Groups clash over the need for Springbank reservoir project

Five years since the 2013 flood, the Calgary River Communities Action Group says the time is now to move forward on the Springbank off-stream reservoir.

The group reinforced its message at an annual general meeting on Wednesday evening that the Springbank dam project is the most “sensible” option to prevent a repeat of the damage seen five years ago.

“It’s the most cost-effective, it can be built the most quickly and it runs into a lot less hazards in terms of the construction process itself, because it’s an off-stream diversion as opposed to a on-stream dam like the (option) at McLean Creek,” said the group’s co-president, Brenda Leeds Binder.

“I think some people are certainly frustrated because we are not in any better position now than we were five years ago to guard against a flood if it happened tomorrow, but we have moved the ball forward.”

Opponents of the project, such as the Don’t Damn Springbank group, say the project would destroy a long-standing community and won’t protect most of the hardest hit communities five years ago.

The Springbank option would also leave the Tsuut’ina reserve vulnerable to floods, according to Kevin Littlelight, a Tsuut’ina spokesperson.

“The Springbank dam will affect Tsuut’ina lands and Tsuut’ina people. We’re saying ‘hey, why don’t you take a deep breath, all sides, and let’s really look at it,’” said Littlelight.

“Apparently they’re not listening. The government is saying they made up their mind, they’re going to go ahead regardless and, in this day and age, in a democracy, all sides need to be heard and respected,” he said. “This is a huge project adjacent to Tsuut’ina. It’s just a pretty disrespectful move not to really take into any kind of weight what Tsuut’ina’s saying.”

Minister of Transportation Brian Mason said the provincial government has consulted Tsuut’ina and is still reaching out to landowners to find a solution that would see the government purchase the land needed for the project.

“Should we not be able to do that, then we are reluctantly prepared to move toward expropriation,” Mason said, adding he understood opposition.

“It’s their property and it’s been in their family for a long time, but in the end it’s a couple dozen families — and we understand their feelings on this matter — but, ultimately, Calgary is a city of a million people, it is the economic engine of Alberta and the downtown is threatened,” he said.

“This project is the best project to protect Calgary, and any attempt to switch courses now would result in very significant delays in flood protection and would result in much poorer outcomes.”

Last month, the province said the project faces a 10-month delay due to regulatory holdups in its approvals.

Mason said the province is doing everything in its power to speed itup.

“We’ve added additional resources to make sure that we can

respond on very short time frames to any further information that the Canadian environmental agency requires of us,” he said.

Leeds Binder said the importance of the project outweighed all other concerns.

“Any time there’s a public infrastructure — whether it’s widening a road, building an LRT station, building a highway, putting in an interchange — land gets expropriated,” she said.

“It is a sad reality. We have 1.5 million people downstream that are really relying on this project and the public benefit out here really outweighs that interest.”