Town of Sundre officials are hoping to have Greenwood Campground open by the end of the month, but are unsure if the washhouse will be operational.
They are in the process of calling local contractors to clean up the campground using bobcats and removing the silt and debris left from the overland flooding of the Red Deer River last month.
“We wanted to do it while it was dry, not while it was wet. We're going to pull all the silt out of there and then do as much remediary clean up that we need to do and spray down everything and then open it back up,” said Dean Pickering, the town's chief administrative officer.
“We want to get it open as soon as possible.”
He said the majority of the damage is from river silt and debris and that the silt plugged a lot of the drains throughout the campground. The washhouse on the campground was flooded and might need to be replaced.
“We probably won't be able to get that (the washhouse) operational, but we have portable outhouses that we'll have available there,” he said.
He is waiting on an insurance adjuster to look at the washhouse.
“It was underwater, the furnace was obviously turned off and the hot water tanks. They may all have to be replaced and the washhouse may have to be replaced as well,” he said.
“We know there's some damage in there and there's some silt damage throughout everything in the campground.”
He said there are things such as tree branches jammed in places throughout the campground that need to be removed.
“As soon as we get a contractor in to get the main cleaning started then we'll start looking at the cost of replacing the washhouse,” he said.
The level of flooding on the campground was beyond posts that are a metre high.
“In some locations it was over six feet, like at the far, low end of the campground,” he said. “It was over the top of the picnic tables in a lot of the campground.”
However, he said the town is lucky that the overland flooding didn't damage the road, as it did in the 2005 flood.
At this point, he is unsure of a cost of damage to the campground, but he says it will cost less than in 2005. The town is applying for flood relief and is hoping that insurance will take care of a portion of the cost of damage to the building.
