Once inundated by the floodof the century, a Minnesota

golf course embraces anunusual solution.

Warren Strandell

With the newly constructed dike in the background,junior golfers enjoy the game at Valley Golf Course

in East Grand Forks, Minn.Photos courtesy of Valley GC

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A movie about the restructured Valley Golf Course in EastGrand Forks, Minn., might be titled "A Dike Runs Through It." Thetheme song could be "Over the Levee and Through the Woods."

Located along the banks of the often volatile Red River of the North,a large dike now does actually run through the golf course. On twoholes, you either tee off from the top of that massive levee or you playover it. On another, you play alongside it.

Interesting? For sure. But there's more. Nine golf holes have been aban-doned, just left to return to whatever nature deems. A completely new ninehas been constructed and put into play on an adjacent site that has severalman-made lakes and provides some 200 upscale building lots.

How all of this has come about - and why - is a story that began inApril 1997 when the north-flowing river topped its banks in what histo-rians say (and u.s. Weather Service records prove) was the "flood of thecentury."

That event has been like a stopgap in time - it changed everything.Residents now refer to the timing of all events as either "pre-flood" or "post-flood." Between East Grand Forks and Grand Forks, its larger North Dakotacounterpart on the other side of the Red River (where several downtownbuildings burned out of control when firefighters couldn't get to them be-

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hundreds. The community iscoming back stronger thanever. The main feature of thisresurrection, which has be-come the federal government'smodel for disaster recovery, isa $410 million flood-protec-tion project. Built by the U.S.Army Corps of Engineers,the giant ring dikes that willsoon completely encircle both

Grand Forks and East Grand Forks on their separate sides ofthe river are designed to protect the two communities from upto a 500-year frequency flood.

Levee alignmentBut not everything has fallen into place without a problem.

For Valley GC, the preliminary alignment for the protectivelevee was a real issue. With only one of the 18 holes to be com-pletely on the dry side of the structure, the golf course was tobe acquired as a part of the flood comrol project. As a part ofthat process, the appraised value of course, which amountedto the cost of replacing it, was set at $2.25 million. But insteadof taking the payoff and going out to start all over at someother site, the Valley membership thought there had to be an-other solution.

"Having the entire golf course be taken for the project wasunacceptable to the membership," according to Greg Boppre,an engineer with the local Floan Sanders engineering firm and

vaIley Goff ColJ.r.r~

4rrCamd Forks, J,/l'l

cause of the 4-foot-deep water in the streets), almost 60,000people were forced to evacuate their homes.

As the top news story of the time, the ugly combination offlood and fire was viewed on television by the entire countryfor several days. President Clinton and a host of other govern-ment officials visited the communities to offer their encour-agement and help in recovery.

Of the 9,000 East Grand Forks residents evacuated, some1,500 made that departure permanent. With their homesdestroyed, they just moved on. The flooding in East GrandForks was so pervasive that only eight houses escaped somelevel of flooding. In all, more than 460 homes were damagedto the extent that they had to be razed. About 30 businessproperties met the same fate. At the time, Mayor Lynn Staussquipped that the often-used EGF acronym for the city's namereally stood for "everyone got flooded."

But a dynamic rebuilding effort has been under way forthe past several years, and new residents are moving in by the

Their time is up.Starts working in hours-even minutes.

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92 GeM May 2007

a member of the board of directors of Valley Gc. "That waswhen HDR was brought in to study possible alternatives."

A large national architecture and engineering firm, HDRassigned senior landscape architect Martin Krueger fromits Dallas office, along with staff from the company's ThiefRiver Falls, Minn., and Minneapolis satellite offices, to dothe study.

"The Corps' preliminary levee alignment," Krueger notes,"ran right through the middle of the existing golf course andwould have destroyed several holes. Our job was to determinethe best location for the levee while minimizing its impacton playability of the course and on neighboring residentialproperties."

From his experience with various aspects of planning anddesign of more than 50 golf courses throughout the UnitedStates and in 12 foreign countries, Krueger was able to an-ticipate how varying alignments would affect the course.Krueger and the HDR engineers developed three alternativesfor levee alignments and golf course routings based on the hy-draulic models, the load-bearing capacities of the existing soiland cost estimates for the earthwork that would be requiredfor the construction of the levees.

The first two alternatives focused on minimizing damagefrom the levee while keeping the course in its existing loca-tion. The third involved a proposal to use additional off-siteland that had been acquired as a part of the flood-controlproject to serve as a "borrow pit" for levee construction.

Best alternativeThis plan called for abandoning nine of the most flood-

prone holes on the existing course, renumbering the remain-ing holes and creating a "new nine" on the adjacent 160-acreborrow pit site.

