Probe a little and Doer’s
responses become more nuanced.
And a little tougher.
Part of this is a change in Doer’s
role. As premier of Manitoba for
10 years ending in 2009, Doer was a
politician. As Canada’s
ambassador to the United States,
Doer is a diplomat.
Part of it is due to shared
emergency from flooding. “This
year was unusual for both of us,”
Doer said. “It’s hard to negotiate
when you’re in water up over your
waders.”
Part of it is due to changed
circumstances.
Doer elaborated on these and
Canadian government reactions to
them in a wide-ranging interview.
The interview took place on Feb.
13 in his office on Pennsylvania
Avenue in Washington D.C., within
sight of the U.S. Capitol.
Devils Lake
Take Devils Lake for example.
As premier of the province, Doer
took a hard line. Indeed, a 2005
memo from the U.S. State
Department – one of the notorious
WikiLeaks – warned of “a
collision course” between the
countries and blamed Doer’s
“intransigence.”
The ambassador refused to
comment on the memo, other than
to say, “Not all the WikiLeaks were
true” and this one “didn’t come
from anyone I ever dealt with.”
Still, Doer was widely regarded
as stubborn about Devils Lake, and
American politicians sometimes
accused him of political
opportunism.
Since Doer left Winnipeg,
Canadian rhetoric on Devils Lake
has softened. Doer’s explanation is
that circumstances changed.
A scientific review established
that there was only minimal risk
that non-native species would
reach Lake Winnipeg from Devils
Lake. This helped spur four-party
talks between North Dakota, the
U.S. government, Manitoba and
the Canadian government that
allowed progress in managing the
rise of Devils Lake.
At the same time, concern about
sulfate levels in the lake proved
less pressing – and more
susceptible to what Doer called “a
basinwide solution.”
Science, he said, helped Canada
accept a Devils Lake outlet. One is
operational. A second is under
construction.
So did a change in North
Dakota’s approach to the lake. The
idea of bringing water from the
Missouri River to help stabilize the
level of the lake was abandoned.
With it went the fear that species
from the Missouri could get into
Lake Winnipeg through a Devils
Lake outlet.
Lake Winnipeg has been a focus
of Canadian concern about U.S.
water projects.
Lake of the Woods
Concern for Lake Winnipeg
prompted a reference to the
International Joint Commission,
established by a 1909 treaty to
manage cross-boundary waters.
This involves
Manitoban Doer stresses ‘collaboration’
while pressing Canada’s case on water
Lake of the
Woods, which
straddles the
border
between
Minnesota,
Manitoba and
Ontario.
The IJC is
mapping
sources of
phosphorus
entering Lake of the Woods, which
drains into Lake Winnipeg
through the Winnipeg River. The
idea is that each country will take
steps to reduce its contribution to
phosphorus levels in the lake.
Nitrogen sources are being
mapped, as well, though nitrogen
is a lesser concern, at least given
current scientific knowledge.
Lake Winnipeg
Phosphorus is a leading cause of
algal blooms in Lake Winnipeg.
These reduce the lake’s appeal for
recreationists and deplete the
oxygen that sustains fish in the
lake, one of the largest freshwater
lakes in the world. It’s known in
Canada as “the sixth Great Lake.”
Doer conceded that Canadian
cities, especially Winnipeg, are
major sources of phosphorous
entering the lake,
A major effort – costing billions
of dollars, Doer said – has been
mounted to treat water. New
treatment plants have been
completed at Brandon and Portage
la Prairie, Man. Winnipeg has
recently brought the first of three
treatment plants on line, a second
is near completion.
Managing phosphorus entering
Lake Winnipeg is an element in
managing reservoirs on
tributaries of the Red River as
well. This is of consequence in
North Dakota because at least two
of these reservoirs were built to
control flooding in Minot. These
are Rafferty and Alameda
reservoirs on the Souris River in
southern Saskatchewan.
Souris River
Last week, North Dakota Gov.
Jack Dalrymple met with
Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall
to discuss drawing down the
Canadian reservoirs in advance of
spring runoff, thus providing more
storage for flood control.
At the port of entry at Neche, N.D., Pembina County fields are covered with floodwater in 2009,
while dry fields are seen across the border in Canada.
