Not keeping up catches up with B.C.
The rivers are rising again in Princeton.
As the spring sun warms B.C.'s mountain slopes, both the Tulameen and Similkameen are starting to swell with snowmelt that could threaten “patched together” flood defences in the Interior town where the two rivers meet.
“We're scared shitless,” says Mayor Spencer Coyne. “I don't know how else to put it.”
It's been five months since the Tulameen blasted through dikes during a series of severe rainstorms, flooding much of downtown Princeton. Since then, the river has been the colour of weak tea, signalling that upriver sediment is still being deposited on the river bottom, possibly raising it almost a metre under one of the town's main bridges.
“We're not exactly sure what that will mean for us,” the mayor says, looking down at the smooth water during a tour of town in late March, “but it can't be good.”
Flood maps completed a year ago show the dikes protecting Princeton from the Tulameen and Similkameen are below provincial standards and offer “little protection” in the event of a 200-year flood from either a winter storm, more likely on the Tulameen, or spring snowmelt, a higher risk on the Similkameen. The report, which had not been presented to council for implementation, planning and budgeting before the November flood, predicts residential areas could be inundated. And that's what happened. Ten minutes before the Tulameen dike broke on the edge of downtown, Coyne was behind it, looking for anyone who hadn't evacuated when flooding became imminent. “We were just trying to keep up,” he recalls.
Princeton's dikes were upgraded by the B.C. government after flooding in 1995, when the province still had responsibility for maintaining the dike system. But like the majority of dikes in B.C., flood maps show they're too low. Upgrades, according to an out-of-date estimate from five years ago, could top $5 million, a huge cost for a town that raises $3.2 million a year from property taxes. The estimate doesn't take into account repair and recovery costs from November's flood.