Lost flood prevention opportunity could be thorn in side for Tories
After the brief post-flood truce, Wildrose starts a new round of political hostilities by blaming the PCs for “a significant portion of the damage incurred.”
The charge is inflammatory. It could hurt the Redford government badly if it sticks in the public mind during the months and years of recovery.
Unfortunately for the PCs, the charge is largely true.
Government inaction and stalling in crucial areas since the 2005 flood seemed outrageous even before June 20. Today, it looks like a significant factor in a disaster that cost thousands of Albertans their homes and businesses, and will drain billions from public treasuries.
This flood would have been highly damaging no matter what humans did. But it would not have been nearly this destructive if the province had taken a few simple steps.
One was absurdly easy: ordering a halt to all construction on flood plains — exactly what the province promises now that the damage is done.
After 2005, such a ban was much discussed in government.
It was about to be included in the 2006 Groeneveld report when the committee was abruptly ordered to stop working.
After that, the PCs refused to act even though some municipalities were almost begging for a ban.
Local councillors knew the riverside building boom was risky; but to stand up to developers — and residents who wanted riverbank homes — they needed a stop-work order from the province.
Without it, towns that imposed their own bans could have faced legal action, as well as a flight of investment to other centres.
After new premier Ed Stelmach took office in late 2006, the issue was pushed aside in favour of manmade disasters, such as Stelmach’s royalty review.
The province did not take the basic step of ordering a halt to floodplain construction on Crown land, even though such a ban was recommended by the Groeneveld study.
If those two measures had been adopted, a lot of flood water would have washed over empty riverbanks on June 20.
The province also failed to push hard on construction of flood-prevention measures, the other obvious key to averting disaster.
The Environment Department has essential work, including mapping, but there was no broad floodmitigation agenda across the south.
This left the initiative to local councils. Some did excellent work — Drumheller, Medicine Hat and, yes, High River.
The power of the flood was too much for that unlucky town, but others that took the job seriously were spared considerable damage.
Calgary completed the New Street berm, which saved parts of Inglewood. Similar measures could have protected hundreds of homes and businesses in every flood-stricken community, as well as the downtown.
Now the PCs promise a construction ban and flood prevention works under the catchphrase: “Unprecedented events demand unprecedented responses.”
That’s a limp justifica- tion for past inaction. If government had shown any guts and drive, this event wouldn’t look quite so unprecedented.
By 2010, George Groeneveld started speaking out about his own government’s casual dismissal of the threat that has now devastated High River, the town he represented as MLA for Highwood.
“When the next flood comes around, a lot of the same issues are going to be staring us right in the face and we once again will say, ‘We should have acted,’ ” Groeneveld said.
Now the government says it did act. Greoneveld, who’s retired, even appeared at a news conference to endorse the claim (rather uneasily, it seemed to me).
Say what they will, there’s no doubt that southern Alberta’s dangerous vulnerability was partly due to a decade of government lethargy.
If the PC epitaph is ever written over this flood, Groeneveld himself supplied it when he said in 2010:
“Unfortunately, when the next one happens, which it will eventually, people are going to say: ‘What about that flood report? Why didn’t we do anything?’ ”