North Broadway motorists will be detoured for 10 days next month due to work related to Minot’s flood protection project.

The contractor, Park Construction, plans a full intersection closure of Broadway and Fourth Avenue Northwest, near Sammy’s Pizza, for about 10 days from May 12 to May 21 to lay water and sewer utilities and place storm sewer lines to the new Broadway pump station. This will be followed by about two months of head-to-head, north and south traffic – with east and west traffic halted – at the intersection to complete concrete paving. The intersection would become fully operational again on about July 19.

Public Works Director Dan Jonasson said the contractor has asked for closure to shorten the overall time of roadway disruption.

“If we don’t allow this, we’re going to see head-to-head traffic, one lane each direction, until December of this year, starting the first part of May,” Jonasson said. “Allowing him to close it for eight to 10 days completely, that will decrease that, so we will see head-to-head traffic until about July 19, and then it will be open fully.

“We thought it was well worth the pain that we’re going to have to go through and the residents are going to have to suffer,” he told the Minot City Council Monday.

The timing of the closure was set to fall between the graduation ceremonies of Minot State University and Minot High School. Access will be maintained to the businesses and church in the area.

“We’ve looked long and hard at how to detour the traffic. Initially, we’re going to try to catch all truck traffic coming from the south on Highway 83 and route them on the bypass,” Jonasson said. Local truck traffic will be encouraged to use 16th Street.

Other local traffic in town will be routed to the west on Sixth and 16th Streets primarily but also to Third Street on the east.

At the same time, there will be head-to-head traffic occurring on a portion of what normally is four lanes of 16th Street. Near the Minot Water Treatment Plant, another closure structure is needed similar to the structure on the south side of the river. During construction from about mid-May until the end of August, traffic on 16th Street will be one lane in each direction so the structure can be built half at a time.

In other flood protection construction, the levee and pump station project in the Napa Valley phase and the project from 16th Street, along Forest Road to the Canadian Pacific Railroad bridge, are scheduled for completion this fall. The Perkett storm water pump station is scheduled to go online in July.

Pending legislation continues the state’s intent to provide $193 million in funding over eight years for the Minot portion of the flood protection project. In the coming biennium, the bill proposes spending $82.5 million.

“That’s one of the largest appropriations that we’ve seen from the Legislature so far for the flood protection,” Jonasson said.