Flood-fight aid coming

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/01/2011 (5680 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The city and province are working on a plan to offer subsidies to homeowners who install backwater valves and sump pumps in an effort to reduce the damage from the flood expected this spring.

Local Government Minister Ron Lemieux said Wednesday his government is working with Manitoba municipalities to put together an incentive package for homeowners to install the valves, which can prevent sewer backups, and the pumps, which can reduce the damage from both backups and overland flooding.

Premier Greg Selinger and Winnipeg Mayor Sam Katz have already discussed the broad strokes of the plan, but city and provincial officials have yet to determine how the subsidies will be rolled out and who precisely will be eligible.

“That’s the intent and that’s what we want. We’re still working on the details, but we want to make an announcement as soon as possible,” Lemieux said in an interview. “We feel this is just another tool in a (flood-fighting) toolbox.”

The subsidies would be in the 50 to 60 per cent range. The program will be offered to other Manitoba municipalities, Lemieux added.

There are tight timelines for rolling it out. High soil-saturation levels, a heavy Prairie snowpack, higher-than-usual river levels and a flood forecast along the U.S. portion of the Red River in the U.S. have led officials in Winnipeg and elsewhere in Manitoba to begin preparing for another soggy spring.

The province will deliver its first flood forecast on Monday. Even then, the actual scale of the expected flood will depend on unpredictable factors such as temperature, precipitation and the way the snowmelt will play out, said Randy Hull, Winnipeg’s emergency preparedness co-ordinator.

“We’re going to have a flood event. We just don’t know the details,” Hull said.

The City of Winnipeg is already getting its four sandbag-making machines “out of mothballs,” ordering more sandbag sleeves to go with the 800,000 on stockpile and preparing to conduct surveys of riverfront properties and dikes, Hull added.

“We know there is a genuine threat and we need to address it,” Katz told reporters Wednesday. “I can tell you all the departments are working toward this and making sure we’re ready in advance.”

The city employs a “flood manual” — essentially, a complex interactive software package — that dictates all the measures the city must take when river levels rise to a certain point.

For example, the locations and schematics of all drainage gates that must be closed at any given river level are included in the manual. So are the locations of all the properties that must be sandbagged at any specific level.

But even slightly engorged rivers can slow the speed of the city’s gravity-powered drainage system, which makes the installation of backwater valves and sump pumps an immediate necessity, Hull said.

“I wouldn’t wait,” he said.

Backwater valves retail for $15 to $22 and sump pumps sell for $70 to $200 on their own. But suppliers say an entire installation can run as high as $1,600.

It’s not yet clear whether homeowners who install the valves and pumps before the incentive program is announced will be compensated after the fact.

North Kildonan Coun. Jeff Browaty, who lobbied council to create flood-mitigation subsidies following severe overland flooding in his ward last year, said he would like the incentives to be retroactive to June 1, 2010.

“People are nervous. They see the high level of ground saturation and hear about the high snow levels. They’re saying ‘we can’t wait any longer, we need to protect our homes,’ ” Browaty said.

Meanwhile, heavy snowfall on already saturated ground in Saskatchewan has the government planning for spring floods.

Premier Brad Wall said Wednesday even though it’s still January, provincial officials are watching with concern areas “where there’s probably some trouble” coming in the spring melt.

“It’s a hopeful thing to think about a melt in January, but it’s also a bit of a concern,” said Wall.

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca