Leaders celebrate the F-M Diversion Inlet Structure’s completion

Fargo, North Dakota – The $3.2 billion Fargo-Moorhead Diversion Project has reached a significant milestone.

The diversion inlet structure was completed, and federal and local leaders, including Assistant Secretary of the Army Michael Connor, North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven, Fargo Mayor and Chairman of the Diversion Authority Tim Mahoney, and Army Corps of Engineers Col. Eric Swenson, were present at Fargo City Hall to celebrate.

The inlet south of Horace is what Hoeven referred to as the “hinge” of the entire project.

“It brings together what the Corps is doing with the embankment and the inlet structures with the public-private partnership [or local portion] which is the channel,” Hoeven said. “This is a one-of-a-kind, first-in-the-nation public-private partnership.”

Mahoney stated that the community is long-term viable because it is impossible to forecast when our next major flood will occur.

“We’ll have resilience,” Mahoney said. “We’ll be able to weather any variety of things that will come at us. If we had a major flood that we didn’t protect, if we had Grand Forks in 1997, it would be $18 billion of infrastructure or costs to our community.”

The project is proceeding according to plan, and it should be completed by the spring of 2027.

“In the next six to seven weeks, we’re going to complete the I-29 (grade) raise, which is critical to getting the interstate out of the flood zone. We’re going to finish the Drayton Dam mitigation project. And we’re also about 95% complete with the Wild Rice Structure, which is the next structure and hope to have that done by the end of December,” Army Corps of Engineers Col. Eric Swenson said.