Flood review past due

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Having resisted repeated demands for an inquiry into the quality of the 2011 flood forecasting and fighting, Infrastructure and Transportation Minister Steve Ashton launched Wednesday four reviews that will examine not just how the province prepared for the historic Assiniboine River flood, but look as well at how Manitoba's landscape can be changed to hold some of the water back in wet years.

Mr. Ashton insisted there was no political interest in the delay to calling this flood review. The independent task force, he said, would have at its disposal all provincial data, documents and the assistance of provincial employees.

This review could have been called last fall, certainly its first phase -- the examination of flood preparation and forecasting -- could have begun alongside the construction of the channel carved in August from Lake St. Martin to Buffalo Creek. But with more than 2,600 residents still evacuated from their homes, that would have encouraged people to complain as the NDP was going into a provincial election. This task force is to be done in six months, which puts it well beyond any planning for any potential flooding on the Assiniboine this spring. (All signs point to a drought this spring, but even the minister cautioned it is snowfall, precipitation and melt patterns in March that largely dictate spring flood conditions.)

A review of lessons to learn is critical. The various provincial departments, primarily flood forecasters in Water Stewardship, were taken by surprise at the level and the duration of the flooding on the Assiniboine but also on other smaller rivers, particularly the Souris, which also had repeat peaks. The flows on the Assiniboine threw standard forecast modelling out the window.

The fact is, the Assiniboine has risen to similar levels, as recently as in 1976. But the river itself has changed as has the land around it, drained for agricultural and other purposes. Flood mitigation has not kept pace, and even a plan to expand the Shellmouth Reservoir, which has protected Brandon, was shelved simply because the Assiniboine has behaved since '76, especially relative to the Red River.

Mr. Ashton said another review will look at the regulatory regime for Lake Manitoba, whose levels are controlled by release of water via the Fairford control structure, into Lake St. Martin. The new channel from Lake St. Martin allows that lake to be drained down, but the capacity of the control structure to relieve flooding on Lake Manitoba is not changed. That lake, which took the brunt of the flooding from the Assiniboine through the release of water into the Portage Diversion, remains high. A second channel to increase outflow should be examined.

The chairman of the Lake Manitoba review, economist Harold Westdal, briefly poked at what has been the elephant in the room at every discussion ever held on flooding in this province -- how to restrict development on a natural flood plain. Mr. Westdal did not want to elaborate when asked to explain his views on zoning regulation. Mr. Ashton noted that after the Flood of a Century on the Red River in 1997, the province imposed development regulations on the Red River Valley, such that new construction had to be two feet higher than the levels water reached that year.

No such regulation exists for the Assiniboine River. Provincial land-use policies, meant to guide municipal development plans in flood-prone areas, failed to protect residences, cottages and farmlands in western Manitoba last year. Brandon saw houses and businesses along its Flats imperilled. The reviews Mr. Ashton has set up will probe issues of land drainage, flood-mitigation efforts and the lessons of past mistakes. The big error, so apparent as the Assiniboine rose repeatedly, was in forgetting rivers and rainfall are unpredictable.

When houses and cottages, farmland and businesses get swallowed, taxpayers foot the hundreds of millions in flood recovery costs. It is time the government looked seriously at mandatory zoning and development regulation across the province.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 9, 2012 A10