Faces of the Diversion: Area Mayors

Dr. Tim Mahoney (Mayor of Fargo): [00:00:13] I’m Tim Mahoney, Mayor of Fargo.

Shelly Carlson (Mayor of Moorhead): [00:00:15] Hi, I’m Moorhead Mayor Shelly Carlson.

Bernie Dardis (Mayor of West Fargo): [00:00:18] My name is Bernie Dardis and I’m the Mayor of West Fargo.

Dr. Tim Mahoney: [00:00:20] When I joined the commission we were buying out homes next to the river, but we had no definitive plan to take care of our flooding. We had talked about it, but did not have a real strong plan of what to do. In 2009 when we had the flood, we had learned a lot in ’97, so 2009 became this zest to have flood protection.

Bernie Dardis: [00:00:56] It’s often asked why certain communities get as engaged in this diversion build as we are, and it’s an easy answer. I’ve got a lot of West Fargo people that work in Fargo, or they work in Moorhead, or Moorhead people that live in Moorhead but work in West Fargo. So we’re a community of one, we’re basically seamless.

Dr. Tim Mahoney: [00:01:20] So we’re sitting out in Washington and they say, “Let’s do a P3, let’s try it.” A P3 had never been tried before, they had never done anything like that. The Corps got excited about it. We’re one of the first P3 projects that was ever done and they loved the idea that it’s Minnesota, North Dakota, two counties, two cities, it’s on a border and everybody’s working together. This will be one of those things that you point out to your grandchildren because it’s something so unusual.

Shelly Carlson: [00:02:03] The Metro Flood Diversion Authority is really a collaborative effort. If you just look at the first word of our name, “Metro,” it really means not just Fargo, not just Moorhead, but our entire region. You can’t have a flood diversion project without both sides of the river cooperating.

Bernie Dardis: [00:03:57] West Fargo’s had its own diversion for over 30 years, but what a lot of people don’t appreciate is the addition of the new diversion will give us even greater flood protection from every direction, whether it’s overland flooding from the west or from the south.

Shelly Carlson: [00:05:07] One of the things that I’m most looking forward to when the flood diversion is completed is that it’s not going to be a main topic of conversation anymore. Every spring in our communities, we don’t have to be anxiously waiting to determine what the forecast is going to be.

Dr. Tim Mahoney: [00:05:33] That is going to be a great day. Just the fact that you get up one day, we have a flood coming at us, and we’d see what we got to cover.