Author: Ray Grabanski, Kindred
Imperial Fargo has done it again sticking a huge spending project to protect Fargo on the rest of the taxpayers of North Dakota and the United States. They’ve devised a $2 billion project (interest alone per year costs $100 million) to protect the few hundred people who built their homes too close to the Red River (and have never been flooded).
The Corps’ claims of protecting 200,000 people in the Metro area are laughable how many are protected by just 1 inch in that projection? How many by just 3 inches? How many by just 6 inches? Who do they think they are kidding? If 100,000 of those people could build a 1 inch dike and protect themselves from the Red River, is this a realistic claim to support a $2 billion project? Interest costs alone are $100 million dollars/year at only 5 percent interest!
Everyone knows just a few people along the Red are really in need of protection. These are the same people who should be moved out to make a channel right through the city just like Grand Forks did. Of course, the Corps and the “Imperial Fargo” bureaucrats all claim it can’t be done, claiming ‘the banks can’t support dikes in Fargo.” Yet they did it in Grand Forks with the same soil types as Fargo and a much bigger problem. And at a cost of less than 20 percent of Fargo’s bill a bill that U.S. taxpayers, N.D. taxpayers, and shoppers in Fargo all pay. Noticeably absent is a direct tax on the people who are supposed to benefit Fargo residents themselves. And why? Because even Imperial Fargo’s bureaucrats know that Fargo taxpayers wouldn’t vote to pay even 20 percent of this inflated $2 billion dollar bill. Even Moorhead support is waning (they didn’t want a project in Minnesota that would cost much less).
It’s also laughable that the Corps’ calculations (that change every few months) are considered gospel by the Fargo Bureaucrats every time they are altered. But the Corps is not God! Their track record in 2011 alone is spotty at best (look at their screw-ups on the Missouri River, the Souris River in Minot, and elsewhere) and their credibility is seriously in question. Yet they state a channel through Fargo is not possible? Come on!
This is the greatest waste of taxpayer money the U.S. has seen topping the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere.” Putting a dike/dam that will surely flood more than 1,000 structures south of the diversion (due to a dam on the south side of town) at a cost of $2 billion dollars, to protect about the same amount of houses susceptible to serious flooding along the Red River is utterly atrocious.
What a grand waste of taxpayer dollars! And a rotten scheme from the start against Fargo’s neighbors to the south making them pay for a project that adversely affects them. Shame on you, Fargo bureaucrats!
You can pull the wool over the eyes of legislators of Fargo, but how effective will you be in the N.D. Legislature, where real needs exist (Devils Lake, Minot, Bismarck, Valley City, Lisbon flooding, Western N.D. infrastructure)? You have no right to money from the state or federal government for a wasteful project that hurts more people than it helps. Let’s use our valuable taxpayer dollars for more needed projects in these cities and counties instead of Imperial Fargo.
Shame on you, Fargo bureaucrats, for trying to stick a bill to others for your pet pork project that hurts more people than it helps.
Cited Source: Minot Daily News
This article is republished pursuant to Section 107 of the US Copyright Code Title 17
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