Red River Diversion Project makes major milestone by rerouting river

HORACE, N.D. (KVRR) — After more than fifteen years of work, the Red River Valley Diversion Project made its step in marking the rerouting of the river.

“What is happening here today is beyond impressive, moving our state’s largest metro area one giant step closer to a more secure and prosperous future,” said Gov. Kelly Armstrong.

Armstrong and others noted that work to control flooding on the Red River dates back to the historic 1997 flood. Sen. John Hoeven and Sen. Amy Klobuchar were among those who worked to secure $750 million in federal money for the $3 billion project.

“Was it easy? No. None of this is ever easy. So there’s a lot of controversy, there’s a lot of people that tried to stop things. But in the end, you get to yes. And you get to yes because of the people in your community that are depending that you do that. That you tell people, nope, this is actually a good thing,” said Klobuchar.

Since work started, more than 200,000 work hours were used to work on the project. The structure includes 50-foot-wide by 52-foot-tall steel gates marking the center of the 22-mile embankment in the metro region.

“Hundreds of thousands of people and businesses are going to be protected from that kind of an onslaught because of this project. It’s been something that this community has been dealing with for so long. And to be able to know that together we came together to make sure that kind of flooding won’t happen again is just really a tribute to everybody,” said Sen. Tina Smith.

The diversion is the first public-private partnership flood management project in North America, and the first P3 civil works project with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.