OUR OPINION: Generous compensation for affected residents
“That’s not true in the Fargo-Moorhead proposal, which calls for ring dikes around some bedroom communities and the diversion of floodwater from land that Fargo hopes to develop to a vast “storage area” further south.
Real towns, real families and real farms will be affected by these developments. Actually, “affected” isn’t the right word. These friends and neighbors will be hurt — many financially, many emotionally by having to pull up roots, say goodbye to lifetime friends and move.
If the project goes through, then the emotional hurt will be unavoidable. But the financial pain is one that governments can and must ease. As a condition of lending their support to the Fargo-Moorhead diversion, residents of the northern valley should insist on generous compensation for those who’ll lose their homes or any use of their land.
That’s the way each of us would hope to be treated if we were in that situation. It’s the treatment we should demand for those in the path of the diversion, too.”
Grand Forks Herald 24 November 2013.