Vancouver –
The mayor of the city said a two-and-a-half-kilometer levee that could lead to the destruction of 22 homes in Abbotsford, BC is no longer under consideration.
“As with all things in the state of emergency, everything is going very smoothly,” Mayor Henry Braun said in an update Friday afternoon about the devastating flooding affecting the city.
“I need to be very clear: The dike option is no longer under consideration and will not be built.”
Instead of building a levee to keep the former Lake Sumas from accreting, he said, city members began building a temporary replacement levee to reinforce an existing levee in time for upcoming storm.
In an update on Thursday, Braun said he had predicted that between 6 and 12 homes would be affected by the construction of the levee.
“I feel like you’re looking for a number, so I don’t want someone to think it’s 50 houses,” he said at the time, in response to a reporter’s question.
“One house is too much. And if it were my house, I would worry too. But there are not many options here.”
On Friday, Braun explained that there are actually 22 homes along the path of the proposed levee that would be affected by the construction.
“They were affected by the (flood) of water,” Braun said. “They would have been affected for a longer time, if we had proceeded with the construction of the dyke.”
He explained that the choice of dyke is no longer considered because “the conditions on the ground have changed.”
“The water was balanced on both sides, so we didn’t have water in the bowl,” says Braun. “So when we learned of this new information, we had some options that we didn’t have before.”
The mayor said Canadian Forces were helping to monitor the existing levee blocking the Sumas River. The dyke has been weakened in recent floods and further breaks are possible, Braun said.
Two existing gaps on the dyke will be repaired, as will any additional violations that occur.
Sumas Prairie is a 90 square kilometer low-lying agricultural area southeast of Abbotsford, and about two-thirds of it is the former Lake Sumas, Braun said.
Currently, the Sumas River flows north from the US border towards the Fraser River, and the dikes along its banks have prevented it from accreting and renovating Lake Sumas. Violations in those levees are allowing the lake to improve faster than the city’s Barrowtown pumping station can drain, according to Braun.
When asked about potential long-term solutions to the flooding problem in Sumas Prairie, the mayor said the city’s current focus is on receding floodwaters and repairing the damage left behind after they flood. happen.
“We have a lot of work ahead of us,” Braun said. “I shouldn’t say this, my staff will get mad at me, but I can see that entire structure, that whole levee, has to be repaired – not repaired, rebuilt – to standards. higher standards.”