"We looked into how we could make a connection fromthe existing course to the new piece of property," Kruegersays. "We also conducted extensive cost-modeling studies formoving and reconstructing putting greens, changing fairwaysand making other necessary revisions, including how thelevee construction activity would impact the course's revenue.Based on the analysis, this third alternative provided the bestcombination of cost-effective flood control and minimal dis-ruption to ongoing golf course operations,"

With the Corps, the city and golf club membership inagreement, the plan went forward. Nine of the course's 18holes, those most susceptible to flooding, were abandoned.Nine were saved. The new nine, constructed on the adjacentland, was financed by the $2.25 million mitigation paymentto the golf course for damages caused by the levee project.

With a striking difference between the two nine-holelayouts, blending the new with the old hasn't exactly been aseamless marriage. One features fairways and greens that werecarved out of an area of thousands of large elm, cottonwoodand oak trees. In addition to their beauty, the trees providesignificant protection from the elements. By contrast, the newnine has a St. Andrews-like links terrain and is built aroundseveral small, man-made lakes.

After playing through the protected, heavily wooded envi-ronment of the original nine, golfers now cross a road to therolling new layout, which by comparison, is void of any largetrees and features the man-made lakes along with a buddingresidential development. With its contrasting looks and fea-tures, Valley GC stockholder-members, who first began play-ing the new nine last August, are predicting that the coursewill soon become the feature layout of the area.

Among the many boosters is Boppre. "The people justlove the new nine; the stockholders are really happy with it,"he says. "It will have the links look until the trees mature.Trees were the real beauty of the golf course before the floodchanged everything. Now we have the big, mature trees onthe original nine and will have the links look on the new ninefor a few years until the young trees that have been replantedthere mature."

A flooded historyThrough the years, member-owned Valley GC has been

subjected to flood damage on a nearly regular basis. But otherthan major-event floodings such as the one that inundated theentire town in 1997, spring flooding usually is not a problembecause the grass on the fairways and greens is still dormantwhen the river spills its banks. In a normal year, there wasn'tmuch more to getting the course back into top shape in thespring than to pick up debris left behind.

However, a big summer rain event can be disastrous. Flood-ing then kills the grass. When that occurs, reseeding's cost and

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They can crawl, but they can't hide.No buffer zones to worry about.

May 2007 GeM 93

disruption causes large revenue losses. Although not a regularoccurrence, summer flooding has happened often enough tokeep the course from reaping the rewards that would allow itto take that next step toward excellence. With the restructuredcourse now, much of that problem should be avoided.

Community volunteers, who formed the Valley Golf orga-nization in 1970, built the original nine holes. The first pres-ident of the group, Gary Sanders, a civil engineer and avidgolfer, personally designed the course on river land that hadonce been a hog farm and, among others things, the deposi-tory for 50 or more junked cars. When it was done using thesite as a borrow pit for material to elevate the city's cemetery,the city turned the land over to the golf course group on a no-cost, long-term lease.

After using $20,000 of its $65,000 budget to purchaseadditional land from an area farmer (bringing the site to 91acres), not much was available for construction. The biggestexpense was the clearing that had to be done to create thefairways through the heavily wooded area. The greens werebuilt by club members from a mixture of sand, peat and blackdirt. A few members personally put in a water system. Whenthe course opened for play in the summer of 1972, the golf carshed doubled as the pro shop.

As the Valley Golf organization emerged from its meagerbeginning and was able to put a few bucks aside, a secondnine was added (following, of all things, an earlier flood that

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destroyed six homes in an adjacent area). After ac-quiring the property for the purpose of clearingthose homes out of the flood plain, the city gavethe land to the golf course on another long-termlease. The club then purchased additional farm-land at the opposite end of the course and em-

I barked on the expansion to 18 holes. The secondnine opened in 1985. With a new clubhouse thatopened in 1987 and other improvements that wereregularly put into place, the course was doing well

despite its battles with floods.

Excavated material stockpiledThe idea of constructing a new nine on the adjacent land

came about as an alternative to the plan that would have re-moved about 4 feet of dirt from the quarter-section of farm-land to provide material for the final segment of levee con-struction. Instead, Krueger worked with project managersfrom the Corps to gather the needed material by digging afew man-made lakes. The 170,000 cubic yards of material re-moved to create the lakes was then stockpiled for the finalphase of levee construction.

Golf course contractor United Golf of Tulsa, Okla., thesuccessful bidder for construction of the course, started mov-ing dirt in the summer of 2003. "It was tough that first sum-mer because the material was wet when you went down just afew feet," says Mike Webb, project manager and an owner ofthe firm. "There was actually water coming out of the groundduring part of the work.

