Another year, another crisis in sight

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/03/2009 (6224 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The hardest-hit region in the 1997 flood has introduced measures to contain development in the flood plain, mainly to existing population centres.

The new guidelines proposed for the Rural Municipality of Ritchot, which includes Grande Pointe and Ste. Agathe — both of which were submerged by the 1997 flood waters — are among the strictest for development in the capital region surrounding Winnipeg.

"We’re tightening everything up," said Bob Stefaniuk, reeve of the RM of Ritchot. "We’re restricting development to areas where it’s already in place. You just can’t go along and say ‘because I own a piece of property, that I can put a house up there.’ You can’t."

Not everyone was happy with the new plan when it was unveiled this week at a public hearing. But Stefaniuk said "having little mini-developments all over the place" is too costly to service with things such as water and roads.

"We’re preparing for a future of reasonable growth and sustainable growth and green growth," he said.

Key to the new development plan is its requirement that any new subdivision be a minimum of about 33 hectares. In other words, you can’t go into Ritchot anymore and buy a two-hectare lot, dig a septic field and build a house. You must buy at least 33 hectares.

However, some areas already subdivided are grandfathered and may still have five- or 10-acre (two to four hectares) lots available.

The plan was conceived with the help of landscape architects The Lombard North Group Ltd. in Winnipeg. The plan includes adjacent RM of Macdonald, which shares the planning district with Ritchot.

The development plan is a stark departure from what has taken place in some communities that ring Winnipeg, where solitary homes or islands of rural homes dot the landscape.

At the same time, Ritchot officials want to tear down and rebuild the ring dike protecting the village of St. Adolphe to allow for new growth.

The St. Adolphe dike was hastily thrown together in the 1966 flood and that morphed into the permanent dike. Some of the dike is already slumping and the province is making repairs.

The original dike doesn’t leave enough space for expansion. A 90-house development is expected to go ahead in the next three or four years and that will use up the last available space.

The RM has applied for infrastructure money from the federal Conservative government’s Build Canada fund to open up the St. Adolphe dike to the north and south, but Stefaniuk wasn’t optimistic that money would be forthcoming.

St. Adolphe is located just 15 kilometres south of the Perimeter Highway.

The RM of Ritchot’s population was at 5,400 before the 1997 flood. It fell to 4,900 after, but has edged up again to about 5,200.

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca