$6.1M contract awarded for the FM Area Diversion project

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, St. Paul District, has awarded a $6.1 million contract to H. B. Construction Inc. of Platte City, Missouri, to complete the Southern Embankment Reach SE-2 portion of the Fargo, North Dakota/Moorhead, Minnesota, Metropolitan Area Flood Risk Management Project, also known as the FM Area Diversion.

The Southern Embankment Reach SE-2 portion is located in Cass County, North Dakota, and consists of an embankment that will extend north from a point approximately 1/4th mile east of the intersection of County Roads 16 and 17, adjacent to the existing Diversion Inlet Structure.

The total length of the embankment is approximately 1 3/4 miles. The embankment material will come from the borrow ditch adjacent to the embankment.

The project will also include removal of a portion of an existing gravel road and an existing abandoned water line, placement of riprap in ditches and construction of new corrugated steel pipe culverts.

This is the second of multiple contracts planned to construct the embankments associated with the southern embankment. This congressionally authorized project is a 30-mile-long diversion channel in North Dakota with upstream staging. The plan includes a 21-mile-long southern embankment, 19 highway bridges, four railroad bridges, three gated control structures and two aqueduct structures.

The Corps is working in partnership on this project with the cities of Fargo and Moorhead and the Metro Flood Diversion Authority. This project provides flood risk reduction for more than 235,000 people and 70 square miles of infrastructure in the communities of Fargo, Moorhead, West Fargo, Horace and Harwood.