The bonus
would be
Mike collecting
JACOBS water that
could flush
Grand Forks
Herald publisher
into Lake
Winnipeg
and “Living
later in the
with Water”
project editor season, a
tactic that
could help
dilute
phosphorus
runoff into Lake Winnipeg.
Doer’s office isn’t involved in
talks between Saskatchewan and
North Dakota but is monitoring
them, he said.
He praised the meeting, held in
Regina, Sask., as an example of
“collaboration.”
Border flooding
Doer also suggested that
“collaboration” might resolve
another border irritant, an
embankment along the border
that Canadian officials refer to as
a road and U.S. officials believe
functions as a dike.
His government installed
culverts that allow some water to
pass through the embankment.
He insisted, however, that the
flooding on the U.S. side of the
border isn’t due entirely to the
embankment. Instead, he said,
water coming from the west
arrives faster than it should
under natural conditions – and
slowing it down will help relieve
flooding.
That will require concession
south of the border.
Elements of policy
As background to all of these
issues, Doer emphasized Canada’s
concern about moving water from
one drainage basin to another – a
key element of Canadian
opposition to the Garrison
Diversion program of the 1980s
and of its concern about possible
use of Missouri River water in the
cities of the Red River Valley,
including Fargo and Grand Forks.
To press his point, Doer talked
about Asian carp, an introduced
species present in the Mississippi
watershed. The fear is that the
fish could invade the Great Lakes.
To avoid this, Canada is pressing
for controls on U.S. rivers,
including electrical fences and
impoundments preventing
AP Photo / The Canadian Press, Adrian Wyld
PAGE 13
A FORUM
COMMUNICATIONS
SPECIAL PROJECT
SUNDAY,
FEBRUARY 26, 2012
overland flooding that could
breach the divide between
drainage basins, including “This year was
electric fences.
Doer returned to this point, and unusual for both of
this example, several times in the us. It’s hard to
hour-long interview.
“Two elements of water policy negotiate when
should inform us,” he said. “One you’re in water up
is introducing alien species
without knowing the impact. The over your
other is changing the natural flow waders.”
of water.” Gary Doer, Canadian
Other water issues ambassador to the
Doer’s list of cross-boundary United States
water issues from east to west:
왘 The Lake Champlain Basin
in Vermont, New York and the
Canadian province of Quebec,
where there was extensive
flooding in 2011;
왘 Water quality in the Great
Lakes, including the introduction
of saltwater and saltwater species
in ballast water of ships using the
lakes;
왘 Lake of the Woods, now
before the IJC;
왘 Devils Lake, the subject of
four-party talks;
왘 The Souris River, under
discussion between North Dakota
and Saskatchewan;
왘 The Flathead River Basin in
Montana and British Columbia. A
proposed coal mine in Canada was
abandoned after U.S. interests
warned of threats to water quality
and the IJC recommended a
program to offset investor losses.
왘 The Columbia River treaty,
involving the Columbia basin in
Idaho, Oregon, Washington and
British Columbia;
왘 Mapping the Beaufort Sea,
where there is competition for
minerals, especially oil in
territory claimed by the United
States, Canada and potentially
Russia.
A striking feature of this list is
that three of its eight items
involve the middle of the
continent, North Dakota,
Minnesota and our neighbors.
Each of these three involves
Manitoba – no surprise since a
fifth of all the water in North
America flows through the
province.
No surprise either that a
Canadian diplomat with deep
roots in Manitoba would have a
deep interest in these water issues.
Eric Hylden / Forum Communications Co.
PAGE 14
A FORUM
COMMUNICATIONS
SPECIAL PROJECT
SUNDAY,
FEBRUARY 26, 2012
Illustration by
McClatchy Newspapers
WATER
Buy flood insurance
The message can’t get much louder. Here’s why it shouldn’t be ignored
By Tom Dennis
Forum Communications Co.
GRAND FORKS – Suppose you’re
a homeowner. Suppose you’re
watching a firetruck rumble off
FOR
down the street after its crew just
installed a fire hydrant near your
house.
Would you go inside, pick up the
phone and cancel your fire
insurance?
No?
Then take this advice, said Chad
Berginnis, associate director of the
Association of State Floodplain
Managers. Take this advice if you
live in Grand Forks, East Grand
Forks, Fargo, Moorhead, Bismarck
or just about anywhere else on the
POLICY
high plains:
Buy flood insurance.
