Flood Protection Timeline - KXNet - Bismarck/Minot/Williston/Dickinson

Flood Protection Timeline

Construction on flood control for the city of Minot would continue through the year 2025 under a plan detailed for city officials today.

Officials from Barr Engineering and Ackerman-Estvold Engineering were in front of the city's finance committee this afternoon.

They told committee members about the plans for implementing the Mouse River Enhanced Flood Protection Plan.

Jim Olson reports on the timeline presented today.

Work to construct floodwalls in downtown Minot at 4th Avenue Northeast would be the first construction project to get going under the timeline presented today by engineers who've been working on the project for more than a year. Those floodwalls - and work on the CP Rail bridge, would happen from 2014-2016.

Other major projects would begin in subsequent years - the Highway 83 bypass bridge and Highway 2 bypass bridge beginning in 2015. Also slated to begin in 2015, work on the Maple Diversion - a five-year construction that is estimated to cost about 104 million dollars and will reroute the Mouse River to straighten out its path through a heavily-residential area of town. The other major diversion project - the 27th Street diversion that would straighten out the river in the southeast part of town near SunPrairie Grain - is scheduled for construction for four years beginning in 2020. In all, the plan calls for work to continue through 2025 with a total cost of 530 million dollars.

As for funding, the plan predicts needing more than 25 million dollars in 2014, a smaller amount in 2015, and then eight consecutive years where funding needs would be between 42 million and 78 million annually.

If you have comments about the plan, you are urged to get in contact with your city council member, or go to MinotRecoveryInfo.com to make online.

The city's public works committee will hear about the timeline tomorrow - and you are invited to attend that meeting.

It begins at 4:15 at city hall.

And there's another public meeting on flood protection tomorrow - it's in Velva at 7pm at the school where officials will discuss the rural impacts of the flood control project.