Cottages to be raised five feet

The Manitoba government wants cottagers, homeowners and farmers flooded out by last year's record high water on Lake Manitoba to raise their homes almost five feet to protect their properties against a similar deluge.

The decision, coming before an independent committee that has submitted its own recommendations on the matter, is already being fought by local governments that argue it is a totally unnecessary and costly precaution.

"We strongly reject the use of 2011 flood levels as a reference point for future management of Lake Manitoba," RM of Lakeview Reeve Philip Thordarson said in an April 17 letter to Steve Topping, executive director of hydrologic forecasting and water management.

"Those levels are the result of man-made flooding -- a situation caused by the Portage Diversion. The only acceptable flood protection for land and property around the lake will be the creation of a channel to increase the outflow of the lake.

"Until this channel is achieved along with proper management, Lake Manitoba is only one major weather event away from another disaster."

Thordarson and other reeves, like Brian Sigfusson of the RM of Coldwell, say the province has to commit to building a new channel from Watchorn Bay on Lake Manitoba to Lake St. Martin to drain Lake Manitoba more quickly of flood water when the Portage Diversion is activated.

Lake St. Martin drains into Lake Winnipeg via the Dauphin River and an emergency channel the province cut after last year's flood.

"I want them to come up with something reasonable," Sigfusson said. "It's unacceptable."

Topping said in a March 22 letter to the RM of Lakeview, also obtained by the Free Press, the standard used until this year for flood protection on Lake Manitoba was the 100-year flood level.

However, he said, because of the extreme high water conditions, combined with a ferocious wind storm last May, the standard will now be the 2011 flood level.

That new standard means the ground floors of new structures are be built to a height of 822.1 feet above sea level, almost five feet higher than Lake Manitoba's peak of 817.5 feet above sea level during the 2011 flood. Prior to last summer, homes and cottages had to be protected for a flood stage of 814 feet. The province wants to take into account the effect of the wind on the lake for future flood-proofing.

"They should worry about lowering the lake instead of us having to raise our properties," said Jeff Douglas, who was told he had to raise his guest cottage seven feet in order to be covered by future flood insurance.

"There's a one-in-300-year flood, and now they want everybody to raise (their cottages)?"

Douglas said cottagers have received changing figures of how high they would have to raise their properties since last winter -- and now, cottagers face mounds of paperwork to get the work underway. "They're making it very onerous on anyone to rebuild," he said.

"Everybody wants a commitment from the government as to what level they're going to do the lake at. Until we get a commitment from the government, nobody can rebuild because they don't know where to put their cottage. Everybody's frustrated because you get different answers, you get different quotes."

A provincial spokesman said because last spring's events overwhelmed the lake's previous one-in-100-year flood levels, a new standard must be set. He said flood-protection levels will be determined on a site-specific basis. For example, levels for back-shore properties can be lower because of the diminishing effects of waves inland of the shoreline.

The province went through a similar process following the 1997 flood on the Red River. Homes and communities in the flood zone now have to be protected to a level equal to the 1997 flood plus three feet.

Many blame the Lake Manitoba flooding on the province's use of the Portage Diversion to protect Portage la Prairie, Elie, Headingley and Winnipeg from serious flooding.

The majority of people whose homes were flooded on Lake Manitoba -- hundreds of homes and cottages were damaged, if not destroyed -- don't blame the province for deliberately flooding them. But those property owners want to be compensated fairly for their losses.

-- With files from Melissa Martin

bruce.owen@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition April 21, 2012 0