Province’s TIER program contributing about $13M for Taber spillway project

New money for flood management projects will arrive in southern Alberta this year via the province’s carbon levy on large emitters, but the funding scheme for a spillway near Taber is still up in the air.

Provincial Environment Minister Jason Nixon announced a restart to the Alberta Community Resiliency Program on Thursday morning in Edmonton.

A $65-million injection from the TIER Fund for flood and drought mitigation projects includes nearly $13 million in new funding for the Horsefly Spillway in Taber.

That comes after the province and federal governments announced some portion of funding earlier this summer, but a regional municipal partnership responsible for the rest has had trouble securing financial support.

That includes from the City of Medicine, which passed a council resolution last year stating it wouldn’t provide any money for a project list in the Highway 3 corridor until its own river-focused flood plan was complete.

Officials with Alberta Environment and the M.D. of Taber did not provide any information by press time.

The province recently announced it was willing to empty the entire $750-million TIER fund in interest of job creation and advancing environmental projects and research.

Nixon said in a general statement Thursday that “this funding will help protect communities against flooding, now and in the future, and support good jobs for Albertans when they are needed most across the province.”

Horsefly is a three-phase project able to carry water along a 14-kilometre emergency spillway that would link the St. Mary’s Irrigation district system to an outlet on the Oldman River.

Most directly, it would prevent overland flooding in the M.D. of Taber and Town of Taber, but also provide a relief valve for canals that continue through the counties of Forty Mile and Cypress, and which end in Medicine Hat.

Though a Regional Drainage Committee partnership of municipalities, all partners were assigned a share of costs based on their perceived benefit.

However, with budget tightening in Medicine Hat, council here announced in 2019 that since they saw the South Saskatchewan River as a greater flood risk, the city wouldn’t contribute its $900,000 share.

Similarly, Cypress County (assigned $1.8 million for the three phases) and County of

Forty Mile ($2 million), have remained officially silent on providing funding.

The M.D. and Town of Taber would pay a combined share of $3.5 million.

The new money is hard to place in the overall budget.

The federal government announced on Aug. 4 that it would contribute $8.9 million for the project through the Investing in Canada infrastructure Grant.

That is a co-pay program and matches Alberta’s announcement last February of $7.4 million in what was to be the final round of ACRP funding.

Municipal partners are responsible for the remaining $5.9 million, in the $22.4-million first-phase budget.

Since 2014, the ACRP provided grants to municipalities, but that program was set to end after the 2020 budget year.

From Thursday, a total of $45 million will go to fund 12 projects throughout the province, including:

— Work on a drainage issues in Rocky View County (east of Calgary), $4.1 million;

— In-creek mitigation measures near Canmore, $9.6 million;

— Work to secure potable water supply plants in Edmonton from high-water, $6.8 million.

— Reworking regional drainage patterns in Northern Sunrise County ($3 million), and;

— Smaller projects in Willow Creek, Wetaskiwin, Smoky River, Edson and Lloydminster.

Another $4.5 million will go to the Municipal Climate Change Action Centre to help municipalities develop adaptation plans. The remaining $3.5 million is available to groups that apply to fund watershed restoration projects by a January deadline.