Col. Eric Swenson, Sen. John Hoeven, Assistant Sec. of the Army Michael Connor, and Mayor Tim Mahoney
FARGO (KFGO) – A key piece of the $3.2 billion Fargo-Moorhead Diversion Project is finished.
Federal and local leaders, including North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven, Fargo Mayor and Diversion Authority Chairman Tim Mahoney, Army Corps of Engineers Col. Eric Swenson, and Assistant Sec. of the Army Michael Connor, were at Fargo City Hall to celebrate the completion of the diversion inlet structure.
Hoeven called the inlet, which is south of Horace, the ‘hinge’ of the entire project.
“It brings together what the Corps is doing with the embankment and the inlet structures with the public-private partnership [or local portion] which is the channel,” Hoeven said. “This is a one-of-a-kind, first-in-the-nation public-private partnership.”
Mahoney said there’s no way to predict when we’ll get our next big flood and the diversion makes the community sustainable for the long-term.
“We’ll have resilience,” Mahoney said. “We’ll be able to weather any variety of things that will come at us. If we had a major flood that we didn’t protect, if we had Grand Forks in 1997, it would be $18 billion of infrastructure or costs to our community.”
The project is moving along on-schedule and should be ready by the spring of 2027.
“In the next six to seven weeks, we’re going to complete the I-29 (grade) raise, which is critical to getting the interstate out of the flood zone. We’re going to finish the Drayton Dam mitigation project. And we’re also about 95% complete with the Wild Rice Structure, which is the next structure and hope to have that done by the end of December,” Army Corps of Engineers Col. Eric Swenson said.
F-M Diversion Inlet
I-29 Grade Raise
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