- Hello, and welcome to Prairie Pulse.

Coming up a little bit later in the show, we'll take a look back at the twin cities' street car strike of 1917.

But first, our guest joining us now is Todd Sando, the soon-to-be retired North Dakota State Engineer.

Todd, thanks so much for joining us today.

- Thank you.

- As we get started, tell the folks a little bit about yourself, your background, maybe where you're originally from.

- Okay, I'm a North Dakota native so I actually grew up in Bismark-Mandan here, went on to college at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks and then started my career at the State Water Commission back in 1985.

- Okay, well you started there, but how did you become State Engineer?

- Well, there's many steps along he way.

Actually I started serving for the Water Commission as a summer interim position and then I was hired full time as an engineer and went through the process of becoming a registered professional engineer and did a lot of engineering projects around the state and moved into management.

As my career continued to move forward, got promoted and I finally at one point became the State Engineer.

- Okay, with that said though, you're soon-to-retired at this, why are you retiring now, just going to the next chapter in your life, or what?

- I have worked for over 31 years at one location for the North Dakota State Water Commission and I have accomplished a lot and our agency has accomplished a lot over the years and it's just at that point in my career that I want a new chapter in my life and go through some new doors and kind of slow it down a little bit and catch my breath.

It's been a very hectic pace in water in our state.

- Well, we want to get to different issues.

But for just a moment here, let's look back at your career and some of the issues you've dealt with.

But how difficult is it to deal with the water issues?

- Water management in North Dakota is very complicated, because it's boom or bust in this part of the world.

We're in the middle of a continent so we're sometimes very, very dry and when we get moisture, it's probably coming all the way from the Gulf of Mexico or from the Pacific Coast, so our average is made up of real dry spells and really wet spells.

So when you're right in the geographic center of a continent it's hard to manage your water.

- Well, Todd, I don't know all farmers tell me they've either got too little or too much.

It's never perfect, I guess.

But with that said, let's talk about Devils Lake.

Devils Lake, the rise and fall of that over time, you've been around for.

It had to be a hard issue to deal with.

It seems like now the levels are starting to go down.

Is that in part due to some of the pumps that were put in?

- Yeah, we've come up with a solution to help alleviate the situation and really Devils Lake has been rising since the drought of the 30s.

So really from 1940 on it's been on the rise.

And when we got in the real wet period from 1980 on the lake went up tens of feet.

So back in the 2000s we started to try and find ways to get water out of Devils Lake.

So we constructed a temporary emergency outlet out the west end in 2005 and that became operational.

That just couldn't keep up with Mother Nature.

We're living the wettest of wet periods we've ever lived through in this area.

And so we came up with some other ideas, how to even get more water out of the lake.

So after the 2011 flood, we built a second oulet out the east end of Devils Lake.

So since 2012 we've been operating two outlets and the lake has come down over four feet since the peak in 2011.

So 40,000 acres that was underwater during the 2011 flood is now back to farm land and back into use.

- You said 40,000.

- 40,000.

- 40,000 acres, but was it hard watching land owners lose their livelihood during that time?

And unfortunately a lot of that criticism was pointed toward your department.

- Oh yeah, a lot of floods, it's people if they get impacted by a flood they still have their job that they can go to.

Maybe where they live that's in jeopardy or something like that, where these land owners, it was where they lived and where they made their living.

So of all disasters, Devils Lake has been the toughest disaster to deal with because of the heart ache and the suffering that they've gone through as the lake continues to rise from the lows in 1940.

- But as that land is now being reclaimed and now farmable again, does the landowner automatically take that land back over or how does that work?

Or is that something you don't deal with and is very much dependent upon how the state works with the landowner?

- Yeah, as the water recedes again the landowners have control of their land.

It's just as the lake goes up, the ordinary high water mark moves and then the public interest comes into play.

But when it goes back down, the riparian landowner controls that land.

- Okay, well let's move over to Minot.

Obviously, Devils Lake was very tough issue, there's been dealings there you talked about.

What kind of flood mitigation has happened since their big flood?

- Yeah, Minot endured their flood of record in 2011 so it'll be five years this summer since that took place and we've been very busy in trying to provide some relief in not just Minot, but the whole Souris River loop when the water comes in at Sherwood and goes back out into Canada at Westhope.

And we've been working on studies and engineering and projects to help with the flood situation there.

- I know there was a lot of talk during that time.

Was the situation avoidable in terms of what happened in Canada with the heavy rains and such?

- Actually it was Mother Nature the mono-precipitation that occurred from Montana all the way up in Saskatchewan that created the flood of record for both the Missouri River and for the Souris River, also known as the Mouse River in North Dakota.

