FM Area Diversion Project

Fargo has been fighting the Red River for a century. The 2009 crest hit 40.8 feet, a 50-year event the city held off with sandbags and volunteers. The $3.2 billion FM Area Diversion is the answer that doesn’t ask anyone to stack bags in March.

Project Scope

The program splits into two pieces under two owners. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, St. Paul District is building the 20-mile Southern Embankment, a dry dam that holds water upstream of the metro. The Metro Flood Diversion Authority is delivering the 30-mile Stormwater Diversion Channel west of Fargo through a public-private partnership with Red River Valley Alliance, a consortium of ACCIONA, Shikun & Binui USA and North American Construction Group. ASN Constructors, the design-build arm of that consortium, holds the channel contract.

The channel runs roughly 20 feet deep and 200 to 300 feet wide at the bottom. Excavation totals about 45 million cubic yards, more than 40 million of which had been moved by February 2026. Nineteen crossings carry county roads, an interstate and railroads over the cut, and seventeen were open to traffic by early 2026. Two river aqueducts carry the Maple and the Sheyenne over the channel like highway overpasses. Both are heated, so fish passage survives a North Dakota winter. Ames Construction built the Wild Rice River Structure and is finishing the Red River Structure, which stands more than 70 feet tall and 200 feet wide with three gates measuring 52 by 50 feet, fabricated in Mississippi and Alabama and craned into place in pieces.

Why It Matters

This is the first public-private partnership ever executed on a Corps-overseen project and the first water-management P3 in North America. The Diversion Authority says the structure delivered the work roughly a decade sooner and about $330 million cheaper than design-bid-build would have, and Red River Valley Alliance carries a 30-year operations and maintenance obligation paid through availability payments.

The system protects about 235,000 people to a 100-year event, with fightable protection to a 500-year flood. FEMA recertification of the floodplain is expected to strip roughly $40 million a year out of local flood insurance premiums. ASN runs the channel 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with a peak workforce near 800 and an apprenticeship program logging more than 450,000 training hours. Substantial completion is targeted for 2027, in time for that spring’s flood season.

Project Team & Details