Devils Lake flooding deepens a decades long struggle

Well, hey there, I'm Eric Detheridge. And I'm Danielle Webster. Welcome back to Prairie Beat. Our weekly news podcast here at Prairie Public. It's been a couple of weeks since I've been on the beat, Danielle, and you were out of the office last week doing some traveling for, as I understand, the subject of today's episode. Yeah, let's just get into it here. We've had some reporting this summer about the rains and the flooding up in the Devils Lake Basin that continue to be an issue for that community after 33-plus years. I made some calls. I drove up there, and I talked to some folks about that. Alrighty, well, without further ado, here is that report. It's been a gradual progression of us losing roads, but what has happened this year is we lost our final, last and only road in and out of here. Fifteen years ago, Prairie Public produced a documentary series called Mother Nature in Charge. It was about the decades-long plight of the Doubles Lake Basin, which reached its most dramatic heights in 2011. What's happened in the years since is what's always happened. A couple of years of normal to lower precipitation levels drive the lake level down, and then another year or two of heavier rains and snowfall erase all that progress. Lather, rinse, repeat. As many of our listeners may know, I grew up in the Devils Lake region. I spent my childhood watching my grandparents get chased off their farm and my dad writing letters with aerial pictures to lawmakers asking for help. And we all felt helpless to watch as the lake ate up the basin road by road, acre by acre, farm by farm. The producers of our documentaries wanted me to sit and talk with my dad about that. We have about probably over 5,000 acres that are flooded. Most of the land I own is flooded. What do you remember of having to burn the house? It was emotional. My dad was not an emotional person. He kept it inside. I can still see him standing there, you know. He has since handed off the farm to the next generation. My brothers-in-law, Evan Shane Fish and Callan Freeman now own and operate Webster farms. After some heavy rains inundated the upper basin and began pushing the lake level to more painful brinks once again this summer, I made some calls and did some reporting, but then I drove up to see some of it for myself. Hopefully you can keep, do what you can to keep water off the fields, you know. But there's only so much you can do. It's kind of ultimately in God's hands and you just go with it. I used to drive these roads out to my grandparents' farm. Evan now takes them to maintain a 50-year-old tractor they're using to pump water off a section of land they've been trying to keep dry as the upper basin drains. What he's pumping onto went under 15 years ago. We put a stake in over here when the big rains came.

So we would know how much the lake's gone up or come down. Oh, over here. No matter who you talk to about the Devil's Lake Flood, everyone seems to agree the solution should be simple, but the reality, it's just not. When you zoom out, you realize it's a large basin and a large problem. Jeff Frith is manager of the Devils Lake Basin Joint Water Resource Board. He also serves on the Ramsey County Commission. All the water from basically the Canadian border up by St. John area over in the Turtle Mountains flows downhill towards Devil's Lake. And, you know, gravity brings the water down here. And then it has nowhere to go. So it pools and ponds and until it reaches a... a maximum elevation of 1,458 feet above sea level, and then it flows down the Tallna Cooley into the Cheyenne River. The Cheyenne River empties into the Red River, which flows north into Canada, emptying into Lake Winnipeg and eventually the Hudson Bay. And Frith says at just about every point along that route, you can encounter a question that needs to be answered before draining meaningful water off the top of Devil's Lake. There are state laws, questions of water quality and aquatic species, and even an international treaty with Canada that promises we won't unfairly inundate them with floodwater. Problems with the water in the Devil's Lake Basin can be traced back several generations, with each one facing that question of what to do. Frith has had this job for about 18 years. You know, the Devil's Lake joined board before I came on board here, had a plan in place to... I clean out the Tallinn to Cooley. And they were questioned about the legality of it, and they didn't want to be sued. They didn't want to find themselves in a legal battle. And so when I asked a former state representative about why something hadn't been done, he simply said the lack of political fortitude. And so it's, you know, and that's a tough thing for politicians to hear, but it came right from a politician's mouth was, you know, we just lacked the resolve to see it through to the end. Whether it be local, state, or federal officials, we should have maybe fought harder years ago. One thing's for sure. At this point, there's no going back. And this has meant everyone in the basin has had to make do with what they have. And what they have a lot of right now, of course, is water. For all the problems the water has caused the agricultural community, it has spurned a strong recreational economy. Susie Kenner is executive director for the Devil's Lake Department of Commerce and Tourism. Our economic direct spending for tourism in Ramsey County is $61 to $64 million a year. So when you look at it for us as a community, that direct spending for us in the community means a lot. It's probably our second largest industry.

