Although much of a recent flood mitigation conference focused on Calgary and High River, there were also some discussions about the need to address concerns in rural areas, says Mountain View County reeve Bruce Beattie.
The Alberta Flood Mitigation Symposium, held in Calgary on Oct. 4, saw experts, community leaders, government officials and others from across Alberta discuss ways to prevent a repeat of the June floods that caused at least $5 billion damage.
“I felt that there was a lot of focus on Calgary and High River and not much focus on the rural areas,” said Beattie. “Although Minister Griffiths (Doug Griffiths, Minister of Municipal Affairs) talked about it being a provincial issue, it seemed to focus very much on Calgary and High River. There was lots of discussion around disaster assistance but not much about the other areas I thought would be in focus.
“I think there is no doubt that the province is committed to acting, but they are going to have to make sure they follow through with what they say they are going to do.”
Beattie took part in roundtable discussions during the symposium, where he did manage to voice some rural concerns.
“Clearwater County and ourselves did have an opportunity to provide some input,” he said. “I said we have significant concerns about what is happening in the headwaters of the river basins and that is critical to what is happening downstream. So we have to start working on the headwater issues.
“If we are going to talk about mitigation, they need to talk about the management of the headwaters. We are talking about the industrial activity, whether it's logging or oil and gas, or some of the other activities that are going on in those areas. It affects runoff.”
At the conference Premier Alison Redford said work needs to get underway now to prevent future flooding problems.
“There is work that needs to be done now because it can't be done over the winter to ensure that communities are protected when spring comes,” said Redford.
Mountain View County has been pushing for several years to have the province help finance the construction of flood prevention berms upstream of Sundre.
Flooding of the Red Deer River in June caused damage to private and public lands upstream of Sundre and elsewhere in Mountain View and Red Deer counties.
