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© Donald P. Schwert. Dept. of Geology, NDSU |
Fargo has purchased and cleared out a few houses located in the floodplain. But the Times article doesn't mention any plans to make broader use of this tactic. It doesn't appear, for example, that there's been any consideration given to applying the funds for levees and diversionary channels to buying up homes and businesses in floodplain areas. Levees and channel systems will inevitably require maintenance. An open floodplain, left as a park or nature preserve, doesn't.
Admittedly, I suspect this approach of "sustainable floodplain management" may be more complicated in the Red River Valley. Apparently this part of North Dakota and northern Minnesota in the U.S., and Manitoba and Saskatchewan in Canada, was an immense inland glacial lake as recently as about 10,000 years ago. Today, the Red River descends very gradually across this old lake bed on its way north to Lake Winnipeg. Because of this geology and history, the river has etched very little in the way of a valley. This means that when waters rise they spread out across a wide area, across a very wide floodplain. It is also why an approach to floodplain management that would apply in other areas may be harder to apply here.
Even so, when close to $2 billion is likely to be spent on engineered solutions to flooding -- solutions that will require additional money every year for maintenance -- it would seem reasonable to ask if there aren't less costly, more environmentally rational, alternatives.
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