AS DAMAGE PILES UP, CITY URGED TO SAVE

Ottawa and Alberta won’t cover everything

After Slave Lake settled nearly all its post-wildfire accounts with the Alberta government, everything major was covered except for one expense that could force the town to drain its reserves.

Medicine Hat secured provincial cheques for all $41 million in infrastructure restoration after its 2010 flood, but the city paid itself for about $9 million of flood-protection upgrades that went beyond basic repairs.

Given their experience with disasters and the financial reckoning that followed, civic leaders in those two communities support the Calgary mayor’s idea of socking away $104 million for flood recovery costs the province and federal government may not cover.

Naheed Nenshi faces a council that appears split over whether to give back a $52-million tax hike it approved in the spring, or agree with him and save the first two annual instalments for flood repairs or future mitigation measures.

“The city ought to ensure that it would fill out gaps the province could possibly leave,” said Slave Lake recovery manager Gordon Lundy, still on the job with more work to complete two years after fire destroyed about one-third of the northwest Alberta town.

In lengthy negotiations that followed the 2011 inferno, the province came through with $29 million to repair Slave Lake’s infrastructure, Lundy said. The one main project the provincial government didn’t fully cover was dredging the sewer lagoons after a subsequent flood swept masses of wildfire debris into Slave Lake’s sewer system.

The Conservative government decided it would only cover 65 per cent of that cost, because part of the lagoon dredging wasn’t attributed to natural disaster.

The $800,000 for the town’s share “will essentially deplete” its capital sewer reserve, Lundy said.

Or, he said the province told him the town can use any savings from grants for a road rebuilding contract.

Some aldermen have said Calgary should feel comfortable using its own reserve funds for expenses that don’t get covered.

The biggest rainy day fund sits at $295 million — at least triple what Nenshi has predicted the city’s tab will be.

In Medicine Hat’s case, the southeast Alberta city asked for and received $41 million in 2010 for postflood repairs to bridges and other infrastructure, Mayor Norm Boucher said Tuesday.

But if the town wanted to harden a riverbank and install boulders rather than dirt, or raise a recreational trail to higher ground, that had to come out of city coffers. Those expenses came to between $8 million and $10 million, he said.

“They helped us bring it back to the level it was,” Boucher said of the province. “We wanted to do a little bit extra to make sure it won’t happen again.”

After the 2013 flood battered the city’s Flats district, the mayor said he wants to install about $22 million in dykes, and expressed hope that other levels of government will share those mitigation costs.

Municipal Affairs Minister Doug Griffiths was unavailable for comment. His spokeswoman said the province doesn’t cover infrastructure upgrades.

“The way the program works and has always worked is to bring things back to the way it was before the flood,” Kathleen Range said.

If they want to restore projects to beyond the basic, pre-existing levels, that’s up to municipalities, she said.

Unlike after the 2005 flood battered Calgary and Medicine Hat, the province will be working out flood mitigation programs with communities. However, no details have been confirmed on those measures yet.

After two 12-hour days of planning debates, council is still far from holding its long-awaited debate on how to disperse its $52-million tax hike. The earliest it will occur is Friday.