Buy flood insurance even if
you’re protected by a dam or dike.
In fact, buy flood insurance
especially if you’re protected by a
dam or dike. Because your
situation is exactly parallel to that
of the homeowner with the brand-
new hydrant: Thanks to the
protection, your risk of losing your
home has gone down.
But it’s not zero. In fact, it’s not
even close.
In fact, you are almost certainly
far more likely to be flooded than
you are to lose your home to a fire.
“Dikes get topped, and levees
fail,” said Berginnis, former state
hazard mitigation officer for Ohio.
Year after year, “rare” weather
events arise that push water levels
beyond the limits offered by a city’s
protection.
So, year after year, people around
the U.S. get painful reminders that
MAKING
despite the defenses offered by
their dams and levees, “they still
live in a floodplain.”
From Maine to Maui, flood
protection systems have lulled
Americans into a false sense of
SECTION 5
security, flood professionals such as
Berginnis agree. Residents believe
they’re protected, and they’re right.
They also – most of them – believe
they’re so well-protected that they
can skip flood insurance.
And in that, they’re wrong.
Just ask the people of Minot,
where the Souris River flowed at
5,000 cubic feet per second back in
1979, but – thanks in part to various
flood-protection measures – it never
approached that level again for a
full 31 years.
Until it did. In June, the defenses
failed, and the flow reached 27,000
cfs.
More than 4,000 homes flooded,
only about 400 of which had flood
insurance.
“I know there was a sense of
complacency,” said David Waind,
Minot city manager.
“Every year, the flood insurance
Commentary
people would come to us and
recommend that Minot residents
buy flood insurance. And every
year, most people would ignore
them.
“Today, the average person really
wishes he or she had bought flood
insurance. It would have made so
much difference,” Waind said.
In flood protection circles,
protected homes and
neighborhoods are said to carry
“residual risk.” Minot residents
may not have realized it, but they
faced the residual risk of floods
even though they enjoyed dike-and-
dam protection.
Residual risk has drawn attention
at the highest levels of the U.S.
government.
Skeptical? Then open the
National Flood Insurance Program
reauthorization bill that was
passed last year by the U.S. Senate
Banking Committee. Turn to
Section 107. There you’ll find this
passage:
“Any area described in
subsection (b) shall be subject to
the mandatory purchase
requirements of sections 102 and
202 of the Flood Disaster Protection year flood. The other lives in an
Act of 1973.”
Subsection B is titled “Residual
Risk Areas.” People in Grand Forks that size.
and East Grand Forks as well as
people in Fargo even after the
construction of a diversion canal,
that means you.
In other words, a bill that has
passed out of committee and now is flood-insurance mandate for
before the U.S. Senate commands
almost every Grand Forks
homeowner as well millions of
others in “protected” communities risk is real, and the flood insurance
to buy flood insurance.
Why?
Because “most people who need
flood insurance do not have it,” said notified of their reduced but still
Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., Senate notable risk, then given the option
Banking Committee chairman, in a to buy flood insurance at a price
statement about the legislation.
“We must explore ways to change Hoeven said.
that. We can have the best flood
insurance program in the world,
but it will do little good if people do to buy flood insurance, “we can
not participate.”
And that very much includes
people who live in properties
protected by dams and dikes,
Shelby believes.
One problem might be the
confusing words the government
uses to describe risk. Suppose you
live in an area protected to the level residents’ perceptions of risk.
of a “100-year flood,” a common
term in flood protection. As you
may know, that has nothing to do
with a flood that occurs every 100
years. It refers to a flood that each
year stands a 1-in-100 chance of
taking place.
But even for people armed with
that knowledge, the “100-year”
language still deceives. Because
over the course of a 30-year
mortgage, the probability of a
100-year flood taking place is not
1 percent. It’s 26 percent, or better
than a 1-in-4 chance.
That’s why, if you live in a 100-
year floodplain, then “during a 30-
year mortgage period, you are 27
times more likely to experience a
flood than having a fire,” the
National Flood Insurance Program
declares.
Given that protected homes still
face considerable flood risk, is the
new flood-insurance mandate in
the Senate bill likely to become
law?
Probably not, said Sen. John
Hoeven, R-N.D.
