The city of Fargo is a potential consumer of an Ecosystem Service Market for upstream water storage and evapotranspiration.

We are well positioned to collaborate with both other towns and land owners within the Red River watershed to create a supply of ecosystem services, primarily but not exclusively for flood control. There are three parts to this proposal:

Work with small towns throughout the Red River valley to retain their stormwater runoff. These can have the ancillary benefit of beautifying the towns as rain gardens and vernal pools. This could possibly just entail a gentleman's agreement to control the runoff, or a sharing of flood control dollars for same.

Purchase land easements around fields for water retention to enlarge the ditches throughout the Red River basin for water retention. If done when the county roads are reconstructed, it will be is a relatively inexpensive partial solution to storm water management. This does not (necessarily entail retaining water in the fields themselves. This will result in lenthening the water runoff/ snow melt into the red river during our peak flood events. The farmer gets fair market value for the land during years when s/he cannot plant. Relatively cheap and everybody wins.

Rent (long lease) land 35'-70' easements along all the tributaries of the Red River for use as buffer zones. Plant poplar trees in these easements. Poplar trees can uptake 100 gallons of water/ day, creating more storage in the soil micropores in the spring by evapotranspiring water from the soil during wet autumn rains. If the soil isnt saturated during our spring snow melts, it will soak in the ground like a sponge. Soil can hold 7x the amount of water as can above ground storage. (Think about all that storage!)

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