New Souris crest coming even quicker

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 24/06/2011 (5547 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For Souris River communities bracing for another onslaught of water, more tough news to take: The flood that doesn’t end is now coming even faster.

On Thursday, the province revised its prediction of when the once-tranquil river would peak in Manitoba. Now, the Souris is expected to reach its crest in Wawanesa between July 7 and 9, more than a week earlier than expected.

A storm expected to develop today over the Souris River in Saskatchewan, the United States and southwestern Manitoba, which could dump up to 30 millimetres of water on the saturated ground, won’t help the river slow down.

Still, provincial Emergency Measures Minister Steve Ashton said, the province will be ready to meet it. “We have time. That’s the advantage we have compared to Minot,” he said at a flood briefing. “We are mobilizing… We will spare no resource and put full effort into protecting those communities.”

The revised prediction is based on data streaming out of the U.S., where officials found the water that engulfed Minot, N.D., and drove more than 10,000 people from their homes came up the river faster than expected.

Now, Manitoba must wrestle with how to ensure the same thing doesn’t happen here.

Provincial officials will meet today in the town of Souris area with representatives from municipalities along the Souris River. That’s where they will hammer out flood-fighting plans, which may include raising dikes two to eight feet above their current height.

For some flood-exhausted communities still reeling from water that has devastated agriculture and dented valuable tourism, news of a new torrent is a heavy burden to bear.

“They’re telling us our level’s going to rise another seven feet over where it is right now,” said Souris chief administrative officer Charlotte Parham. “Everybody went into stunned mode as soon as we read that. We were thinking, ‘This can’t be happening.'”

It is happening, though it’s not yet clear what will happen on the ground. Provincial officials plan to raise dikes in Melita by two feet before the Souris peaks and will also look at widening dikes and anchoring them to better withstand wind and waves.

But in Melita, where the Souris fans out into a generous valley and the new peak is predicted to be only about two-and-a-half feet higher than its April crest, Mayor Bob Walker is cautiously optimistic. “We might be already built high enough,” he said.

“The two dikes on top never really came into play at the last peak. We still had another foot-and-a-half on the original dikes. Are we concerned? Yes, we’re concerned, because we don’t know what (the province’s) numbers mean.”

In Wawanesa, where the Souris could surge up to seven feet past its April peak, Mayor Bruce Gullett expressed similar feelings, noting the community plans to shore up its dikes with more sandbags. “The water could come up seven-plus feet and we’d be fine. We have a dike built to hold that,” he said. “We’re reasonably satisfied with what we have. We just have to make it stronger.”

 

— With files from the Brandon Sun

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca

 

 

Assiniboine eyed

WHILE the province races to shore up flood protection along the swelling Souris River, it is keeping a watchful eye on the Assiniboine River, which will hit a third peak next month.

Flows on the Assiniboine are now expected to surge to 50,000 cubic feet per second in the middle of July — nearly the same as its two previous peaks. The huge flows mean the province’s flood-fighting structures such as the Portage Diversion and Lake Manitoba’s outlet at Fairford will continue to face high pressure as the summer wears on.

“We will now see a third crest in the middle of July,” Emergency Measures Minister Steve Ashton said Thursday. “That is unheard-of. This is not your classic spring flooding… When we first started, I don’t think we anticipated we’d be looking at more than two or three weeks of flows. We’re now at two or three months.”