ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times

DATE: Tuesday, April 22, 1997                TAG: 9704220063
SECTION: EDITORIAL                PAGE: A-6  EDITION: METRO 

JUST WHAT GRAND FORKS NEEDS - MORE WATER IN THE RIVER

The Red River has inundated this North Dakota city. But the feds want $50 million to put more water into its tributaries.

THE DESTRUCTION of Grand Forks, N.D., reads more like the Old Testament than a collection of newspaper stories.

First there was flood. Then fire. What's next?

Maybe more water, courtesy of the federal government.

The Red River has been rampaging in Minnesota and the Dakotas for weeks now. In Grand Forks, the frigid floodwaters, now fouled by sewage, have turned streets into canals where traffic lights tell boats, not cars, to yield. Over the weekend, fire gutted three blocks of downtown. By Monday, three-fourths of the city was underwater; 90 percent of the city's 50,000 residents have fled. The University of North Dakota has sent its 11,000 students home and canceled classes for the rest of the semester.

The river was expected to crest Monday at 54 feet - 26 feet above flood stage.

Geography makes the Red River particularly prone to flooding. It flows north, so when ice in the south melts, the water is often blocked by ice downstream. The river cuts a shallow valley across one of the flattest expanses of land in the world. And as it flows north along the North Dakota border, the river gradient drops from 5 inches per mile to 1.5 inches per mile, according to Donald P. Schwert of North Dakota State University's Department of Geosciences.

Man has done his part, too. Woodlands and wetlands that once mitigated the effects of flooding have been converted to farmland.

So what's the last thing the people of Grand Forks need? Maybe this: A $50 million plan to put more water into the Red River. The Clinton administration is asking for the money to divert water from Devil's Lake, about 80 miles west of Grand Forks, into the Red's tributaries.

That proposal helped land the Red River of the North on the list of most-threatened rivers recently issued by the environmental group American Rivers.

American Rivers says Congress should reject the plan. We agree. After the water recedes and the streets of Grand Forks are once again dry, the government will have a more pressing use for that $50 million.

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