So it was record rainfalls in May and June that caused the flooding so it really was unavoidable because of the situation of mono-precipitation and mono runoff.

It was many times greater than any records.

We lived through the wettest time period ever this last six or seven years.

- So now we talked a little bit about Devils Lake and about Minot, but you mentioned Mother Nature a couple of times.

I mean, no matter how much planning your department does and works on, Mother Nature's still Mother Nature.

- That's right, and a lot of times our development like Minot and Fargo and wherever, Grafton Valley City, Grand Forks, Bismark, Mandan, it was times of a drier time period so a lot of people are built in places that are in harm's way.

So we really have to look at ways to protect people now that the climate has been much wetter than what it was when we settled here.

- What other issues besides water is your department involved with?

- Well, there's so many aspects.

Not only do we develop water projects, we regulate and manage all the water resources in our state.

One of the big issues has been with the Bakken, so water rights and appropriating temporary water permits in lieu of irrigation permits to allow fracking to take place.

If it wasn't for water, there wouldn't be fracking, there wouldn't be oil and we wouldn't have the economy that we've had or the money that we've had to deal with in our state.

So we've been heavily involved with the water depots and granting water rights for people temporarily and permanently to help address the water needs in western North Dakota.

Water is the key, water is the key to everything, not only to the Bakken and the oil industry, it's the key to coal fire plants, it's the key to the egg processing plants, it's the key to everything.

- Well, with that said, and you mentioned Fargo, do you think the Fargo diversion will ever get done and should it get done?

- The Fargo diversion flood control is an absolute necessity for our people in the Red River Valley.

Most our people live east of I-29 and our biggest metropolitan area is the Fargo area.

So there's definitely a need.

One of the issues there is not only the Red River but there's so many other rivers that flow in right by Fargo and West Fargo, so you've got to deal with the Wild Rice River, the Maple River, the Cheyenne River, the Rush River.

So all those head towards Fargo and West Fargo so there's a definite need for flood protection.

They skirted flood disasters in 2009, 2010, 2011, in 1997.

They haven't had the disaster like Grand Forks or like Minot but they were on the verge.

So there's definitely a need to provide flood protection for such a populated area.

- Do you think that with every dry spring we've had recently that people become a little more complacent and think that, oh well, we don't really need it right now?

But I think you said, it's a necessity.

- It really is a necessity to provide flood protection and human safety for people.

People might become complacent but all the sudden you can get big rainfall events and you're right back into the situation so it's not very far in the back of people's minds.

These floods have been very devastating and really have scarred a lot of people and affected people so they know the importance of providing flood protection and safety for our people.

- How closely does your department work with the National Weather Service?

- Yeah with the National Weather Service we work with them a lot and Emergency Operations.

I mean they're the official forecasters but we have a lot of experience in hydrology and hydraulics and those areas.

So we work hand in hand with the weather service especially trying to forecast Devils Lake levels or runoff from rain fall type events.

But the weather service is the official forecaster and we rely heavily on them to help us when we try to provide flood protection or design projects.

- Well, so with that said, you somewhat said you get involved with forecasting, so there you go.

Are we in a dry spell right now and do you foresee that continuing?

- Well, earlier this spring it looked like a dry spell, but April in many parts of the state have been well above normal precipitation so I'm sure the drought monitor is going to show that lots of areas of the state are not technically in a drought.

So we're teetering between wet and dry.

We've come from this wet cycle moving towards dry.

Who knows, we might move into a drought period.

You really don't know until you're well into it that you're in a drought.

- Well, you mentioned the Bakken.

So tell us more about delivering that adequate water supply to the Bakken.

How big an issue is that and especially with the downturn in the oil industry out there.

Is it still an issue and will it continue to be?

- Oh yeah, it's been an issue during the whole time period so we've been providing temporary water permits to meet the need.

Also, a lot of times the water's not in the right places so we've been helping fund water supply systems, like Western Area Water Supply to deal with the big influx of people.

And when there's excess water in these water systems they've been able to sell that water to the industry for fracking.

On average a well would take like 3 million gallons to frack so that's a lot of truck loads of water.

So we were granting permits out of excess water from our rivers and streams and wetlands during the wet cycle.

So we're kind of blessed that we were very wet when the Bakken boom happened too.

At the same time, we allowed our irrigators convert their irrigation permits so they actually would sell the water to the oil industry too for fracking so we allowed that on a temporary basis until we got a lot of water depots in place.

And we've been able to serve the needs.

So for the last five years we were allowing in lieu of irrigation permits and now that has been suspended too because water use is dramatically down with fracking.

Right now there's a suspension of frack jobs so there's not a lot of fracking going around right now.

