Problems should not be pushed on to our neighbours

In a province known for neighbours and strangers coming together to deal with any crisis, the current approach to flood mitigation has been anything but true to our treasured provincial values.

Had we stayed true to these values, a mitigation solution could have been realized by now.

How could we have achieved this? By putting politics aside, by coming together as neighbours for the good of all communities involved, and by working together, not against each other.

In 2013, as the devastation of the flood became apparent, many of our Springbank neighbours headed into the city armed with pumps, shovels, food and helping hands — helping Calgary’s flooddamaged communities, shoulder to shoulder with neighbours we never met. Because that’s what neighbours do.

Under immense pressure for a quick response, government bureaucrats came up with an untested, previously unimagined and, ultimately un-Albertan idea to build a reservoir on top of 4,000 acres of Springbank homes and ranches as the easy solution.

It was a radical proposal, driven by haste, not science, to divert 70 million cubic metres of Elbow River flood water kilometres off stream and dump all of that silt and debris on Calgary’s closest neighbours.

The fact that families would be uprooted, businesses destroyed and the landscape and environment forever changed was ignored in this hastily contrived proposal.

This presumed quick and convenient solution is held back by many inconvenient realities. The opposition is not going away, it is growing.

Costs are escalating at an alarming rate. And instead of rallying communities together for a solution that benefits everyone, our government is threatening to expropriate land and misleading Albertans every step of the way.

Rather than bringing Albertans together to solve this problem, they have pitted Albertans against Albertans in what has been, and will continue to be, a long battle.

The idea to push Calgary’s flood problems onto its nearest neighbours is simply not right.

It is not right that Kamp Kiwanis should be wiped out.

It is not right to steal the homes, property and livelihoods of the ranching families who have lovingly and responsibly stewarded this beautiful part of Alberta for more than five generations.

It is not right that Bragg Creek and Redwood Meadows are left to be protected by berms and dykes that government officials admit will ultimately fail.

While experts warn of years of drought, it is not right to push for an off-stream reservoir that only briefly stores water before flushing it away, dirty and stagnant.

After 2013, had flood mitigation influence not been limited to representatives of a few Elbow River communities — the politically connected people who built and rebuilt luxury riverfront homes in a known flood plain, with compensation from taxpayers — and the very engineering firm that will profit from a Springbank reservoir, things could have been different.

It’s not too late to bring all stakeholders together and bring Alberta common sense to bear.

Common sense says that a dam at McLean Creek checks more boxes. It protects Calgary’s Elbow River communities. It protects upstream and downstream communities. It causes minimal human disruption. It does not threaten a First Nation. It stores water for drought and firefighting. It can be built in an environmentally responsible way.

The Springbank reservoir remains the wrong project at the wrong place for the wrong reasons. We need a plan that benefits more Albertans and sacrifices none. We do not need to create more victims of the flood of 2013.

Rather than bringing Albertans together to solve this problem, they have pitted Albertans against Albertans.