For one thing, such a mandate
actually could discourage the
building of dams and dikes. After
all, why should homeowners pay
more taxes for a levee system if
they’re still going to have to buy
flood insurance after it’s built?
For another, there’s a fairness
issue, Hoeven said. Picture two
families: One lives behind a dike
that protects to the level of a 100-
unprotected area that’s
geologically vulnerable to a flood of
Why should the law single out the
protected family and impose an
insurance mandate on them and
only them?
For these and similar reasons, the
protected areas likely will be
crossed out, Hoeven said.
But make no mistake: Residual
reauthorization is sure to address it
in some way. Most likely, homes in
Grand Forks and elsewhere will be
that reflects that reduced risk,
By encouraging more people in
the Red River Valley and elsewhere
help ensure the flood insurance
program’s solvency on a long-term
basis,” he said.
Getting the message out will be a
tall order.
As a graduate student at the
University of California-Berkeley,
Jessica Ludy helped study
“In the Sacramento-San Joaquin
Delta of California, we encounter
the curious situation that lands
below sea level are considered not
‘floodplain’ and are open to
residential and commercial
development because they are
‘protected’ by levees,” the study she
co-authored notes.
“Residents are not informed that
they are at risk from floods because
officially they are not in the
floodplain.”
So, how well do these residents
who are protected by a 100-year
levee understand their flood risk?
“When asked to assess their flood
risk in comparison with other risks
faced, such as illness, accidents, or
other natural hazards, most
respondents thought they were
equally likely to experience a flood
as a fire,” the study found.
“On a scale from ‘not at all likely’
to ‘almost certainly,’ a combined 82
percent of respondents believed
flooding was ‘not at all likely’ or
only ‘somewhat unlikely.’”
In truth, not only do the residents
face a 1-in-4 chance of flooding over
the course of a 30-year mortgage,
but also their neighborhood’s
location below sea level almost
guarantees catastrophic damage.
To sum up, these “mostly well-
educated, professional residents
were unaware of their true risk of
flooding, believing that the ‘100-
year’ levee protected them from all
flooding,” the study concluded.
Of course, “when residents are
told they are not ‘in the floodplain,’
it is not surprising that they
underestimate their flood risk.”
If nothing else, this
miscommunication can and should
change. In Minot, that might have
helped, City Manager Waind said.
Flooded residents who lacked
insurance did get some help.
Specifically, they got up to $30,200
in grants as well as the chance for
low-interest loans.
But most of the homes were
flooded to the rafters, and replacing
them likely will cost $150,000 or
more. And that’s the kind of
payment residents got if they had
flood insurance, he said.
“Until it happens, people have no
idea how this kind of event affects
their lives,” Waind said.
One elderly widow lived on Social
Security but enjoyed her paid-off
house. Then floodwaters filled the
building to the attic.
Today, “$30,200 is not enough to
fix the house,” Waind said.
“But if she tries to sell her
(ruined) house, she won’t get
enough to buy a new house.
“I don’t know what she’s going to
do. I don’t know what a lot of
people are going to do.”
But Waind does know what Minot
residents should do in years to
come, he said: Buy flood insurance,
whether the federal government
requires it or not.
Tom Dennis is the opinion editor
of the Grand Forks Herald.

Flooding forced the old US Highway 281 to be moved three miles west about five years ago. The highway is currently the
impassable 65th Avenue northeast of Minnewaukan in Benson County.
A radical suggestion
becomes a solution
ND turns to outlet to relieve Devils Lake flooding
By Kevin Bonham
Forum Communications Co.
DEVILS LAKE, N.D. – Back in
1995, then-Gov. Ed Schafer
proposed what sounded, at least to
some people, like a radical plan to
ease flooding in the Devils Lake
Basin that had stretched into its
third consecutive year.
He suggested lowering a small
divide called the Jerusalem
channel between East Devils Lake
and Stump Lake to allow about 2
feet of water flow into the then-
stagnant Stump Lake, which
engineers estimated would have
risen about 20 feet, to an elevation
of 1,420 feet above sea level.
It didn’t fly. Neither did a scaled-
down version of the $4.6 million
project to move just 1 foot of water
from Devils Lake, raising Stump
Lake to about 1,411 feet, mainly
because people in Nelson County
protested.
Devils Lake should take care of
its own water, they said, not force
their water problems onto their
closest neighbors. At the time,
Devils Lake was at an elevation of
1,435 feet, about 13 feet higher than
it had been in 1993.
