Red River flooding, again

The New York Times reported this week that Fargo and other towns along the Red River in North Dakota are again facing the likelihood of flooding.  This will be the fourth time in five years.  At the moment, it seems every available person has been mobilized to fill sandbags.  Understandably, people may be getting tired of this kind of emergency response and may be looking for less last-minute ways to avoid flood damage.

© Donald P. Schwert. Dept. of Geology, NDSU

Equally understandably, it seems they're giving most attention to familiar measures -- levees and spillways and diversionary channels.  The Times reports that 14 miles of levees have been built in Fargo in the last four years.  Plans are also well under way for a much bigger project.  This is a design for 35 miles of channels to divert flood waters away from the city.  Total cost, $1.8 billion.  A little over $300 million is supposed to come from North Dakota state and local sources; the rest -- about $1.2 billion -- would come from the federal government.

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.