Mike Williams: Better Land Use Practices

To the Editor:

Kudos to Fargo engineers Mark Bittner and April Walker for the November 16th informational meeting from the Fargo City Commission and Planning Commission and for all their hard work. The meeting was an eye opener for some. There was an admission of past mistakes and an exchange of ideas for changes that could better protect our city while we continue to grow.

I believe we need an approach that focuses on protecting what we have in our current boundary. We can do this while targeting our development strategies toward quality development with infill in our current footprint that already has decades worth of growth in undeveloped or underdeveloped areas with existing infrastructure and city services already in place.

While we need a diversion to protect for a 500-year event and long term water management, a diversion will not be in place to help anyone for 8 - 10 years in the best case.  While the Diversion studies continue, we need to focus on what Fargo and our region can do right now.

The Minnesota Red Watershed Board and many North Dakota Watershed boards have a common goal of 20% flow reduction of their watersheds to the Red.  Some engineers estimate a 20% flow reduction upstream could lower the Fargo Red River level of a 2009 event by 4 - 5 feet.  To achieve that, it’s estimated we need 1 million acre feet of retention along the basin.

Some of these upstream watershed boards like the Bois de Sioux, have already identified 100,000 or more acre feet of potential water storage areas just in their own watershed.  The goal is to develop 100,000 acre feet storage a year for 10 years.  As soon some of the retention is in place, it helps, and we’ll be reducing flood impacts incrementally with each project.

What can Fargo do?
Protect what we have:  Continue to accelerate the completion of our projects to protect our current boundary to at least the 100 year flood level with room to add for more severe events.

Retention and curtail displacement:  We should participate in Basin wide retention and support and use practices that don’t further displace thousands of acres of rural land that have historically held water during floods.

Water Course Setbacks: We can implement ordinances that back new developments away from Rivers and drains to allow the river more room and to preserve and grow trees for soil stability on the banks.

Where will we grow?  Fargo already has 43 sections of land now in our footprint, that’s almost as much as Boston (48.4 sq miles) and almost as much as San Francisco. 43 Sections is 27,500 acres for our 100,000 population = 3.6 people per acre. Fargo’s planning goal is to have 10 people per acre with continued population growth.  Extreme best case projections point to a possible 250,000 Fargo population by 2050.  We already have enough land for 250,000 population right now.  250,000 people / 27,500 acres is 9.5 people per acre. If you want to see what 10 people per acre can look like, just walk by some of our more mature, core neighborhoods like Clara Barton and Hawthorne and others.

All of this leads to a great opportunity to direct our efforts and development tools in a more targeted manner to fill Fargo land that already has infrastructure and is ripe for quality development that will lead to a more safe, attractive, efficient, and sustainable city.

-Mike Williams
Fargo

[Editor’s Note: The writer is a Fargo City Commissioner.]