“It’s kind of humorous now, but
it was blocked because people
didn’t believe that would happen,
that Devils Lake would rise
enough to pass that divide in the
Jerusalem channel,” said Gov.
Jack Dalrymple. “Today, it’s all one
lake, all one elevation.”
The story illustrates just how
divisive the Devil Lake flood issue
has been over the past 20 years, as
people living in the Devils Lake
Basin have faced opposition and
roadblocks from Stump Lake to
Lake Winnipeg over the issues of
water quantity and quality.
20-plus years of flooding
Devils Lake started trickling into
Stump Lake in 1999, once it
reached an elevation of 1,446.6 feet.
Gravestones stick out of the floodwater from the rising Devils Lake in May 2011 at a cemetery near Churchs Ferry, N.D.
“It’s kind of humorous now, but it was
blocked because people didn’t believe that would
happen, that Devils Lake would rise enough
to pass that divide in the Jerusalem channel.
Today, it’s all one lake, all one elevation.”
Gov. Jack Dalrymple, R-N.D.
It took another eight years, but the
two lakes equalized, essentially
becoming one lake, at an elevation
of 1,447.15 feet, in 2007.
The combined lake reached a
record elevation of 1,454.4 feet last
summer, less than 4 feet from the
1,458-foot elevation that it would
begin spilling uncontrollably out
of Stump Lake to the Sheyenne
River Valley, which flows into the
Red River north of Fargo.
The lake’s elevation has dropped
since last year’s peak, as it does
virtually every year because of
evaporation in summer and early
fall. After freezing at about 1,453.3
feet, the National Weather Service
now forecasts that because of a
dry fall and mild winter, the lake
may not reach the 2011 record this
year.
But that has not stopped state
and federal officials from pursuing
projects to prevent a potential
uncontrolled overflow.
The lake has quadrupled in size,
devouring farmland, and forcing
federal acquisitions most of the
property in Churchs Ferry and
Penn, plus the partial relocation of
Minnewaukan, now under way.
About $1.5 billion has been spent
to raise roads, dikes and other
infrastructure, to pay for people to
move homes and businesses out of
the way, and to find ways to
provide relief to people in the
Devils Lake Basin, while at the
same time prevent potentially
catastrophic damage downstream.
Building outlets
Another plan was discussed in
the late 1990s and early 2000s to
essentially clean out Tolna Coulee
so Stump Lake could begin to flow
naturally toward the Sheyenne
River. It was a federal government
project, one that many people in
the upper basin believe could have
resolved the Devils Lake flood
issue by releasing smaller
amounts of water over the past
dozen years or so without causing
damage downstream.
However, that project was
rejected, mainly because of
Canadian opposition and
environmental issues involved
with moving water through a
federal wetland area.
Instead, the state built an outlet
in 2005 from the west end of Devils
Lake to the Sheyenne River. The
100-cubic-feet-per-second outlet
was expanded to 250 cfs in 2010.
“That west-end outlet was
planned based on the 1997 flood
events,” Dalrymple said. “That
took a long time to bring online. It
just shows that at that time, there
were a lot of people who didn’t
believe that we had a problem.
Again, at that time, the thought
was that getting to 250 (cfs) would
be a big help and possibly be
enough.”
In 2009 and 2011, upper basin
annual inflows into the lake set
records, surpassing 580,000 acre-
feet in each of those years. That
compares with average combined
outflows, plus evaporation, of
Sarah Kolberg / Forum Communications Co.
PAGE 15
A FORUM
COMMUNICATIONS
SPECIAL PROJECT
SUNDAY,
FEBRUARY 26, 2012
about 200,000 acre-feet.
Then, the lake rose by about
6 feet between 2009 and 2011,
including almost 3 feet in 2011
alone.
“That was a milestone in the
sense that when people started to
contemplate the realistic
possibility of a catastrophic
overflow, that it could be a one-
year event, things changed,”
Dalrymple said.
Over the past couple of years,
Dalrymple and the state’s
congressional delegation have
discussed the issue with officials
from Valley City, Lisbon, Fargo,
Grand Forks, as well as in
Minnesota and Manitoba,
Dalrymple said, to build an
understanding that managing the
lake is better than allowing it to
overflow uncontrolled out of
Stump Lake.
