AP News, June 6th, 2007
Students practiced their dances and songs between sandbagging relays outside their performing arts school, where the rising Red River threatened to flood the area.
"I thought I would get a lot of experience with this internship, but I didn't know that sandbagging would be part of it," North Dakota State University student Laura Beauchamp said, smiling.
While volunteers worked at Trollwood Performing Arts School, the Army Corps of Engineers finished building a dike early Wednesday to protect low-lying areas downtown.
Swollen from heavy rain over the past week, the north-flowing Red is expected to rise about 4 feet in Fargo each day, before cresting at 33 feet on Friday. Flood stage in the city is 18 feet. The river had risen to about 27 feet early Wednesday.
Fargo officials said they knew of no homes in danger. Park District officials were preparing to move the Roger Maris golf tournament and the celebrity fundraiser if the city's Edgewood Golf Course floods. The entire course would be flooded at 33 feet.
The city has asked the Army Corps of Engineers to study the feasibility of a downtown floodwall that would eliminate the need for a temporary dike every time the Red is predicted to rise above 30 feet.
"It seems like we do this every year," said Dean Bellin, the school's director. "We've gotten really good at it, unfortunately."
Trollwood has been raising money for years for a site farther from the river, and groundbreaking is scheduled next week in neighboring Moorhead, Minn. "This (flooding) is the main reason we need to move," Bellin said.
