As the floodwaters of the Red River subsided last week, so did the swelling possibility that Fargo might receive resources to help plan for long-term flood protection. According to an article in the New York Times, Fargo residents’ heroic efforts to save their city will likely net far less funding mileage than swathes of destruction.

“If we would have lost, we would have had the $800 million we need right away,” Fargo Vice Mayor Tim Mahoney told the Times. “We would have had that done tomorrow. But this way, in two weeks, this will be off the national news and people will forget this happened.”

It’s true that a little more than a week after Mahoney made that comment, Fargo has merited only the most passing of mentions in national coverage—despite the fact that the Red River is again threatening the web of earthen levees and sand-bagged barriers contrived to keep it at bay.

The National Weather Service is predicting a second crest of 38-40 inches—an inch less than last week’s narrow reprieve—before April 18, but rather than shoring up the urgency of implementing abatement measures, the record rise could send planners back to the drawing board.

While the recent near-flooding renewed momentum for a long-plotted flood control project—known as the Southside Project—it’s also has planners and politicians thinking twice about the scope of the $161-million system of levees, channel extensions, and retention land, according to an article in the Fargo-Moorhead Inforum.

The project, in the works since epic flooding in 1997, has met with funding restraints and opposition from residents with property in the project zone. While current conditions are helping overcome that resistance, they also point to the need for more stringent parameters. Previous plans had allowed for a four-foot freeboard above 1997’s 40-foot crest.

“I want the model run with the numbers we get from this event,” North Dakota Sen. Tom Fischer told Inforum. “I want to know what that water is going to act like at 43 feet. We owe that to the citizens of the city.”

Others though, including Fargo Mayor Dennis Walaker and Gov. John Hoeven, want to move ahead with the project as planned starting this fall, according to the Inforum article. Regardless of their Southside stance, North Dakota lawmakers, along with their counterparts across the river in Minnesota, have stated their attention to ask federal players to join the game. But first, the river will get to make its next move.