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Balancing Baldhill Dam For the Greater Good
April 18, 2009 Valley City, North Dakota
Scott Tichy, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers This is not normal. Believe it or not this
is not normal.
Normally this would be a nice lazy river you
could take your canoe down and enjoy the
day. This is not normal for this river at all.
We have a large volume of water that is
coming down the Sheyenne right now. That
river itself has been out of its banks for about
200 miles north of the reservoir. It has been
out of its banks for about three weeks now.
At any given point I can go down there and
read that gauge so I know exactly what we are
putting out. I can adjust accordingly
on the dam.
We try to keep the release as low as possible
by having a 6,000 CFS over a long period of
time. Hopefully we can avoid that major
release that would cause a catastrophe for the
down stream cities.
It takes about eight about to ten hours for our
releases to reach Valley City so that is almost
immediate. Downstream from that you have
the cities of Fort Ransom, Kathryn, Lisbon,
Kindred, Fargo, West Fargo, and Harwood up
north where the Sheyenne meets the Red. All
of those communities are affected by
what we do.
Most people understand it. We have some
farms within a mile or two below us. We know
when we are going to hit 5000 CFS; we are
going to have some serous impacts on these
people. They may loose their homes. They
are going to have impacts on their cattle and
everything else.
They know this as well. We know them, we
talk to them and try to give them a call, give
them a heads-up, so the can prepare for what
is gong to happen next week. So they can
prepare themselves for it. Many of us who
work out here live in Valley City. Our homes
are affected. Our families are evacuated. So
we definitely realize the seriousness what
happens here. But you have to look at the
greater good of what we are doing by putting
out 6,000 now we may be able to avoid the
potential catastrophe of putting out 9,000 later
or uncontrolled or more.
For more information, visit www.fema.gov