Section 2: When Water Overwhelms
Welcome to the second installment of “Living with Water.” “Living with Water” is a five-part series. Today’s installment deals with flooding.
Read MoreA Final Flood
Keeping the water out of town means creating permanent lakes in the country As he farms by the Wild Rice River near Kindred, N.D., lovely country where he was born 64 years ago and has worked the land since 1967, Jerome Nipstad frets about water: spring floods, summer floods, but mostly the water that may come with a Red River diversion project designed to protect Fargo. “They’ve got me under 5 or 6 feet of water,” Nipstad said on a bright and blessedly dry summer day, citing projections...
Read MoreHigh lake levels
Closed basins create ‘unimaginable’ problems Minnesota Lakes Country has dealt with high water for nearly 20 years now, and even the extremely dry weather of the past few months may not signal the end of the wet cycle. Drive through lakes country and you’ll see highways that have been built up, sometimes more than once – and others with flooded shoulders and driving lanes narrowed by rising lake water. On lakes and sloughs with outlets, the problem runs off downstream unnoticed, but...
Read More‘I guess this is one in 500’
Historic Missouri River flood of 2011 may change river channel for years to come BISMARCK – Count John and Susan Boyce among the many who now know firsthand that the Missouri River can humble even the gigantic Garrison Dam. Their home, in the leafy Sandy River Drive neighborhood north of Bismarck, is normally a couple of hundred yards from the Missouri River. The ranch-style house was built in what was considered the 500-year floodplain, thanks to Garrison Dam, an earthen flood-control...
Read MoreOakport battles Red’s annual flood
Where ‘the plough ought to be at work, the waves roll’ OAKPORT TOWNSHIP, Minn. – Jay Leitch keeps his canoe parked on his driveway. When the Red River – located a cozy 200 feet away – overwhelms its banks and surrounds his house, the boat ferries him to the outside world. When Leitch moved into his Oakport home in 1992, it was thought to be well above the 100-year floodplain. It’s stayed safe since then, but not without a few close calls. This summer, he finished work on a small...
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