- You mentioned water depot, what does that mean?

- A water depot, that's where trucks can come up and haul water away to the drill sites where they've actually drilled wells and now they're going to frack them so they need to put water down there to frack them.

There's at least 250 places that are water depots that can sell water throughout the state plus many other locations for a temporary.

And then we implemented real time metering so we can watch what's going on and all the water that's being used and make sure we protect the public's water source.

- Can you talk, even though it might have been a little bit before your time, about the Garrison Diversion and what that would have done for the state?

- Garrison Diversion was a well-laid out plan.

It was to deliver water to every corner of our state.

So back to the 1944 Flood Control Act that was passed it was to provide flood control for the downstream states at the same time provide water supply.

So it's known as the Pick-Sloan Plan and it was supposed to deliver water to all parts of our state, so the goal was to get water to eastern North Dakota to north central North Dakota, to central North Dakota, and provide good reliable water.

We just came through the drought of the 30s and Missouri was living a lot of floods during that time period after that so there's a shotgun marriage between the Bureau of Reclamation and the Corps of Engineers.

One deals with flood control, navigation and excess water and the other deals with water supply, the Bureau of Reclamation.

So the federal government for decades and decades have been trying to develop a water supply and there's been a lot of bumps along the way to deliver water throughout our state.

- And so why was that derailed?

- Oh there was Canadians, international issues, environmental issues, just a whole host of things that just trying to get water across the Continental Divide, getting water from Missouri River drainage to the Hudson Bay drainage is very complicated when you're dealing with concerns of water going from one basin to another.

So it's been hard to overcome those types of issues.

- You mentioned about our physical location of North Dakota, but in terms of water, how is North Dakota different from other states for water issues?

- Yeah we are rather unique.

I've been heavily involved with Western States Water Council and Western State Engineers so we deal with the 17 western states.

And a lot of times, in this time period that I've been state engineer from 2010 to 2016, a lot of western United States was in drought, but we were very wet and we're located quite a ways north so our evaporation rates are lower.

Once we get wet it seems like we continue to breed moisture, once we have water on the landscape we have all kinds of water out on the landscape because of this wet period.

We've been very wet when, for example, there's drought in Texas and Oklahoma and then it was in Nebraska and now lately it's been California.

And we've been just wet, wet, wet.

Extra water, excess water, it's like we can't even give away our water.

It's hard to even pump it out of Devils Lake.

And people in other states would just love the Devils Lake water.

And here we're just trying to get rid of water.

That's been one big difference, we've had a lot of water to deal with but there is times when we're very, very short.

But during my whole career, it's been pretty much a lot of water.

- Well, Todd, you said 31 years, what are the memorable moments for you looking back on your career with the State Engineer?

- There's a lot of memorable moments.

Big ones are dealing with, yeah we've been talking about this wet cycle, dealing with floods.

The flood in Grand Forks in 1997 was a devastating flood.

And I was able to try and help not only Grand Forks, but the federal government fight the flood and we came up with some good ideas on how to save big parts of Grand Forks.

So that was a memorable moment.

Devils Lake, getting two outlets built out of Devils Lake.

A lot of people says you can't get the water out, in fact the federal government had a very difficult times doing that so the state took in on ourselves with no federal funds, no federal involvement at all and we were able to get water out of Devils Lake.

So that was a huge accomplishment.

Fighting floods here in western North Dakota too has been quite the accomplishment too.

- Well there have been some big moments then.

Talk about the search and timeline for your replacement, do you know much about it?

- Actually, it's taken place.

It's an important position and actually there's a search committee and the Water Commission is made up seven appointed members, the governor and the ag commissioner.

And we've already gone through the process and they did interviews a couple of weeks ago and they've made a job offer.

The new State Engineer will be coming here June 1st.

And I'll be done July 1st.

So there will be overlap so the new person can spend time with me to shadow some of the things that I've been working on over in my career.

- Real quick, if people want more information, where's the best place to go?

- The best place is to our state Water Commission website.

- Alright well Todd we're out of time so thanks so much and good luck in retirement.

- Okay well, thank you.

- Stay tuned for more.

On the eve of World War I, conflict in St Paul and Minneapolis between the street car workers and the Twin Cities Rapid Transit Company set the stage for a fight to achieve the right of working people to organize in Minnesota and created national awareness of the plight of working men and women.

- In the early 1900s, an organization called The Citizens' Alliance is created and it flows out of Minneapolis business owners.

And they are working together to ensure that Minneapolis remains a town where union can't get much of a foothold.

- People who were workers really understood that they were going to get shut down by this open shop movement, called The Citizens' Alliance.

