Corps of Engineers employee honored for flood work

Posted at 3:18 PM on April 19, 2011 by Dan Gunderson

Photo courtesy Army Corps of Engineers

A veteran of floods in the Red River Valley is being honored by the Army Corps of Engineers as disaster responder of the year.

Tim Bertschi has overseen levee building projects for the Corps during flood events since 1989. That includes six major flood responses in the Red River Valley.

He's still involved in the 2011 floods, managing levees in several small North Dakota communities still experiencing flooding.

Bertschi won the national award for his work during the record setting flood of 2009 when he supervised 28 construction contracts worth more than $16 million. About 37 miles of emergency levees were constructed in six cities during a frantic eight day period as flood waters rose rapidly.

When he's not fighting floods, Bertschi serves as the St. Paul Corps district operations project manager. He's in charge of environmental programs for thousands of acres of public lands; 13 reservoirs in Minnesota, North Dakota and Wisconsin; and 16 parks operated by the Corps.