Buying property on Red River flood plains (Fargo, Grand Forks: insurance, house)

[Slig]

I was wondering what other people's thoughts are on buying property along the flood plains and more specifically, those along the Red River in Grand Forks and Fargo.

I personally find it irresponsible, especially when the federal government ends up covering 75% of the recovery costs incurred by local and state governments for flood damage and US citizens nationwide contribute to repair very preventable damages. If people wouldn't have invested in property and infrastructure in these flood plains all of these incurred costs wouldn't have happened. Those people should have known the risks involved and based on probability knew that sooner or later they would require government aid to save their property.

When I began the search for my first home the first place I looked was on the West Side of St. Paul and the first thing my realtor said was that I should be careful with that area as some of the property there is on a flood plain. I looked up where the flood plain was and excluded that property from my search. BOOM! problem solved!

Am I way off base for feeling this way? If I'm misinformed on this matter I'd love to be enlightened.

[kerplunk]

With all due respect (very little), your timing for a post or thread like this is the only thing that is irresponsible.

Being as a flood of this magnitude has never happened before in industrial times, I would say that you are completely out of line.

Also, hindsight is 20/20.

[ga2email]

The mod should have this thread removed. It's in really bad taste.

[FargoBison]

For one this thread is in poor taste, not only because of the 500 year flood that is ongoing but also it is a rather uneducated take. The new flood plain maps are still being worked on and the city wants to build protection for those in the flood plain. But it is going to take time to get people on the same page and get the funds in place to do it.

Grand Forks built flood protection and they are very safe right now, Wahpeton built flood protection and they were high and dry. Now Fargo needs to get it done.

[roundball]

Originally Posted by Slig

I was wondering what other people's thoughts are on buying property along the flood plains

I don't know if you have checked out the FEMA maps.....There are many populated areas that are in the "A" category. A good portion of the East coast is in a flood plain. When I lived in NC (during the '97 flood) there was a hurricane and 3 tropical storms that cut the island I lived on in 3 parts. If you take a look at the Phoenix metro area (where I live now) there are many areas where you need to buy flood insurance with a mortgage, and this is the desert!

I don't think your thread needs to be erased. When people buy a home and they have to buy flood insurance they should know, at least in the back of their mind, what they are possibly getting into.

Towns all over the world are built on rivers. That's the way they did things out of necessity.

But yeah....People in VA, NC, GA, FL, MI, LA, TX, ND, IO (water), KS and all the other states that get tornadoes every other week, the list could go on....oh yeah, I forgot all about all the idiots that move out West when there is a water shortage CA, CO, NM, UT, AZ. I wouldn't want to buy a house in NY, MA, DC, or any other North East state if a nucleur war happens.

p.s. I almost forgot about the super caldera under Yellowstone....when that thing blows you can say goodbye to about 15 states right there.

[Ghengis]

I hope our neighbors up North get through this unscathed and have many many years of safe residency wherever they choose to live. I thought it commendable how everyone up there rolled up their sleeves and responded to the task at hand. However, I can't help but notice the difference that the media and public have portrayed the community and their choice of residence with what happened a few short years ago in New Orleans.

[3-Oaks]

Originally Posted by Ghengis

I hope our neighbors up North get through this unscathed and have many many years of safe residency wherever they choose to live. I thought it commendable how everyone up there rolled up their sleeves and responded to the task at hand. However, I can't help but notice the difference that the media and public have portrayed the community and their choice of residence with what happened a few short years ago in New Orleans.

I'd say there's 3 main reasons:
1. Look at the difference in how the residents & local government entities reacted.

2. And not much of that "poor me", "take care of me" attitude up north.

3. Also if you're living 20-25 feet BELOW sea level, you know your going to get wet if there's ever a problem with the levies.

[ScranBarre]

To be fair has anyone considered the possibility that continued urban sprawl and rapid development in communities uphill from the Red River Flood Plain may be just as responsible for what is happening today in Fargo? Every new residential subdivision, strip mall, big-box store, office park, etc. built out of the flood plain reduces the amount of vegetation in that area, and the non-porous surfaces created don't permit water to soak into the ground---all it does is run off into nearby streams/creeks, which eventually drain into the Red River.

In my own area there is currently an uproar in the Wyoming Valley in Northeastern Pennsylvania about who should bear the "burden" of the levee system that protects the urbanized valley floor near Wilkes-Barre from the Susquehanna River. The county commissioners are proposing a hefty new tax that will be levied upon homeowners ONLY in riverside communities whereas I feel as if a tax affecting the ENTIRE WATERSHED would be more prudent. Why? Well, not only will spreading this tax around to numerous more property owners reduce the individual tax burden placed upon EVERYONE, but everyone who lives uphill from the flood plain SHOULD feel somewhat responsible that all of the water that flows off of their developed properties will just exacerbate flooding for the poor folks beneath them. Unfortunately the word "poor" has a dual meaning here, as most of my region's affluent residents live along the rapidly-developing suburban hillsides whereas most of the impoverished live in the working-class river cities.