It was a pact among all the major employers in Minneapolis that they would cooperate internally amongst each other that if any union tried to organize, they would be denied recognition and they wouldn't get anywhere.

Workers didn't have protections.

They could organize but they would get stomped on if they organized.

- The Citizens' Alliance is not just this group of business people, Citizens' Alliance is deeply embedded in the political structures of the city and the economic structures of the city.

It's the leading men of Minneapolis.

They developed strategies for these moments when union organizers do come to Minneapolis and do try to start unions.

Because of the ways in which they are able to flex their political and economic power, there are moments when they can actually engage strike breakers if necessary.

The Citizens' Alliance is looking forward to trying to flex its muscle in St Paul, but that doesn't happen until the 19 teens.

And that only through particular circumstances that emerged because of events during World War I.

♪ Over there, over there ♪ send the work, send the work ♪ over there ♪ The Twin Cities Rapid Transit Company controls all the public transit in Minneapolis and St.

Paul.

They were able to take advantage of cheap labor by being resolutely anti union.

Because the Twin Cities Rapid Transit Company had been so bad to workers for so long, workers by 1916 and 1917 are becoming more and more frustrated.

And by the fall, this is September 1917, they start thinking about figuring out how they're going to organize and how they're going to maybe even call a strike.

If the street cars are no longer running, no one can get anywhere.

It's a pretty powerful way for workers to try to press back against business owners.

And it affects not just the transit company but companies of every kind in both cities.

- The Citizens' Alliance went to the municipal courts to get equity injunctions against trade union organizing.

So if there was any kind of picketing, they would go to the courts and say, "Please get these people out of here "because our business is in danger "of being shut down and we're facing "an emergency situation."

That was the legal rational that a judge, using his power of equity, he could so something on an emergency basis would simple say, "You can't banner this place," or "You can't stand outside and if you do, "what you're doing is a criminal conspiracy.

"We're going to arrest you and throw you in jail."

So if you're sitting there in St.

Paul or Minneapolis and you're thinking, "You know, I think we ought to have a trade union, "but people say that if I try to do that, "I'm a criminal conspirator," this is really going to tick you off.

- In some ways, this make St.

Paul labor organizations stronger and it also gets them looking for allies.

So it's the first time you have unions working across these city boundaries.

So in September of 1917 you have a small scale strike.

A Minneapolis order is kept through the Citizens' Alliance calling out their quasi law enforcement with this home guard made up of men in their 30s and 40s who are volunteers who are armed and who are meant to ensure that public order is kept during this war time emergency.

They ensure that there is no public disorder, that there aren't any marches or parades, or much kind of union activity at all in Minneapolis, but in St.

Paul it's very different because there you don't have a Citizens' Alliance and business people are used to at least trying to work out their differences with union leaders.

In St.

Paul the street cars are disrupted and that's a real problem and you have large number of people in the streets, thousands of people in the streets.

Eventually a call for mediation is made.

So the strike ends pretty quickly.

The union doesn't necessarily get all of what it wants, but the company starts to engage in negotiations.

But in the mean time, during a war tome emergency, any disruption to the public's business or to public infrastructure is deemed to potentially undercutting the war effort.

By November, the federal government is getting involved.

Woodrow Wilson's administration in Washington DC is saying, "Look, there's all kinds of stuff "happening, these tensions are still simmering in St.

Paul."

And in Minneapolis, less is happening because the Citizens' Alliance is able to literally control all the public spaces to keep union workers from organizing.

And so in St.

Paul, this simmering tension erupts again in December.

In December you have a large rally in Rice Park in St.

Paul.

It attracts thousands of workers.

You have public disorder, the home guard basically puts a stop to the strike and forces these workers to go back to work.

Therefore in Minnesota in 1917 and 1918 you get a variety of civil liberties that are trampled on.

This was a real kind of shock to the system for St.

Paul business people.

First, to see so much public disorder in the streets and second, the fact that the union people wouldn't even be listened to, that they'd be shut down by law enforcement or quasi law enforcement agencies.

They realized that the Citizens' Alliance has been able to extend its power into St.

Paul in this way that no one really anticipated, largely because the industry that workers were striking in connected two cities.

So this kind of violence in the streets not only attracted national attention, but made it clear that working people needed to have the opportunity at least to organize and that the federal government maybe should actually provide workers with the right to organize a union.

That had never been a federally recognized right for workers anywhere in the United States.

- Well, that's all we have on Prairie Pulse for this week.

And as always, thanks for watching.

- [Voiceover] Funding for Minnesota legacy programs provided by a grant from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on Novemebr 4, 2008.

And by the members of Prairie Public.