Photo Courtesy of the North Dakota Game and Fish Department

North Dakota Outdoors - The Waffle Project

By Doug Leier, North Dakota Game and Fish Department

July 14, 2004 - Imagine over the years the multitude of ideas hatched by people who were enjoying breakfast. Some might even deal with breakfast itself, like the combination of bacon and eggs, or my personal favorite, the all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet.

However, not all great sunrise menu concoctions are about food. One in particular just may be the next high-profile tactic for use in the periodic battle against overland flooding. And, coincidently, it's called the waffle plan.

For starters, think about breakfast, and a pancake in particular. It's flat for the most part, not necessarily indicative of the overall North Dakota landscape, but not far off if you just include the Red River Valley. Think of rain as syrup - maple in my case - pouring over the pancake, similar to a rain shower on the prairie.

Drizzled syrup or slow rain will absorb into the ground, or in this example, a pancake. At some point, however, the pancake becomes saturated and can no longer hold more syrup, so the sugary liquid runs off the side. In real life, when rain saturates the ground, water then follows the path of least resistance and begins a natural flow toward a lower elevation.

When too much water starts running off instead of being absorbed into the ground, it can lead to flooding. A solution, of sorts, is to convert the pancake into a waffle. Same ingredients, same taste, but a decidedly different outcome.

I personally conducted a rudimentary experiment about this compelling morning mealtime vs. nature comparison at a local establishment that serves both breakfast entrees.

Photo Courtesy of the North Dakota Game and Fish Department

All that was needed:

1. A waffle and pancake equal in size and area.

2. Equal amounts of syrup.

3. Drizzled at the same rate.

The waffle with its obvious divots, as you might expect, held more syrup over time. As each pocket slowly filled, it allowed more time for absorption to take place. At the same time, the pancake quickly reached saturation and syrup flowed toward the edge of the plate.

Bringing it all together
The waffle concept for reducing severity of floods is not my idea, and I don't think it was conceived at a breakfast table. But it makes sense when looked at from a breakfast angle. How this transitions to the real world is that over much of the prairie, roads, culverts and ditches are already in place, forming nice squares a mile long on each side. In most places, especially the Red River Basin, the roads are higher than the farmland they surround.

Bethany A. Bolles is a Senior Research Manager at the Energy and Environmental Research Center, located at the University of North Dakota, where she conducts and oversees research involving water and resource management strategies for sustainable use and development.

Photo Courtesy of the North Dakota Game and Fish Department

She has an M.S. in Hydrogeology from the University of North Dakota, and a B.S. in Geochemistry from Bridgewater State University, Massachusetts. She is currently managing a project to evaluate the feasibility of temporary storage of springtime runoff, the waffle plan, in the Red River basin as a means of large-scale flood mitigation.

The gist of the project is that by temporarily plugging culverts that allow runoff into river systems, water would be held in those square-mile waffle sections just long enough to reduce severity of spring-time flooding.

"The waffle plan is a prospective temporary flood water storage method, where roads, ditches and culverts are utilized for temporary storage similar to a waffle," Bolles said. "Currently we are in the testing phase to determine the overall viability and efficiency of the waffle plan."

It's still early in the evaluation process and many questions remain. For instance, holding water on crop land, even for a short time, might mean a longer time before spring planting can begin.

Will landowners embrace it? How will crop yield results react? What kind of results will temporary storage have on the soil? These and a host of questions are what the EERC will attempt to answer with the study, and that's what it is at this time, a study. The study began in spring 2001 and is expected to last for a total of four years. One component of the study is the actual testing of the concept by temporarily storing water on parcels throughout the Red River Basin. The first of many waffle field tests took place this past spring on a one-square-mile plot in the Red River Valley.

No matter what humans do, the potential for waterways to flood will always exist. We can only protect ourselves so far. If experiments like the waffle plan pan out, the worst floods might not be quite as devastating to both people and wildlife.

To learn more about the waffle plan and the EERC visit www.undeerc.org/waffle/.

Leier is a biologist for the Game and Fish Department. He can be reached by email. dleier@state.nd.us