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.