The 2013 catastrophic floods in Alberta have provided been a wakeup call to ensure for British Columbia takes action to address flooding.
Fraser Basin Council unveiled its multi-year flood management strategy in New Westminster on July 15. The two-phased strategy aims to create a better way of protecting communities from flooding.
“Lower Mainland communities face a significant and growing risk of a major flood,” Colin Hansen, chair of the Fraser Basin Council, said in a press release. “This flood management strategy reflects a serious, unprecedented commitment by the federal government, the province of B.C., 25 Lower Mainland local governments and other public and private sector organizations to work together on flood protection measures that will safeguard the region as a whole.”
Phase 1 (2014 and 2015) of the strategy aims to build a better understanding of flood hazards in the Lower Mainland, identify flood vulnerabilities across the region and assess flood management practices and policies from a regional perspective. Phase 2 (2016 and beyond) will include completion of the strategy development based on work from Phase 1 and will set out options for funding and implementation.
“We recognized early on the potential to collaborate around issues of flood and river management, “ said Jason Lum, chair of the Lower Mainland Local Government Association’s flood control and river management committee. “A major flood event in any of our member communities would have serious impacts on a provincial, even national scale. We are supporting development of a regional flood management strategy to ensure that proactive measures are in place and our communities are protected.”
According to the Fraser Basin Council, a recent study by the Province of British Columbia indicates that the magnitude and frequency of large floods along the Fraser, from Hope to the river mouth, will increase significantly because of a rise in sea levels and climate change. The study found that risks of catastrophic loss from a major flood are highest in the Lower Mainland because the region has a large population and significant infrastructure of regional, provincial and national importance that’s located in the floodplains.
Coun. Chuck Puchmayr, president of the Lower Mainland Local Government Association, attended the strategy’s rollout in New Westminster.
“It was an amazing presentation: Alberta’s Flood – Lessons For B.C. was what the event was titled. It really opened our eyes to a whole bunch of things that we need to do differently,” he said. “They, of course, honed their skills by necessity from the impacts of flooding – the biggest natural disaster in Canadian history, over $6 billion.”
Puchmayr said the Alberta floods are a good reminder of why it’s better to invest money to prevent flooding, rather than mitigate the devastation after floods occur.
“We can do a lot in advance,” he said. “Only one in 16 of our dikes is actually in compliance. The rest of the dikes in the Lower Mainland, because of the rise in sea levels and because of the seismic requirements in the new standards that have been implemented for diking infrastructure, our dikes are in very poor condition.”
According to Puchmayr, the Lower Mainland has come quite close to experiencing major flooding in recent years.
“In 2007, I think we were about half a metre from breaching the dikes. That was the near major flood in 2007 when we put all the sandbags down at the Quay,” he recalled. “Two more hot days in June – we would have gone over. It was that close. That was in the entire Lower Mainland. We were that close to a catastrophic flooding event.”
Puchmayr credits last year’s flooding in Alberta to making people realize the importance of bringing the dikes up to current standards.
“The Fraser Valley and other parts of the Fraser Basin have experienced two major Fraser River floods of record, the largest in 1894 and the second largest in 1948,” stated a report by the Fraser Basin Council. “Most of the flood protection works in place today were constructed by the federal-provincial Fraser River flood control program between 1968 and 1995. Updated modelling on the Fraser River in 2006 revealed that dikes in the Lower Mainland were too low to protect against a Fraser River flood of record.”
Puchmayr is the former co-chair of the Lower Mainland Local Government Association’s flood control and river management committee.
“What we have been working on for the last two years is getting local governments and stakeholders to actually come to the table with some money so we can actually fund two phases of work,” he said. “The phases are analyzing the impacts of catastrophic flooding events and doing an analysis of what that would do to our economy, and looking at the weak diking infrastructure that we have and giving a really good analysis to that and then looking at what needs to happen in order to mitigate or present a major flood in the Lower Mainland.”
Puchmayr said people are starting to really understand how flooding would impact the businesses and the economy of British Columbia.
“We have been saying at the LMLGA we need to pick up this game, we need to start looking at this infrastructure and we need to get senior levels of government looking at this seriously. Unfortunately it took the Alberta flood to really open people’s eyes here. I have really seen a change in attitude. I know the Fraser Basin Council has been working really hard trying to get people to listen for years as to the potential impacts of a major flood.”
Because of its locations on the banks of the Mighty Fraser, Puchmayr said the issue had direct implications for New Westminster.
“There is no city that has the fiscal capacity to bring the dikes up to the standards that are required to avoid a serious flooding event,” said Puchmayr, who chairs the city’s emergency advisory committee. “That’s why we need the federal and provincial governments at the table. They are there. They pledged that they would be there. They are supporting this. They actually partnered in the rollout of the flood mitigation strategy. They are listening.”