Now, three major projects are
under construction or planned this
spring in an effort to move more
water from the Devils Lake Basin.
All of them are expected to be in
operation by June, when Devils
Lake reaches its normal peak flow
times.
왘 The state is building a 350-cfs
outlet from East Devils Lake that
would operate when the lake is
above 1,446 feet. Combined with
the expanded west-end outlet,
they’ll be capable of removing up
to 600 cfs for about six months
annually, from May to freeze-up in
November. The plan has
restrictions, however, to cut back
or stop releases in times of high
water or of low water quality in
the Sheyenne River.
왘 The U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers and the State Water
Commission are building a
$70 million control structure on
the Tolna Coulee, one that will not
operate until the lake elevation
DEVILS LAKE: Page 16
Eric Hylden / Forum Communications Co.
PAGE 16
surpasses 1,458 feet. The structure
A FORUM is designed to mimic natural
COMMUNICATIONS erosion, so that as the coulee
SPECIAL PROJECT erodes from the flow, more water
would be allowed to flow.
SUNDAY, 왘 The State Water Commission
FEBRUARY 26, 2012 and the Devils Lake Basin Joint
Water Resource District are testing
land south of Stump Lake, where
they hope to build a gravity-flow
outlet from Stump Lake to the
Tolna Coulee. That outlet would be
built at an elevation of 1,452 feet,
allowing water to flow until the
lake drops to that point, with
probable flows of about 500 to 600
cfs.
If the lake continues to rise
closer to the spill elevation, those
flows would increase. However, the
state’s operating plan calls for the
combined outlets to release no
more than a total of 3,000 cfs, and
to further restrict flows during
high-water periods in the
Sheyenne River Valley.
During the record flood of 2009,
peak flows in Valley City were
between 6,000 and 7,000 cfs.
Eventually, state and federal
officials would like to lower Devils
Lake to about 1,446 feet and
manage it at that point, allowing
for some variances based on
weather events, according to State
Engineer Todd Sando.
“The goal is to get about 8 feet of
water out of the lake,” he said. “If
we could get a foot a year off, on
average – when the lake’s this size,
it’s going to take longer to get it
down. But over time, we’d probably
think that would be good.”
Cultivating consensus
In November, the City
Commission in Valley City adopted
a resolution that supports the
controlled release of Devils Lake
water but insisting that
downstream communities play an
active role in managing the
operating plans for a planned
Stump Lake gravity-flow
emergency channel.
“A great deal of progress has
occurred in coming to a general
consensus that it is in the interest
of both those in the Devils Lake
Basin and those who live
downstream to move water out of
the lake in a controlled manner,”
said Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D.
“In previous years, we were more
likely to hear strong resistance to
any movement of water. Now the
discussion is more about quantity,
quality and when it will move. The
common-interest theme really
occurred as most people
downstream realized that the risk
of a potentially catastrophic
DEVILS LAKE
From Page 15
uncontrolled overflow is very real.”
Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., said
the state is making real progress.
“Letting out water in a controlled
way and installing a control
structure at Tolna Coulee will
provide a safety valve for the
Devils Lake region and at the same
time protect downstream
communities and individuals,” the
senator and former governor said.
The State Water Commission
also developed a Devils Lake
Mitigation Plan to address issues
downstream. At least two
Sheyenne River Valley landowners
had submitted applications, as of
early February, for projects to
protect some cropland located in
the bottomlands.
“We have said basically that we
will mitigate any effects on the
Sheyenne River that are caused by
increased flows from the outlet,”
Gov. Dalrymple said, adding that
the potential cost of the program
remains unknown.
“This was part of our three-
prong strategy: first, to store as
much water in the upper basin as
possible; second, to mitigate flood
impacts with dikes, levees and
other infrastructure in the Devils
Lake region; and third, to release
water in a controlled way,” Hoeven
said.
A citizens group in Barnes
County, the Ad Hoc Downstream
Group, continues to demand that
more water be stored in the Upper
Devils Lake Basin, rather than
threatening or endangering
downstream property.
“Nobody can make the rain and
snow stop, but we can leave it
where it falls,” the ad hoc group
said in a recent 19-page report it
distributed to help build support,
adding that the state refuses to
impose a moratorium on future
wetland drainage in the Devils
Lake Basin.
