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.

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.

Brandy Leon: [00:00:14] Hi, my name is Brandy Leon and I am a safety professional here at ASN Constructors. A safety professional is a person that works alongside everybody on the job site to make sure that they go home safe at the end of the day.

[00:00:25] A lot of the employees that come on site have not been introduced to this type of construction environment before, and as safety professionals we’re here to kind of guide those employees and show them of those particular dangers. Some of the particular dangers we have would be cranes lifting heavy loads overhead, working at heights, different types of tools that they use that they’re just not familiar with in this environment, and we’re here to guide and to alert them of potential issues or safety dangers that they come across.

[00:00:59] I really do enjoy being a safety professional. I enjoy the policies, the procedures, but I also enjoy interacting with employees and getting to know them and their stories, and making sure that they go home to those stories that they have. When you tell somebody what you do as a safety person or safety professional, they think that you’re the bad guy or the cop on site, but it really isn’t that, and so it’s nice to talk with them and discuss it with them so that they understand what we really truly do.

[00:01:32] Construction has been predominantly male-dominated, but in recent years it’s really expanded and a lot more women are coming into the field, so it doesn’t feel like it’s really male-dominated anymore. It’s a lot more accepting, and it’s been really nice to work alongside people that don’t care if I’m a female, they just want to make sure they go home.

[00:01:51] The stigma of construction and male-dominated fields has sometimes hindered women, and I would say go for it. It shouldn’t be a stigma anymore, and the more women that go into the field will make it so much easier for the next generation and the next generation to go in.

[00:02:11] The best parts of this job are the people, I’m not lying. It’s honestly the people out here. There’s such a variety of different people and thoughts and everything, and it’s just entertaining to talk with people and interact with them and get to know them to ensure that they do go home safe.