Lyndon Pease: [00:00:13] My name is Lyndon Pease. I’m a senior project manager with Moore Engineering. Moore Engineering got involved with the FM Area Diversion project in 2009 following the historic 2009 flood event to provide engineering support for the Metro Flood Diversion Authority. At the time in 2009, with the amount of alternatives that were being evaluated and studied and some of the challenges that we were seeing, I wondered if this project would see it through. Fortunately, it has.

[00:00:46] Some of the biggest challenges working on the FM Area Diversion project is just working with all the different parties, stakeholders, and people that are affected by the project. When you look back at over 15 years of studies and design, you looked at how people are impacted, and primarily it’s the farming community. As an engineer, you look to help and try to develop solutions that work both on a technical perspective but also try to balance impacts for those that may not want the project to begin with. Those are some of the biggest challenges that I’ve encountered on this project.

[00:01:26] I first came to Fargo-Moorhead in 2006 as a graduate student at North Dakota State University. I soon started working as an intern with Moore Engineering while I was in graduate school, and I started working on flood control projects right away. At that time, like so many in our community, I have also done sandbagging. I did sandbagging, both filled them and placed them during blizzards in 2009, 2010, and 2011.

[00:01:58] The biggest success on the FM Area Diversion project to date to me is driving the landscape and actually seeing active construction, whether that’s the diversion channel, the southern embankment, the levees, or utility relocation projects.

[00:02:17] Working on the FM Area Diversion project is rewarding. It’s rewarding because I know that I’m helping to provide thousands of homes, schools, and businesses permanent flood protection.

Jorge Villarreal: [00:00:14] Hi, my name is Jorge Luis Villarreal and I am a business development specialist here at the Fargo-Moorhead Diversion Project. As the business development specialist here, my job is to implement new technologies, create high-level reports from the collection of data in the field, and make sure that we can turn them into readable reports where we can make high-level decisions.

[00:00:34] An example of some of the technology that I’ve implemented here is a software specific to the Fargo-Moorhead Diversion called Atlas. What we do is we collect all the data via physically installed hardware and then from there we send over the data into a SQL database. From there we’re able to organize the data how we see fit. It tells us things like production per day, production per hour, production by the machine, as well as our efficiencies.

[00:01:02] Management is able to use that data to see how much production was done the day before, verify it with the foreman, and then see where the next area is that we need to focus on or if we need to allocate more resources to a specific area. We have a custom app where we have the operator tell us exactly what it is that they’re doing every day, and all of that has an assignment inside the software where it auto-generates things like cost code, cost, and areas where our production is really heavy. Those components play a crucial role in being able to collect data so we can actually make those reports.

[00:01:44] You know, working on a project like this, you think about a lot of things. Not only about how it’s protecting the metropolitan area, but how it’s actually helping expand infrastructure, and in the long run this project is actually helping raise the value of the Fargo-Moorhead area on so many levels.

[00:02:10] A big challenge that I had to overcome is that there is no reference point anywhere in the United States. This diversion is new. So the tough part is not only making it good enough but making it excellent.

[00:02:27] Sometimes we forget, especially when we work on this project, how difficult things are in the moment, not realizing that there’s a bigger goal at the end of it all. And realizing that that goal is not only going to help us, but it’ll help our children and our grandchildren and all the future generations.

Jason Benson: [00:00:14] Hi, I’m Jason Benson, the executive director for the Metro Flood Diversion Authority. As the executive director, I’m responsible for all of the administrative and leadership roles within the project. That means managing both our full-time employees and all the consultants that work on the project, and collaborate with all of our contractors, the Corps of Engineers, and other elements. I report directly to the board of authority and the chair of the board to make sure that their goals are met and that the project continues to move forward to completion.

[00:00:43] In 2010, I attended my first meeting and it was actually an engineering meeting to discuss moving the project from the Minnesota side around Dilworth to the North Dakota side, going around West Fargo and Horace and Harwood. A thing that stood out to me then was we started sketching out on the whiteboard what these aqueduct structures would have to look like, and all of us as engineers sat around the table just looking at this whiteboard thinking, “How are we going to build this?” And now we are.

[00:01:21] Up until about 2020, the Diversion Authority didn’t have a full-time executive director and engineering staff, so the local engineering staff from the counties and the cities really provided that technical expertise that our elected officials relied on. Cass County Commissioners and board members really relied on me as the county engineer to be that person from the technical side to sit in on meetings with the Corps of Engineers, with FEMA and other agencies, to make sure that it was going to meet the standards and provide the protection at the lowest cost for our taxpayers.

[00:02:10] In 2017, Governor Burgum called me and asked if I would sit on the Governor’s Task Force. That was very important and it was a critical turning point for me and my experience with the diversion project. I was really the only technical representative that had been on the project for some time, so it was a big challenge because I knew that throughout the Governor’s Task Force… technical concepts would be thrown up as options, and a lot of those options had been discussed back in 2011, 2012 and had been dismissed because they just weren’t viable.