behind agriculture. Kenner says many farmers who lost agricultural land to the lake were able to pivot and develop campgrounds and resorts. And she says they are enjoyed by local residents as much as anyone else who travels from far away. There's not a lot of places in... the United States or even in the state of North Dakota, where you can get off work at 5 o'clock, the family meet up at home, and you're having sandwiches and water skiing on the lake on a weeknight at 5.30. Or you can go out and fish or do whatever you want with those opportunities out on the lake. Kyle Blanchfield's grandparents bought their property in the 1940s, making their living farming and ranching. In 1988, he acquired it and took a chance on an idea for a resort. His grandmother's walkout basement became the Cove Restaurant, the pasture became a small campground, and four cabins were available to rent. In 1993, it started raining, and as Kyle puts it, they got chased up the hill a couple of times over the years. The restaurant is currently in its third location, and people travel from all over the country to stay at the Woodland Resort while they hunt and fish. You know, we've moved 22 buildings, some of the building. I was involved in 22 building moves. Some of the buildings were moved more than once, so I didn't move 22 buildings, but I was involved in 22. And not one of them is fun. Some of them are easier than others. Some of them are really, really tough, including my own parents' house, which was probably more emotionally difficult than cabins and restaurant buildings, stuff like that. But, you know, just do what do you do? Either you throw in the cards and say, I've quit, or you get, you know. tough up and deal with it. And we just had to deal with it. Blanchfield says his Norwegian stubbornness, along with belief and support from their local bank, is what kept his business afloat this whole time. And even though today the resort is built to withstand the lake at its highest possible level, he knows the community could not withstand it. A dam at the Tolnaculi completed in 2012 prevents the floodwater from spilling over into the Cheyenne River, which would spell catastrophe for everyone along that route. Two small outlets on the east and west ends of Devil's Lake can pump off water at a combined rate of 600 cubic feet per second. An evaporation is supposed to remove about 30 or so inches of water per year. But just ask any farmer, resort owner, or homeowner near the water. These solutions to mitigate the lake level do not keep up with water flowing into it. Blanchfield grew up north of Penn, North Dakota, a region where thousands of acres are currently inundated. And he says he knows how quickly progress can be erased. But, you know, we just had these big rains up in Edmore and up north of Kandu, five, six-inch rains. I mean, Mavi Kuli was traveling at 1,200 cubic feet per second. I mean, that's like the... I mean, that is a massive flow. It's probably one of the biggest flows I've ever seen. Even since, like, the 97 floods have flooded out at Grand Forrest. That's a ridiculous flow. So that can just tell you with a flip of a switch, you can either go into a drought or you can flip the switch, turn the faucet on, and we are struggling with too much water. I can't imagine what this area looks like at 1458. There'd be so much gone. It's hard to even imagine that.

I do think that... Representative Kathy Fraylick has represented District 15 in the state legislature, which includes the Devils Lake Basin, since her election in 2022. We met at a local coffee shop in Devils Lake where I asked her about her efforts to move the needle on more solutions for the community. Like Jeff Frith, she says, political fortitude is hard to come by in Bismarck. But she does have some ideas. Landowners by and large have no mechanism to be made whole when their farms are taken by the flood. That's because due to North Dakota's sovereign lands law, despite the land being in their name and a property tax bill they're expected to pay, that land officially now belongs to the state of North Dakota. It applies to all land under navigable water and below the ordinary high watermark. But Freelik says these laws are written with rivers in mind, not closed basin lakes. So the bill that I was introducing to our committee basically excludes patent land that was given prior to statehood, excludes that from the sovereign land act, which means that the state can't claim ownership to it. Now that in itself is going to be a huge ask. And there's already questions because of all the lawsuits that have already occurred. But when you look at those lawsuits, they're all surrounding rivers and not lakes. So my thought is... is that, yes, okay, if we're going to take, if this is going to go to court, if the legislature can pass this, and it means this is going to go to the Supreme Court, let the judges decide, and let's see if they believe that the state owns this land or not. Freelik says it's a heavy lift in the legislature because changing those definitions could open a can of legal worms across the state, but it's still worth asking the question. Despite the success of the tourism industry, it does not make up for the lost revenue due to agriculture sector losses. An economic impact study by NDSU in 2011 found annual losses at that time in the $200 million range every year. Freelik and others I spoke with all wished there was more engagement from North Dakota's executive branch of government. I did reach out to Governor Kelly Armstrong's office for comment, but did not receive a response before publishing this report. When I sat down with my dad 15 years ago for Prairie Public's documentaries about the flood, he expressed frustration, but also determination. Just by nature, if you're a farmer, you're kind of an optimist, and you always try to. look at the bright side and stuff. I never thought it would get this bad. I always thought that the powers of B would do something to not let it get this bad. And I'm losing faith. For now, the only thing they can do is what they've been doing. Evan says he plans to do exactly that. Do you have any hope of ever farming this part ever again, like right here?

Yeah, I think the lake would have to go down about three to four feet before we could get this back. And then what do you have to do to it before you can farm it? We'd have to pump it all off. We'd have to fix that road, make it. good enough to hold water and then we'd have to pump and it'd take a lot of money but it would we'd have to pump all this water off which we've done it before so I mean we could do it but it could happen again but the lake could have to go down probably four feet so you have like a foot freeboard before you could pump over and save the save it but yeah it could be done Well, Danielle, what a multi-layered issue. I know that's one that's close to your heart. You can hear the emotion, especially in your dad's voice, but everybody's voices. Everybody has a stake up there. The state has a stake. We all have a stake in this issue, and you really boil it down to plain language and help us understand it better. Well, thank you. Yeah, it is a complicated, hard question for pretty much everybody involved, and it's going to require. More people asking hard questions and doing hard work to try to figure it out. I think they can. Well, we're lucky we could tap into your expertise, your homespun expertise up there at Devil's Lake. So I'm sure you will be literally on the beat on this subject in the future. Absolutely. All right, that's it for this week's edition of Prairie Beat. We'll see you next week. I'm Eric Dethrich. And I'm Danielle Webster. We'll see you on the beat next week.