Fargo and Moorhead will make some dikes permanent
(WDAY News Script)
With the flood winding down in Fargo-Moorhead, plans are now underway for next year's flood preparations...

Marv/News Center 6:
One priority for city officials is to have more permanent dikes. Jim Shaw reports.

Jim Shaw/News Center 6:
The images of flooding in southwest Fargo are vivid in the minds of Fargo city officials, and they want to prevent scenes like this from ever happening again. So, eight hastily put up dikes in southwest Fargo, such as this one at Greenfield's...The city wants to make permanent. Things are much quiter around those dikes now, although they would need some work on them to make them permanent.

Mark Bittner/Fargo City Engineer:
Another one that we're looking at is this one that we had sandbags in that was south of the Milwaukee bike trail underpass on 40th avenue.

Jim Shaw/News Center 6:
Fargo city engineer Mark Bittner says among the other dikes they'd like to make permanent are at Fox Run, Meadowcreek, Oak Creek, Rosewood Park, and 38th avenue south. He says keeping those dikes permanent will save a lot of time, money, and heartache.

Mark Bittner/Fargo City Engineer:
(Why do you want to make these PERMANENT?) well, so the next time around that we don't have to come in in an emergency situation and build all these temporary levies. (IT WOULD JUST BE SO MUCH EASIER TO HAVE THESE IN PLACE?) you betcha. we're also looking at other permanent improvements along the corridor that would tie in with these improvements.

Sounds Of... Construction

Jim Shaw/News Center 6:
In Moorhead, the dike in the residential area of Horn Park is starting to come down, but down the road they want to make the Horn Park dike permanent along with one at Woodlawn Park, while checking over the storm sewer system.

Bob Martin/Moorhead Public Works:
With that high level of water that we had, there's a higher risk of some of the dike failures that people saw, and so we're gonna look at some more permanent structures that would help prevent that type of situation that we were in during this last flood.

Jim Shaw/News Center 6:
In Fargo, it will be up to the property owners as to whether these temporary dikes will become permanent. So far, most of those property owners are saying yes. Jim Shaw, WDAY NewsCenter 6.