“State and federal agencies need
to establish an appropriate price
for wetland restoration and make
water storage a key component of
a comprehensive, equitable,
science-based water management
program for the Devils Lake
Basin,” the ad hoc group
concluded.
While earlier attempts to
encourage farmers to store more
water upstream largely have failed
– mainly because of federal
programs that require 30-year
easements, the state’s
congressional delegation is
working to modify program
requirements and to find new ways
to compensate landowners for the
loss of productive farmland.
One of them, the Wetland
Reserve Program, requires 30-year
easements and has been available
only for water that’s less than 6 feet
deep. A waterbank program under
development would cover water
that is more than 6 feet deep –
essentially land that has been
under water for several years, and
shortening the easement period.
Conrad said the reconvening in
2010 of a 1995 federal interagency
task force on Devils Lake resulted
in three significant developments
toward both short-term and long-
term solutions: the EPA approving
the state’s request for a permanent
change on the water quality
standard for sulfates on the Upper
Sheyenne River from 450 to 750
mg/l; the Department of
Education approving a $6 million
Impact Aid grant to relocate
Minnewaukan Public School to
higher ground; and EPA
determining that the Water
Transfer Rule allows the state
flexibility in addressing water
quality standards.
“The EPA decisions removed a
major potential barrier to moving
more water off Devils Lake
through the state outlets,” he said.
Finally, he noted the creation of
the Devils Lake Executive
Committee Task Force.
“The DLEC has fostered
improved communications and
again focused our efforts on these
critical issues – from constructing
additional state outlets to highway
funding and many other needs
around the basin,” Conrad said.
Conrad said it took the imminent
threat of an uncontrolled spill
from Stump Lake to convince the
Canadian and provincial officials
to listen to ideas about moving
more water downstream.
“After Stump Lake filled and the
two lakes equalized, coupled with
the significant inflows into the lake
starting in 2009, the probability of
an uncontrolled overflow became a
very real possibility to them,”
Conrad said. “In 2010, in meetings
spearheaded by Sen. (Byron)
Dorgan, the Canadians formally
acknowledged for the first time
that it was in their interest to
prevent an uncontrolled overflow
of the lake through controlled
releases of water. This was a major
step forward.”
Looking ahead
“I think downstream
communities are concerned about
drinking water and flooding
issues,” Hoeven said. “That is why
we have worked to place a control
structure on Tolna Coulee and
invested in a new, state-of-the art
water filtration system for Valley
City.”
“We need to keep upstream and
downstream interests working
together on our three-part plan,
which is to store as much water in
the upper basin, mitigate impacts
with dikes and other
infrastructure, and release as
much water as possible in a
controlled way,” he added.
Conrad said the concerns of
downstream communities are
legitimate, as more water is moved
through new and bigger outlets.
“Mitigation needs to occur with
respect to stream bank erosion,
property buyouts for homes and
other structures too close to the
river to protect as erosion occurs,
assistance to modify water
treatment plants to address
increased sulfates, and assistance
in the continued development of
their local flood protection plans.
In most circumstances, these
communities simply do not have
the financial capacity to do all of
this on their own,” he said.
The governor and two senators
are convinced that the Devils Lake
Basin is on its way toward getting
permanent flood protection and
lake stabilization.
“We believe we’re turning the
corner on flooding in the Devils
Lake region with the new outlets
and additional mitigation,” Hoeven
said. “A lot will depend on the
weather cycle, of course, but we
are putting millions of federal and
state dollars into flood protection
and millions on new outlets to be
proactive. We’ll continue to do all
we can to protect Devils Lake, as
well as downstream communities.”
“From my standpoint, there’s
really only one obstacle – the joint
management of all these outlets
through all the interested parties,”
Dalrymple said. “We need to
maintain some consensus on how
to manage these outlets and how to
manage the lake. That’s going to be
a continuous effort.”
“In some sense, that’s up to
Mother Nature,” Conrad said. “But
I think our combined efforts can go
a long way toward protecting
people who are under the threat of
flood. I believe the outlets
currently under development make
significant progress in
combination with a return to more
moderate precipitation. The
weather patterns we’ve seen so far
this year may give us the
breathing room we need to finally
make some headway against this
disaster.”
Kevin Bonham reports
for the Grand Forks Herald.