Shrinking Proposed Dikes - Little Savings? - KXNet - Bismarck/Minot/Williston/Dickinson

Shrinking Proposed Dikes - Little Savings?

In the midst of the voluntary buyouts in the Mouse River Valley following the 2011 flood, plans are still evolving on the Minot portion of the enhanced flood protection project.

The design that was adopted in April of 2012 called for a protection level against the flood of record which was 27,400 cubic feet per second.

The cost for the city is a lofty 543 million dollars.

Officials have since requested designs for scaled back version and possible cost savings.

Ryan Ackerman of Ackerman Estvold Engineering, the firm working on the project, says because officials don't want the footprint to change the cost savings would be minimal.

Ryan Ackerman, Ackerman-Estvold Engineering) "Acquisitions would remain the same, the size of the project, the width of the corridor, the impacts to utilities, infrastructure, roadways, bridges all that stuff would be the same. So really the only thing that would be modified in that would be the feature heights, so the actual heights of the levees and floodwalls and what we found the levees and flood walls as a whole only make up about 25 percent of the entire project cost.

Ackerman presented the scaling assessment to the city Finance Committee this afternoon.

He says the next step for the city is adopting an implementation plan which would then lock in which phases of flood control would be built first and at what level.