Residents upset over lack of plan for flooding threat
Couple baffled why province isn’t considering mitigation project to prevent another Bow River disaster
Two years after the Bow River overtopped its banks and water filled the basement of their Calgary home, Mike Bradfield and Deborah Murray are upset the province has not yet found a way of taming the flood threat faced by neighbourhoods and the downtown core located next to the city’s largest river.
A temporary deal between the government and TransAlta Corp. that pays the utility $2 million to lower water levels on its Ghost Reservoir for two months this year when the risk of rising waters looms largest offers a partial solution.
But the couple wants to know why the province is not looking seriously at a large scale mitigation project — like the $250-million off-stream storage proposed to protect vulnerable neighbourhoods near the Elbow River — to save communities along the Bow River from future disasters.
“We are frustrated that nothing has happened and we worry every time it rains,” Bradfield said. “It’s our job now to embarrass the government and make them stop forgetting about us.”
While the two handed out postcards to passersby on the Peace Bridge Friday that urge Premier Rachel Notley to act, her recently elected NDP government revealed it is now taking a second look at building a new dam on the main stem of the Bow River just upstream of Calgary.
Jason Penner, a spokesman for Alberta Environment and Parks, said the proposed location — roughly midway between the existing Bearspaw and Ghost dams — had been dismissed by engineers a year ago as they searched for ways of preventing a repeat of the 2013 disaster.
While the project would cost an estimated $1 billion, Penner said it would only have the capacity to hold about 40 per cent of the river’s flow during a flood like that experienced two years ago.
“It had not looked feasible because it would cost too much and store too little water, but now they’re re-examining the idea,” he said.
A draft report on the project expected in July will also look at other options for flood control structures further upstream from Calgary. “It is becoming more likely that flood storage on the Bow River upstream of Calgary will have to be achieved through a combination of measures, rather than new, largescale reservoirs,” Penner said.
The former Conservative government announced last fall that it would spend at least $250 mil- lion to construct a diversion weir, canal and reservoir west of the city in the Springbank area to protect residents in Elbow River neighbourhoods that would soon go to the polls in a byelection.
With questions now being raised about whether an alternative dry dam further upstream on Crown land near the confluence with McLean Creek would make better economic sense, Notley said the government is revisiting the Tories’ decision.
“We’re going to go ahead on the basis of the science,” she said. “We may not make everyone happy.”
But new studies released since the green light was given on the Springbank project show it is surging waters on the Bow River that actually pose the larger threat to Calgary and its economic livelihood.
The government-commissioned report by IBI Group Inc. predicted nearly $700 million in direct and indirect damages if the Bow tops its banks in a disaster slightly larger than the 2013 floods, 21 per cent of which would be borne by building and commerce in the downtown core.
By comparison, the engineering consultants say a flood of the same scale and probability on the Elbow would result in a bill of $538 million, less than three per cent of which would be borne by businesses.
Until now, efforts at protecting communities along the Bow have focused on smaller-scale projects such as improved flood barriers, restorations of wetlands that can hold water after heavy rains and negotiations with TransAlta to use its hydroelectricity infrastructure for flood control purposes.
For example, the deal struck with the utility this year saw the province pay to lower water levels in the Ghost Reservoir by up to four metres during the months of May and June, a measure that government experts estimate would reduce peak flows by 30 per cent in a repeat of the 2013 disaster.
“Compensation paid to TransAlta totals $2 million,” Penner said. “The new government will decide whether they would like to pursue a long-term arrangement to use the company’s infrastructure for flood mitigation purposes.”
Bradfield said he and his wife suffered $100,000 in damages after flood waters overwhelmed the storm sewers in their Sunnyside neighbourhood two years ago.
An estimated $30 million in improvements to the underground network of pipes and pumping stations in his community could alleviate future sewer backups during flood events, he said.
But the earthen berms along the Bow near his home, built to protect against a flood with a one per cent probability, would still be no match for an event like the 0.5 per cent chance event that overwhelmed the Elbow’s banks two years ago.
“It was really just about which river’s headwaters the heaviest rains fell on that June day,” Bradfield said. “We know it’s just a matter of when, not if, it happens on the Bow.”
He said he thinks buttressing flood defences on the Elbow became a higher priority for the government in the aftermath of the 2013 floods because residents in vulnerable areas near that river were better organized and more influential than those in the disparate communities along the Bow.
“They had an organized bloc of 1,000 people within months of the disaster who had the ear of the politicians,” he said. “We need to band together and demand action too, not just for our neighbourhoods but to protect the heart of Calgary.”
We worry every time it rains. It’s our job now to embarrass the government and make them stop forgetting about us.