Faces of the Diversion: Nathan Boerboom

Nathan Boerboom: [00:00:13] I am Nathan Boerboom, assistant city engineer for the city of Fargo. My role is a wide range of things. Flood plain management is one role, but also the diversion project. I’m assigned as a technical lead for the city of Fargo to the overall diversion project, but then also heavily involved in planning of new subdivisions with the city of Fargo, master planning our utilities for those areas.

[00:00:44] But then also involved in, you know, all projects throughout the city as we look at what type of reconstruction projects or various items we need to complete maintaining our infrastructure.

[00:00:52] My first experience with any sort of flood fighting was actually back in 1997 as a high schooler. I grew up in a small town in west central Minnesota, and one of our neighboring communities, Granite Falls, was dealing with flooding on the Minnesota River at that point. So not involvement up here on the Red River, but they had similar issues that they were dealing with down there. And not surprisingly, my role at that point was the young back throwing sandbags behind homes.

[00:01:25] I’d say the biggest challenge along the way is acquiring people’s homes. It’s something that city staff as well as city commission never took lightly. We always looked at a whole wide range of alternatives to see what is the best project for a neighborhood and whether or not we needed to acquire homes or if they could remain. Unfortunately, a lot of homes did have to be purchased throughout the city of Fargo. We always tried to work with those properties as much as possible to accommodate various timelines that maybe they have going on in their lives to allow them to remain in their homes as long as possible, but ultimately we had to purchase homes to be able to complete the projects we’ve done to date.

[00:02:10] The benefit of this project is that the 100-year flood plain that is located within the city today will be gone and allow for property owners to be able to purchase flood insurance at a much lower rate and no longer be mandated to purchase it.

[00:02:24] I think the community should be very proud of the accomplishments that we’ve been able to make up and down the river corridor. Being able to complete all the levees and flood walls, you know, all those 28 miles, reduce our risk, be able to safely pass that 37 feet through town and not need to throw a sandbag at all. I mean it’s a very large accomplishment that our community has made, and it’s something that hopefully our community over time doesn’t take for granted.

[00:02:56] It’s very gratifying to be able to see this flood protection actually coming to fruition for our community.