The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead highlighted the progress the FM Area Diversion project made over the spring and summer months.
Diversion construction continues through summer marked by dispute, administrative issues
Diversion Authority leaders said the project is on track to be substantially finished and operational in 2027 with completion in 2028.
FARGO — Construction on the Fargo-Moorhead Area Diversion is continuing as administrative and legal challenges bubble under the surface.
Alyssa Goelzer/The Forum
Months after the sudden exit of the Diversion Authority’s first executive director and amid a contract dispute between the Diversion Authority and the project’s developer, Diversion Authority leaders highlighted the ongoing progress on the project during a Monday, July 29, meeting with The Forum’s Editorial Board.
At the editorial board meeting, Diversion Authority leaders said the project is on track to be substantially finished and operational in 2027 with completion in 2028.
“We’re going to make sure that pedal stays to the floor throughout some of these challenges, whether they be P3 challenges or relationship challenges with the executive director position,” Fargo City Administrator Michael Redlinger said. “We absolutely have to deliver on this; we’ve got to do this for the benefit of the metro area.”
Redlinger serves as an interim co-executive director for the Diversion Authority along with Cass County Administrator Robert Wilson.
Once complete, the $3.2 billion flood control project will divert water from the Red River into a diversion channel around the Fargo-Moorhead metro during extreme flooding.
The public-private partnership, or P3, project is funded by public money, including federal and state funding and local tax dollars. The project is levied against Cass County properties with a property tax assessment that could be activated to help pay the local share of project costs in dire circumstances.
Kris Bakkegard, Diversion Authority director of engineering, told The Forum the project is nearing the halfway point to completion across all parts.
“From the Authority’s perspective, we’re satisfied with where progress is at in the global sense,” Bakkegard said.
Diversion channel progress
The Metro Flood Diversion Authority oversees work on the diversion channel and infrastructure along the channel, like road and rail bridges, aqueducts and drainage inlets. Its P3 partner and developer, the Red River Valley Alliance, is tasked with designing and building the non-federal portion of the project.
Alyssa Goelzer/The Forum
Work continues on structures along the diversion channel even as the Diversion Authority and Red River Valley Alliance disagree about specifications for those structures. The contract dispute between the Diversion Authority and the Red River Valley Alliance centers around a disagreement about the requirements for the use of epoxy-coated rebar in structures along the diversion channel.
The Diversion Authority says the contract between the two entities requires epoxy-coated rebar to be used in all reinforced concrete, while the Red River Valley Alliance argues epoxy-coated rebar is required only when steel is subject to corrosive environmental conditions.
Crews from ASN Constructors, the construction arm of the Red River Valley Alliance, have worked through the summer on bridges, completing the first of 19 bridge decks in July.
“They’ll, I think, have a pretty continual run of getting bridges more into the completion line more throughout the summer and fall here,” Bakkegard said.
Crews from ASN have continued to use some black rebar, rather than all epoxy-coated rebar, in structures, Martin Nicholson, a Diversion Authority consultant, told the Editorial Board. Nicholson and other Diversion Authority leaders were reluctant to say how the project could be affected by the contract dispute.
“I’m not going to speculate on what those discussions are going to include because we haven’t had them yet,” Nicholson said.
Alyssa Goelzer/The Forum
Work has also continued to dig the diversion channel but got off to a slow start during the rainy spring, Bakkegard said.
“As we were still coming off the spring melt, getting spring into summer, rainstorms were hitting such that things just never got totally dried out,” he said.
With the warmer weather, the ground dries faster and work has picked up, he said.
Between April and July, nearly 3 million cubic yards of soil have been moved, according to a written progress update supplied by the Red River Valley Alliance. Additional heavy equipment has been deployed for construction over the summer, with crews working around the clock to continue work on the project.
In total, around 45 million cubic yards of earth need to be moved to build the diversion channel, and crews have moved 22 million cubic yards so far.
Southern embankment progress
The United States Army Corps of Engineers is responsible for work on the southern embankment and three gated control structures. The 22-mile earth wall will hold water south of Fargo and Moorhead during floods. The three control structures will control the flow of water into the diversion channel, the Red River and the Wild Rice River.
Contracts have been awarded for construction along most of the 22-mile earth wall. The Corps plans to award contracts for two remaining sections of the embankment in January 2025, said Kevin Denn, a project manager for the Corps.
Work is nearing 60% completion on the Red River structure, a dam that will control the flow of water into the Red River. The first of three large rotating gates was assembled at the structure in July. Denn expects the other two to be installed before the end of the year.
Construction on the Wild Rice Structure is around 98% complete. The inlet control structure was completed in October 2023.
This year and next year are busy years for the Corps on the site of the diversion, Denn said, with multiple contracts in action.
“By this time next year, work will essentially be either complete or ongoing on all the different reaches of the dam, so we’ll have a lot of work going on across our entire program there,” Denn said.
By Ingrid Harbo
Published on August 5, 2024
