September 15, 2025
Faces of the Diversion: Jeremy Fenske
Jeremy Fenske with ASN Constructors manages 100 people as they work together to construct the one-of-a-kind Maple River Aqueduct. Watch what challenges the team faces each day as they push toward completion of the structure, which will route the Maple River over the stormwater diversion channel.
Transcript: Faces of the Diversion — Jeremy Fenske
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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.