Work to begin on water channel

MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS ARCHIVES Enlarge Image

A sandbag dike fails to keep water out of Lake St. Martin reserve in May.

The province is starting work immediately on a $100-million water-diversion channel aimed at lowering both Lake St. Martin and Lake Manitoba.

On the advice of a team of 30 mainly private engineers and consultants, the government will build an emergency eight-kilometre outlet on the east side of Lake St. Martin to Big Buffalo Lake. It hopes to complete the job by Nov. 1.

The 90-metre-wide channel, if finished this fall, will allow maximum operation of the Fairford River water control structure throughout the winter. The structure drains water from Lake Manitoba into Lake St. Martin.

The government's goal is to lower water levels on both lakes by between two and three feet by next spring, Premier Greg Selinger told a news conference at the legislative building Tuesday.

"This is an extremely ambitious timeline," Selinger said. "The work will proceed under very difficult conditions in a remote location that is essentially an underwater bog right now."

Once the Lake St. Martin outlet is completed, the province will undertake a second, $60-million construction project aimed at further lowering Lake Manitoba. This will be done by building a bypass channel off the Fairford River, west of Lake St. Martin. About 2.5 kilometres long, the channel will extend north of the Fairford River water control structure and improve the river's capacity.

Selinger said he believes the costly project will be fully eligible for federal funding under the disaster financial assistance program. If so, the feds would be on the hook for 90 per cent of project costs. Provincial officials were in Ottawa Tuesday briefing their federal counterparts on the emergency project.

Residents along Lake Manitoba said they were worried the channel would fail to lower the lake adequately.

"It's a good start, but it certainly doesn't go far enough," said Kevin Yuill, a Portage la Prairie-area farmer and member of the Lake Manitoba Flood Rehabilitation Committee.

Yuill said he doubted the Lake St. Martin outlet, predicted to handle as much as 9,000 cubic feet of water per second when complete, would be sufficient. He said the channel will only be able to handle that much water when lake levels are very high.

Another member of the committee, Oli Olson of Peonan Point, 250 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg, said he was disappointed that improvements to the Fairford River's capacity would not be undertaken simultaneously with the construction of the Lake St. Martin channel. That will delay needed drainage for Lake Manitoba, he said.

Engineering firms KGS Group and AECOM have been working feverishly with government officials over the past several weeks on an emergency solution to the high lake levels. Several proposals were considered and discarded before the consultants recommended the eight-kilometre channel extending east from Lake St. Martin.

AECOM's Eric Blais said the main problem is the low capacity of the Dauphin River to drain Lake St. Martin. "If we get the channel in, we can run the Fairford River water control structure at its full capacity, which is the quickest way to bring down the levels on Lake Manitoba," he said.

In a joint report, the two engineering firms described this year's flooding along Lake Manitoba as a one-in-2,000-year event.

Government officials are worried that if they don't tackle the high lake levels before spring, residents could experience more flooding next year.

They know their goal of completing the eight-kilometre channel by Nov. 1 is optimistic. "We will be compressing what normally might take years into weeks and months," Emergency Measures Minister Steve Ashton said.

Complicating matters is that the construction site is a bog and it's remote. Heavy equipment must be ferried across Lake St. Martin, which is easier said than done. "We lost a day the other day because we couldn't get exploratory equipment on a barge because the winds and waves were too high," said Doug McNeil, deputy minister of the Infrastructure and Transportation department.

Normally, water-diversion projects are preceded by years of environmental studies. Because of the emergency, those studies will be abbreviated and conducted concurrently with construction.

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca

Channelling their efforts

The problem: Lake Manitoba and Lake St. Martin need to be lowered quickly to prevent further flood damage affecting hundreds of people.

The emergency solution: Build a channel from the east side of Lake St. Martin to Big Buffalo Lake. From there, the water will wind its way to the Dauphin River and on to Lake Winnipeg. The channel will let the province operate the Fairford River water control structure full-out all winter. The structure releases water from Lake Manitoba into Lake St. Martin.

The scope of the project: The Lake St. Martin outlet will be eight kilometres long, 90 metres wide and as much as 7.5 metres deep. It's expected to cost $100 million. About 150 workers and 50 pieces of heavy equipment will excavate as much as 2.5 million cubic metres of earth.

When that's done: A second, smaller construction project will be undertaken to further lower Lake Manitoba. That will involve a bypass channel to improve flows of the Fairford River between Lake Manitoba and Lake St. Martin. Cost is estimated at $60 million. Work could begin late this year.

-- Sources: Province of Manitoba and engineering firms AECOM and KGS Group

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition July 27, 2011 A5