[00:02:51] So in 2017 I had to be the technical expert at the table to defend why the project as it was designed at that point was the best project, and why the options that other folks were throwing against the wall to try to see if they would stick wouldn’t work. I was the person that had to support the governors in making sure that we got the project… to where we’ve got a project that’s in construction today.

[00:03:24] The number one thing that I think is important for the public to know is that this is a very robust project. Unlike sandbag levees, unlike just earthen levees and flood walls, the diversion project gives us an extremely robust project that provides the flexibility to where we can cover and handle a 100-year flood event passing 37 feet of flow through town, but then we can also fight up to a 500-year flood event passing about 40 feet of flow through town. In comparison, the 2009 flood, we fought nearly a 41-foot flow through town.

[00:04:16] That type of robustness gives us the confidence, as things change, as you hear about devastating flood events, hurricanes and other storms doing damage in other parts of the country, you don’t have to worry about that here. We’ve got you covered. The community can continue to go about its daily business between the citizens and the business owners, that we’re going to be a viable community and continue to grow with the knowledge that we don’t have to worry about throwing sandbags.

[00:05:14] For me when I look at the impact of this project and what it means to me, it’s really important. Senator Hoeven at the opening of the Red River Structure said, you know, this is protecting a community of over 250,000 people now, and it could be up to a half million people in 20, 30 years. Knowing that this is a multi-generational project that’s going to protect the future generations of Fargo, West Fargo, Harwood, Horace, Moorhead, Dilworth… to be part of something like that that brings long-term protection to the community is really exciting and really important.

Luke Chenery: [00:00:14] Hello, my name is Luke Chenery. I’m the chief executive of Red River Valley Alliance, which is the P3 company building the diversion channel here in North Dakota.

[00:00:25] I heard about this role through an executive recruitment firm. They contacted me in 2024 partly because I was performing a similar role for another investor on a project in New York. I didn’t know a lot about the project and I didn’t know a lot about North Dakota, so I started here in March of this year and it’s been wonderful. I’ve really enjoyed my time in Fargo and in North Dakota.

[00:00:52] Our role as the P3 developer is all-encompassing. We finance the project, we design, we build, and ultimately we operate and maintain the project for 30 years. Clearly, we outsource the design and construction to a construction company called ASN Constructors. So they will build the project for a 5-year project—has about one more year to go—and then RRVA is responsible for operations for 30 years.

[00:01:21] Some of the challenges of coming into the project when it was fairly well advanced from a design and construction perspective… I had to learn the project, I obviously had to learn a lot of the contractual obligations of the P3 company. But the challenges have really just been getting up to speed very quickly because the project is moving very quickly forward. We are about 3/4 of the way finished from a construction perspective. We do want to finish the project in October of 2026 to be ready for the flood season of spring of ’27.

[00:01:57] It’s a really interesting project because we actually don’t know when the project will be used. Clearly the bridges will be used each and every day by the people of the area, but the diversion channel itself, it’s a little unknown when we will use it. But what we do know is that we will provide flood protection for the people of Fargo forever.

[00:02:16] I’ve heard the devastating impacts of the flooding in this region, and from 2027 onward we remove that risk to the people of Fargo and we feel very, very proud about that. The most rewarding part of the project is really just the people. I’ve really enjoyed working with the people. We have a world-class team here.

[00:02:57] The number one thing I want the public to know is that being a P3 project, this project is being invested in by long-term private investors. And we’re here for the right reasons. We’re here to provide flood protection for the people of Fargo for generations. The infrastructure we’re building will last many, many generations… 100 years or more. And we’re very proud of that fact.

Mark Buringa: [00:00:14] My name is Mark Buringa. I’m a contracting officer’s representative for the United States Army Corps of Engineers. I’m the main liaison between the government and the contractor, so I’m the first line of communication between the contractor performing the work and the US government.

[00:00:32] The southern embankment is mostly an earth dam embankment that’s built out of impervious clay material. It holds all the water back south of Fargo before it hits that diversion channel. There’s multiple contract reaches; the one that I work most closely with is the reach SE2B, that’s the one that connects the Wild Rice River Structure and the SE2A structure.

[00:00:58] Earthwork operation seems fairly simple to the untrained eye, but there’s so much going on. Blending process is something that’s really important. You need to make sure that the right suitable material is getting pulled from the borrow and placed in the embankment. That’s known to us as impervious fill, and that fill has to get conditioned to certain moisture and compaction requirements to meet the specifications of a dam embankment.

[00:01:21] Being able to meet those specifications includes operations like conditioning the soil. This would be using agriculture equipment like a disc to be able to make sure that the soil is being blended and the particles are broken down to create a good bonding when it’s placed on the structure itself. Heavy equipment such as sheep’s foot rollers, pull behind tampers, excavators, dozers, all get used in tandem to be able to create a nice cohesive final product that’s going to be very stable to protect the floods of the future.

[00:01:54] This partnership being the first ever that the Corps of Engineers has done, it’s really pushed innovation to be able to solve problems a lot faster. Being able to obligate federal funds in a quick manner is not an easy thing to do. It takes a lot of people working and pulling the rope in the same direction. The administration in this area has done a fantastic job in getting the funds needed for the Corps to be able to execute and do their jobs in a fast manner. And this has really challenged us to be able to push out designs and solutions to problems as we’re experiencing them in the field to be able to meet the overall project deadline and maintain schedule and budget.

[00:02:33] I grew up in southeastern Minnesota and have some experience in the past of flooding in the Driftless region. There’s the Mississippi River Valley, the Root River, the Whitewater River, and all of them have flood potential. In particular, I was a young kid in 2007 and we had a record flood in southeastern Minnesota where the Root River and the Mississippi River came to record levels. It was all hands on deck to try to be able to pump water out of basements and build sandbags and temporary levees to keep the flood waters out of residential areas.

[00:03:19] I’d say the biggest reward to working on this project is the idea that it gets to impact so many people and the local community. It’s a big scale project, one of the biggest ones in the country right now, and it’s an honor just to play a part in that. I look forward to someday bringing my wife and kids and maybe even grandkids out here to a flood protection project that I was able to play a part in building.

Jeremy Fenske: [00:00:13] Hi, I’m Jeremy Fenske. I’m superintendent of the Aqueduct for ASN Constructors. As a superintendent, you run the daily operations of the job site. I would run all of your subcontractors, all the employees, you know, making sure that your foremen know what they’re doing, making sure that we’re getting the materials here on site that we need.

[00:00:39] Ordering concrete, meetings… let my higher-ups and the owners know what’s going on, what’s needed, passing on information to the designer, stuff like that.

[00:00:51] So I would say the biggest challenge out here with the aqueduct would be probably piecing everything together. Just making sure everything’s on schedule, dealing with the subcontractors, dealing with the materials, dealing with if something don’t work out with the design of the project, getting relaying that to the designer. Pretty much just running the whole day-to-day operation. I mean, when you have 100 people out here, it gets to be a rat race.

[00:01:25] So the weather out here has a lot to do with the construction. If we get rain, it gets too muddy. The clay can’t get concrete trucks in here. I know Chicago is known as the windy city, but Fargo is definitely windy. And when you get wind that’s 30 mph you can’t run the cranes, you can’t run man lifts, certain equipment. So that becomes a challenge.

[00:01:52] What makes it unique is the heat and elements running through it. You’ve got the gates, you got a mechanical gate, you got a mechanical gate on the spillway. It’s the amount of concrete that you’re putting into it. It’s the size of the hole that you’re dealing with. There’s never been anything like this built in the United States before.

[00:02:14] I have had experience with flooding. Down in Virginia we had a couple hurricanes come through. Literally my house that I was living in in Virginia, the road was four feet underwater. We were canoeing down it.

[00:02:29] It feels really good being able to help a community out from not having to worry about that flooding aspect as much as they would if the project wasn’t here.

Scott Anderson: [00:00:13] My name is Scott Anderson. I work for Dakota Monument and I’m their account executive. The project at Eagle Valley Cemetery, they need to build up the cemetery as part of the diversion project, and our part of the project is removing all the monuments so they can actually bring in the dirt to build it up.

[00:00:32] The removal project’s pretty simple, it’s just removing all the monuments, the flat markers, uprights, everything out of the way. There’s also a buffer zone, so some of the monuments we moved aren’t going to get any dirt, but they wanted to make sure the machinery didn’t damage those monuments. So we’re not only removing monuments that are getting dirt, but monuments that are close to the area for a buffer zone.

[00:00:56] So far we’ve just removed the monuments, and now they have to come in with the dirt and they’re going to plant new trees and all sorts of stuff. At the end of the summer we’ll do the reinstallation process. The biggest problem I saw when I started this project was the reinstallation of the monuments. Where are they going to go? How are we going to get them in the exact spot?

[00:01:17] Lyndon at Moore Engineering did a great job GPSing each corner of the monument and he also got an aerial photo with a drone of each monument, and then a photo up front of it. What we did is we took all his information and put them on what we call a monument tag. It’s just a really nice vinyl sticker that’s waterproof, and so we have the site ID, the family name, which way it faces… all the information that Lyndon provided on a tag on the monument.

[00:01:39] Come reinstallation time, the engineers will go out and they’ll flag each corner with the site ID. We’ll match that ID with the stone and then we’ll install the memorial just how it was placed. Another thing to think about for reinstallation is it’s going to be fresh dirt, and what happens with fresh dirt on monuments is they sink down. So we’ll be reinstalling all of them in October… and then after reinstallation we’ll follow up in a year and make sure everything’s level, and relevel everything that’s not level.

[00:02:16] That’s also a nice thing for the people at the cemetery, because a lot of the older section the markers are already unlevel right now, or they were before we removed them. So when we reinstall them everything’s going to be level, everything’s going to look fresh.

[00:02:25] It feels good helping with the diversion, mainly ’cause I just don’t want to sandbag ever again. I actually went to Oak Grove High School and our school flooded in 2009, so I definitely know the effects that the flooding can have. I was a senior in high school when Oak Grove got flooded, so we had several weeks of sandbagging. Our dike broke in the middle of it and flooded our whole high school. You know, one time was enough for a lot of us, and I’m just glad it’ll be hopefully done in a few years so we don’t have to worry about it ever again.