Wow take a step back people.... Both Fargo and Grand Forks are about to face another major flood fight that will need to involve the cooperation of a lot of volunteers, childish bickering will not help anyone. In 1997 both cities fought very hard to build temporary dikes with the purpose of holding the water back. The objective of a dike is to keep water out of peoples homes, when homes were lost, the dike 'failed 'plain and simple. Based on the laws of physics there is only so much water that can be held back by temporary dikes/levees. My family and I lived on the river in Fargo, we with the help of many people sandbagged and put up quite a fight, however we lost/'failed'. Some of our neighbors dikes were high enough, however they still lost their homes when thier basement floors imploded from the pressure of the vast amounts of water they were surrounded by. Sometimes no matter how hard you try there just isn't anything you can do. Most of Fargo got lucky, many homes/neighborhoods were spared by a matter of inches.
In Grand Forks, many were not so lucky. The dike/levees in place failed to hold back the flood. GF had to deal with a lot more water (the river runs north, so all the water from that was in Fargo, plus all the snow melting/overland water north of Fargo will eventually end up in GF) but no one is saying that Grand Forks didn't fight as hard, or that they somehow 'deserved' to lose. That is absurd, I've lost a home and can tell you it is something that no one should ever have to go through.
Pure and simple from a pratical/monetary standpoint there was much more damage done in GF, so at the time in order to rebuild (which the people of Grand Forks did a phenomenal job of, by the way) it was clear that a large, permanent solution was needed and so Federal and state money was spent in Grand Forks. Grand Forks built permanent flood protection, that was necessary and will now protect people and thier homes in many future years. There wasn't enough money at the time to do the same in Fargo, it is now becoming clear that these extreme floods are not a "one in a hundred, or one in five hundred year floods" and more permanent flood protection needs to be built in Fargo as well and that federal money will be needed to do so. Walaker (who if you remeber was in charge of public works and did a great job in the 1997 flood) was merely trying to point out the need for money to build long-term protection so that sandbagging (which doesn't always work, and costs a lot both in monetary and manpower terms) will not be needed every time the river rises.
