Grand Valley Road residents worry as water nears houses

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This article was published 06/05/2011 (5447 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Harold Whittingham is not resting easy these days as the Assiniboine River’s edge creeps closer to his Grand Valley Road house.

"It’s up in our garden and touching our shed now and that’s at (361.19 metres above sea level)," Whittingham said on Thursday.

Water is now flowing through the Grand Valley Road underpass at the Trans-Canada Highway like a culvert, which isn’t helping. Whittingham and his wife, Christine Hearn, had asked provincial officials to sandbag that roadway before it became a culvert for flood water, but their pleas went unanswered.

"There’s four feet of water coming through it now," Whittingham said. "That’s where the majority of the water coming near our house is coming from now. It wasn’t near our property before it came in through there. We asked them to plug that up, but you’d never get a sandbag in there now. They either waited too late or didn’t bother."

The water isn’t close to their house yet — the garden and shed on the acreage is more than 180 metres away from the house. A road also acts as a small dike, but that serves as little comfort.

"The water at the bridge, I was told, was (362.1 metres above sea level," Whittingham said. "That’s the same height as my garage floor, and that’s attached to my house. There’s still dips and dives in the field that collect water and hold it back.

"Whether it makes it up to the house remains to be seen."

With that in mind, Whittingham keeps a close eye on Manitoba Water Stewardship’s flood sheets, as he’s 2.13 metres higher than Brandon’s First Street bridge.

The higher crest estimate of 362.16 metres above sea level at Whittingham’s property would require construction of a small sandbag dike.

As he’s got a bad back, he was trying to avoid building a dike, though he said he wouldn’t need one more than 50 centimetres high.