Dikes along Highway 110 no longer in city’s plans

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This article was published 08/03/2014 (4440 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Dikes along Highway 110 were quietly deleted from the city’s $22-million flood mitigation plans because there wasn’t enough money budgeted.

At one point, the plan — which is funded by the province and the city in a 90/10 split — included the now-completed dike along 18th Street, a dike along Highway 110, and improvements to the hastily erected existing dikes along the north and south banks of the Assiniboine River.

However, sometime after a plan update in July, the Highway 110 dike was scrapped from the project.

“There were a lot of renditions of (the plan) as we went through the process with the province,” said city manager Scott Hildebrand.

Hildebrand said the biggest factor for ditching the Highway 110 plans would have been the cost of the project, but he said he wasn’t “red-flagged” when it was decided the project wasn’t going to go ahead.

Patrick Pulak, who became the city’s director of engineering and water services in January, said the dike wasn’t part of the plan when he came onto the project in September 2013, adding the change happened sometime before that.

Ian Christensen, who held the position before Pulak, said “I don’t recall” when or why the decision was made when contacted by the Sun and referred the inquiry back to the city.

The plan was never set in stone, and cabinet press secretary Rachel Morgan told the Sun last July the plans weren’t finalized.

“The document was a description of possible mitigation efforts and the city would determine its priorities,” Morgan stated in the email at the time. “We understand that diking work along PTH 110 was one of the concepts being considered, but this has not been identified as a priority by the city.”

Coun. Stephen Montague (Richmond) said he didn’t even know the access road plans were no longer part of the city’s plan.

“Unless there’s a briefing I missed,” he said.

There will be sandbags along the eastern bypass should the need arise in order to maintain one of the city’s most important access routes, Hildebrand said.

After flood plans were made public in July, RM of Cornwallis Reeve Reg Atkinson said the plan to protect Highway 110 to 2011 levels was overkill and said the city was “getting carried away a bit.”

The project still doesn’t include diking First Street North, either temporarily or permanently, and floodwaters will flow over the road in a 100-year flood.

Now, the multimillion-dollar project, led by the city with a guiding hand from the province, includes only one new dike to protect the Corral Centre shopping mall and work to portions of the existing dike system.

That work, which is expected to be tendered this month, includes a “minor” alteration to allow raising dike crest elevations and to ease restriction of the river channel and flood plain. The city will also install more piping and drainage along Kirkcaldy Drive and will upgrade the Hilton Avenue lift station.

Still, the project will bring the city’s flood protection standards up to one-in-333 year flood levels, Hildebrand said.

The city will hold an information session for residents of the RM of Cornwallis and the RM of Whitehead — whose homes could be affected by this year’s dike work — on Monday for upstream residents and Tuesday for downstream residents.

Both information sessions will be held in the main foyer of city hall between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m.

The city will also hold information sessions for Kasiurak Bay and Kirkcaldy Drive area residents later in the spring.

In their first flood briefing of 2014, provincial officials said the outlook is fairly positive at this point because of a relatively “dry” snow pack and average soil moisture conditions heading into freeze-up.

The one exception is some areas along the Souris River, which has the highest probability of overland flooding.

» gbruce@brandonsun.com