[chester]

Slig's comment is his opinion, but really a stupid one. If we were to follow his suggestion, then no state that has history of natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornado, earthquakes, volcano, should be allowed to build and develop. This would pretty much take care of the entire west coast, Alaska, Hawaii, Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Floriday, Georgia, South Carolina, the entire midwest from Texas all the way up to Minnesota-Illionois, etc... etc... etc... there is a history re-occuring natural disaster in all of these regions far more than the Red River valley of ND-MN... his post wasn't very well thought out.

[3-Oaks]

Originally Posted by ScranBarre

To be fair has anyone considered the possibility that continued urban sprawl and rapid development in communities uphill from the Red River Flood Plain may be just as responsible for what is happening today in Fargo? Every new residential subdivision, strip mall, big-box store, office park, etc. built out of the flood plain reduces the amount of vegetation in that area, and the non-porous surfaces created don't permit water to soak into the ground---all it does is run off into nearby streams/creeks, which eventually drain into the Red River.

LOLOL!!!!!!!!!!!!

Good question, but you've obviously never been to this area.

Fargo/Moorhead is only 50 miles from the head of the Red River and there are only a couple towns of a few hundred people above it.

From its source in LakeTraverse to its end at Lake Winnipeg the Red River is 550 miles as the crow flies and nearly double that if you follow all the twists & turns. At the south end, the valley is about 40 miles wide and the relief or drop in elevation is about 5" per mile. The valley widens up to 160 miles in some areas. Up north near the Canadian border the relief is only 1 1/2" per mile. Through out the whole length of the river, changes in elevation are measured in inches rather than feet.

As a reporter from New Jersey described it during the 1997 flood, "Dump a big glass of water on a pool table and see what part doesn't get wet!" That's about the best description I've heard of the flatness of the valley.

It is one of the few places I know where, if you get a few miles out of town, you can stand there and see all the way to the horizon in all directions with nothing but maybe a couple trees in the way.

Calling this a 'valley' is not really correct as we are the bottom of an ancient lake formed as the glaciers were melting. Since it's so flat, the river can't really make much of a channel for itself since it doesn't flow fast enough except during the spring melt. Normally it's under 10' deep in summer.


As someone on another thread said <<<I don't live in North Dakota but have been in and through it many times. The Red River valley is as flat and featureless as any valley ever was. From Wahpeton clear to the border, a distance of some 240 miles [[it's really more than 2x that distance as the crow flies]] counting all the kinks in the river, it drops a whopping 160 feet. That's like 8 inches [[actually less than 4"]] per mile. Any rise in the water and it's going to spread out. It's all flood plain. But the silver lining in all that is some of the richest soils anywhere on earth are found within spitting distance of Fargo and Grand Forks. You like sugar in your oatmeal? it probably came from right around here. Your whole wheat bread? That too, grown within a hour's drive from Fargo. People live here because that's where the agriculture is; and it's as good as it is because of the periodic Red River Flooding that is so disruptive to people's lives whenever it occurs.>>>


This year it was like "The Perfect Storm" to cause this severe flooding. We had recordbreaking rain last fall. There are many counties where 1/3 or more of the crops didn't get harvested last fall because of water standing in the fields. That meant the soils were already more than waterlogged going into winter.

Normally we hope for a good bit of the snowmelt to be absorbed into the ground rather than running into the rivers. That couldn't happen this year, the fields already had excess water to dump into the rivers. Then we had one of the top 10 winters for the amount of snow...just what we needed on top of already oversaturated soils. Now in March, we got double the normal precipitation, most in the form of rain, which tries to run off immediately. All in all, we knew it was going to be bad, but never dreamed of this bad. Plus add an exceptionally early and fast start to the melt.


Along with this year's fast melt is the fact that this river runs NORTH, so the south end always opens up well before the north end, so the water has no where to go at first.

Flooding is usually part from the river and partly what is called overland flooding. As the snow & ice in the fields melts it begins to make it's way over the land to the streams & rivers. With the frozen flooded fields from last fall, the heavy snow over the winter, the rain in March, and the fast, early melt, there were some towns and hundreds of farm homes flooded that are not anywhere near a river! Also part of overland flooding, besides fields melting off, is that the river may overflow many miles away into a slightly lower area and the flooding will run across that area and sneak up on a town from behind. I think Fargo has like 12 miles of dikes to protect from the river out of a total of 40-45 miles of dikes. Nearly all the ones not along the river are in the south & west parts of town to protect from overland flooding.