Flood recovery erosion control program

By Carlie Connolly

The program was announced in August 2013 from the Government of Alberta as an initiative to increase municipal erosion and flood resiliency in the case of any high water events for those areas that were impacted by the floods that year.

In March 2014, the program was closed due to new applications. The community’s projects given grants include the raw water pumphouse protection and the river valley park protection.

The grants given for the pumphouse was needed to protect it from any future flooding. They raised the pumphouse up that was done last year up to six to eight feet high so that it wouldn’t incur anymore flooding problems. In the past there was water coming up substantially high and it would flood up the river pumps and the pumphouse. Mayor, Ernie Reimer says, “we needed to go higher to ensure we wouldn’t get anymore future flooding.” And so they received a grant to prevent that from happening again.

For the erosion problem down by the river near the house that was built there, they had a paved walking path that was eroding from the flooding, because on the opposite side of the river on the south side, they have what they call slothing going on. This means that where the banks are, they are eroding and falling into the river. What then happens is that the river gets diverted more to the north side on their property and it’s chewing away at the banks. It also chewed away on one of their walking paths. They are now trying to put some protection there to stop that from happening in the future. The protection is something they call rip wrap. They put that down to prevent that bank from eroding any further. 

For both grants, the work will begin in the near future.