"Our goal was to go up there and move all the dirt the firstyear; get the course rough-shaped, top-soiled and the drainagesystem formed. Then go back the next spring to complete thefine-shaping and build all the greens, bunkers and put in theirrigation system. It went really well. Dakota Peat & Equip-ment was a great help. Not only did they help in getting thesand and doing the blending for the greens, but they also let

They've never seen anything like it.New mode of action catches them off guard.

94 GeM May 2007

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us use a machine to spread the sand in the traps. They werealways there when I needed something."

The water source for the irrigation system is the river. FloanSanders engineering firm worked with HDR irrigation consul-tant Terry Little to design a system that draws water from theriver and transfers it to an existing pond on the original nine.In the plan, a new transfer pipe crosses the old course to alake on the new course where the irrigation well is located. Allof the lakes are interconnected by a series of buried pipes. Sowhen the irrigation system is activated, it draws down from allthe lakes, making displacement of water look less severe thanif it were all taken from one lake.

A county ditch also has been diverted to direct local drain-age into the lakes, which will serve as storm-retention pondsfor drainage inside the levee system during a flood. "We canstore stormwater in the golf course lakes as part of the city'soverall stormwater conveyance system," Krueger says of themore than 60-million-gallon storage capacity. "And in stormconditions, the lakes will be connected to a pump station thatcan transfer the water to the other side of the levee."

The new nine holes and lakes take up about 60 acres ofthe parcel. The remaining 100 or so acres are in the city's newWaters Edge residential subdivision.

Slice controlledKrueger's golf course design takes into account the fact

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that more than 95 percent of golfers are right-handed and thatthe majority of them slice the ball when they hit it.

"We've arranged the new holes so that most errant shotswill land on another hole rather than on someone's home or intheir backyard," Krueger says.

Dakota Peat & Equipment was instrumental in develop-ment of the new holes. Besides providing the peat, the compa-ny's involvement included working with Krueger in selectinga sand source for the greens that exceeded all USGA specifi-cations. Sister company Dakota Analytical, one of only a fewlaboratories in the country with the American Associationfor Laboratory Accreditation (A2LA), provided testing forthe 90-10 putting greens mix materials, and Dakota Blend-ing, another sister company, did the blending. Dakota Peat &Equipment also provided equipment used to deliver sand forthe bunkers.

Good weather allowed almost all of the work in construct-ing the levee through the course to be completed in fall of2005. The completion of the irrigation installation and thegrow-in were uneventful, and the entire course was playablefor the 2006 season, thanks to some strategic placement ofgolf car paths that allowed the golfers to play around the newlyseeded levee.

"We only have about six months to make our money, so wecan't afford to shut down for a month or two while the grassgrows in," says Scott Eggers, course superintendent and gen-

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eral manager. "If we did, it would really hurt our budget."But what really hurt was another flood last spring - a 47-

footer that put three holes under water, deposited quite a bit ofsilt and set the golf season back about five weeks.

Nevertheless, the club's golfers enjoyed the somewhatshortened season and the "added character" the levee gives thecourse, says Eggers, a two-year GCSAA member. The club-house has been moved to higher ground, the golf car pathshave been hard-surfaced and a new driving range has beencompleted for the 2007 season.

Eggers and his crew have planted nearly 200 trees already,with 75 to 100 more scheduled to go in this year.

The club's five-year plan calls for the pushup greenson the original nine holes to be reconstructed to USGArecommendations.

Over the leveeThe effect of play over the levee on the hole where it's a fac-

tor won't be as readily noticeable as it may sound, accordingto Sanders, who remains a key member of Valley GC. "Thedesign provides a gradual rise of the fairway to the top of thedike height, and the landscape shaping, trees and shrub prac-tices help to minimize it," he says. "Without those features,which were developed by John Fisher of the Corps of Engi-neers, you would have a blind hole. The levee is almost 10 feet

tall in that area."Having the tee box on the top of the levee on the other

hole directly affected will only provide for a nice view, Sand-ers says.

The construction of the new nine holes also provides a sig-nificant economic benefit to the community, he notes.

"The planning that was done 30 to 40 years ago did notaddress expansion of the city into this area and, with the highcost of extending infrastructure, development there wasn'tlikely to happen anytime soon without the golf course," hesays. "Now, with city services in place, some 200 lots havebeen developed. We can't build near the river any more, sothat's out. This area represents much of what is available nowfor new upscale housing."

As last year's flood proved, much of the course on the "wetside" of the dike will continue to be susceptible to spring flood-ing, Eggers says, but adds, "The spring floods we can deal with.The summer flooding that would kill us will now be a thing ofthe past. And with the new nine, all the makings of a dynamic,new golf course are in place."

Warren Strandell is a free-lance writer living in East Grand Forks, Minn.

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98 GeM May 2007