The melting snowpack that has resulted in overland flooding in some areas throughout the province prompted a councillor to inquire last week whether any emergency management meetings were scheduled.
“Before I left the office, there were 16 alerts,” said Coun. Charlene Preston during the April 23 meeting, referring to municipalities that were forced to close certain roads and warn about possible evacuations.
“I know that it’s not directly in our area at this point, but it certainly could be,” she said.
Chief administrative officer Linda Nelson said there were no emergency management meetings scheduled, but that the municipality’s operations manager and peace officer have both been monitoring the situation as the snowpack continues to melt and how that has impacted river levels and flows.
“A lot of the concern has been regarding overland water,” said Nelson.
“But because of our topography, we’re not as concerned about that, because we have the river.”
The administrator said the peace officer and operations manager had at the time not expressed any serious concerns.
“I checked the west end of Bearberry Creek — that’s the one that’s got concern for me currently,” said Jim Hall, operations manager.
There has been some overland flooding going into the river, and although a lot of the snowpack further west has melted, there is still a lot to go yet, said Hall.
“The key is rain. We always say rain. Depending on how much rain we get, the mountains are pretty white,” he said, adding this year’s snowpack has a substantially bigger accumulation than last season.
“We’re over our normal. So we’re watching that very carefully. But with the weather patterns, we get freeze — a little bit of cold at night — and then it warms up during the day, so we should be in good shape.”
As of the time of council’s meeting, Hall said weekly checks were underway and that the frequency of those visits would be increasing as time goes on.
Coun. Richard Warnock wondered about the potential of ice buildup causing problems with Bearberry Creek, and whether the Red Deer tributary should be monitored daily.
Hall said he had been checking upstream as far out as 20-30 kilometres west of Sundre to ensure there was no accumulation of ice blocking the creek’s flow, resulting in a backup.
“From what I could see today with the Bearberry, there was virtually no ice floating down that would jam up,” he said.
“And we have a lot of space where it will come across and open up into the fields before we have to worry about it.”
He said a close eye is being kept on the water levels as well as computer updates from monitoring equipment that gathers data to issue forecasts and alerts or advisories as required.
Mayor Terry Leslie said that following the 2013 flood event, there has been tremendously more communication between all levels of government.
“Everybody’s got their heads up. The intent is to make sure that folks understand that the province is on it, and locally, we’re on it,” Leslie said.
