211 9th Street South, P.o . Box 2806, Fargo, ND 58108- 2806
Phone 701-241-5600 Fax 701-241-5728
August 26, 2014
The Honorable Mark Dayton
Governor Mark Dayton
116 Veterans Service Building
20 West 12th St.
St. Paul, MN 55155
Dear Governor Dayton,
I want to express my surprise at the timing and tone of your letter dated Aug. 21 to Assistant Secretary of the Army (ASA) Jo-Ellen Darcy regarding the federally authorized Fargo-Moorhead Metropolitan Flood Risk Management Project in which you asked the Corps of Engineers to stop all federal work on the Diversion Project until the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (MDNR) completes its Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) .
The timing of the letter calls several items into question. On Aug. 20, just one day before the letter was sent, I personally attended a meeting in St. Paul between several Diversion Authority representatives from both North Dakota and Minnesota, and the M DNR. We had what I thought was a really productive meeting that led to an agreement on a goal for the schedule to complete the State’s EIS, a statement by the Diversion Authority that it would forebear from construction of the diversion channel until the scheduled goal for that completion, and that the Diversion Authority Board would hold a special meeting this week on Aug. 28 to consider a request for significant additional funding from the MDNR. Upon reading the contents of your letter to ASA Darcy, I can only assume that your office was not aware of this meeting that the Authority had with the MDNR the day before the letter was signed.
Your letter also raised a number of other concerns about our multi-state Project that we would sincerely like the opportunity to discuss since many of them appear to be based on a misunderstanding of the Diversion Authority’s obligation to its constituents across multiple jurisdictions, as well as its sincere interest in avoiding any further conflict with the MDNR review process. I welcome your office’s involvement at any of the Diversion Authority’s regularly scheduled meetings, which have been ongoing for more than three years now, or if those times are not convenient, at some other time we can schedule with you. I also look forward to your help on how we can work together to avoid any further delay in addressing the problem of flooding, an urgent need on which the locally elected leaders in both States have been working on for years in order to ease the concerns of t he people and jobs that the Diversion Project would protect in Minnesota and North Dakota.
Sincerely,
Darrell Vanyo
Fargo-Moorhead Diversion Authority Chairman
cc: Assistant Secretary Jo-Ellen Darcy
Senator John Hoevcn
Senator Heidi Heitkamp
Senator Amy Klobuchar
Senator Al Franken
Congressman Kevin Cramer
Congressman Collin Peterson
Congresswoman Betty McCollum
Congressman John Kline
Congressman Tim Walz
Congresswoman Michele Bachmann
Congressman Keith Elli son
Congressman Erik Paulsen
Congressman Rick Nolan
Governor Jack Dalrymple
Lt. General Thomas Bostick, Chief ofEngi ncers,
US Army Corps of Engineers
Mr. Shaun Donovan, Director, Office of Management & Budget,
The White House
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Read MN Gov. Mark Dayton reply to Darrell Vanyo, Fargo Diversion Authority
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Drop the DA action to preempt Mn state law would be a good step for avoiding conflict with the state of Mn.