Some residents question special assessments for pump station project near Vail Circle

GRAND FORKS — Special assessments for a project that added a new pump station and an additional forcemain near Vail Circle have raised questions about the level of burden put on some homeowners to help pay for that project. Grand Forks City Council members voted Monday to approve and certify several special assessments for various projects throughout the city. One was a project started around 2023 and finished in August this year to add one new pump station and upgrade two existing stations near Vail Circle, a neighborhood hit hard by flooding in 2019 and which has had existing drainage issues for years. The project also included a new forcemain running parallel to the existing one. The reason for the Pump Station 186 projects is over time, we ve seen increased rainfall events, said Ben Williams, principal engineer for Webster Foster and Weston Engineers. The intensity has gone up, the average rainfall has gone up over time, and the frequencies of these storms, they re jus