Council seeks option to ensure company’s flood protection
It’s back to the drawing board for a portion of the MI-8/MI-9 segment of the flood control project in southeast Minot. A cost-saving measure in the proposed design that ends levee construction before reaching a major commercial property gave Minot City Council members pause at their meeting Monday.
Tim Smith, owner of a multi-million dollar oil field service company, said his company moved into the vacant Cloverdale property in 2018, which he fully acquired in 2023 with the understanding it would always be flood protected. His frac sand hauling company makes a significant impact on Minot with 54 full-time employees and an average salary of $78,000, he said.
“And we continue to grow. I’ll probably grow 20-30% this year, and we’ll hire more people,” he said. “I’ve hired all local people. We buy here. We spend money here. We make a big difference to this community.”
Jerry Bents with Houston Engineering, who presented the latest design update for council consideration, said the original plan showed the Cloverdale property would be protected by a new levee.
As the project design advanced to its current 60% complete, it was discovered a large drainage field runs through the south end of MI-9, requiring water be diverted along Valley Street or a pump station built. An option was proposed to halt levee construction north of Eighth Avenue and tie in to the west at 15th Street rather than continue south, Bents said.
“Our basis of the change here was economic in nature. It was the $4.5 million savings that came with the revised plan,” Bents said.
The frac sand company is not considered to be in the 100-year flood plain, but its property had required protection from an emergency levee in 2011. In event of another flood on the scale of 2011, an emergency levee would be constructed, Bents said.
Smith said the current project design would push water onto his property in a flood. His wife, Jodi Smith, also raised concerns about a temporary levee.
“Certainly, we can do that to save the property, but that’s not going to help our business,” she said. “That temporary levee would shut our business down.”
A temporary levy would prohibit trucks from parking and navigating from the yard as needed and would interfere with use of the building’s mechanic bays. The economic cost to the company along with the cost to the city of building a levee, mitigating the flood and taking the levee down would exceed the $4.5 million in savings, she said.
Council member Rob Fuller, who previously has protested the cost of the flood project, argued the city has a responsibility to the Smiths, who invested in a property planned for protection.
“Of all the times that I’ve sat up here and said we shouldn’t spend the money, I’m going to sit here and say this time we should spend the money. It’s the right thing to do. It’s what we’ve told him we would do for over eight years. How do we go ahead and change that now and leave him hanging?” Fuller said.
The $4.5 million cost estimate would largely be paid with state assistance. About $1.57 million would be local share from city sales tax.
Council member Lisa Olson moved to table the latest project design for two weeks to give engineers time to see if they can come up with a better plan.
Bents agreed to the time frame for a design review. He said based on the Smiths’ description of the impact of the proposed design, engineering assumptions need to be reconsidered and any adjustments will change the costs. The Smiths had been unable to attend a public meeting at which engineers met with property owners to discuss impacts.
The council voted 6-0 to table the project design.