Fargo, Moorhead grapple with how best to protect region against future flooding

MinnPost.com: It's a difficult, emotional, often bitter negotiation that local officials conduct with people who dearly love their riverfront property despite chances the river will overwhelm them some spring day and carry everything away.

The tense scene is about to play out on a large scale in Fargo, N.D., and Moorhead, Minn., and in rural townships up and down the Red River Valley, as federal and state agencies, local governments and individual citizens grapple with how best to protect the region — and the nation's taxpayers — against major flooding.

In countless posts to newspaper websites here, people from across the country have reacted to images of the rampaging Red River by posing a pointed question: "Why do people live there, so close to that river?" And, "Why do governments let them live there?"

Moorhead has allowed developments in the floodplain since the 1997 floods, "but the developers did raise the elevation of the subdivision so it was out of the 100-year floodplain," City Planner Debra Martzahn said. "They flood-proofed basements, beyond what our code requires. They've been very conscientious. But this flood is extreme," she said. "It's higher here than it was in 1997, so it's a problem."

People are naturally drawn to the river, Martzahn said. "We have a lot of parkland by the river, so it's convenient for people who like to walk, bike or fish. "Our zoning seemed to be reasonable up until now, but maybe we need to look at our code to see if we should be allowing development this close to the river."….

Red River of the North, viewed on the Fargo side, shot by Tim Kiser (Maleaphasant), Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 License