Water, water everywhere!

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law society of saskatchewan - new judgement - Queen's Bench - Sprecken v. Griffin (Rural Municipality No. 66) - June 20, 2011

Think rural roads can't be used as dams to impede water flow - think again.

[BTOfarmallll]

Watch me cut The God Damn Road under The Haze of a Full Moon, I work at Night.........

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Flatlander, did you forget to turn off the pivots, or is that an admission that you farm swamp land?

[jamesb]

I think the judgement was right. If one RM in the southeast had cut every road that was holding back water it would have created a snowball effect for everybody downstream. Sure there needs more culverts to be put in, but we had what they are saying was a 1 in 300 year flood.

[jensend]

i don't know what there is to criticize in the judgement. the legal system is about balancing rights. does your right to drain supercede the rights of someone downstream not to be flooded by your drainage? greater harm was also a consideration in the judgement and that has to be a key point.

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Jensend.

Not criticizing. Acts of nature happen that can overwhelm any system.

However, to be fair, the Spreckens were not draining. They were partly asking a judge to order a baulking RM to equalized water on both sides of a road, and not take months for it to happen. It was not Sprecken's fault that the road in question was rebuilt to a height that the water backup could not have naturally washed out the road. I'm sure that the RM would not have plugged it, as it would have been no more significant than any of the others that did breach. Had it been one of those low level roads, the affidavit persons downstream, some of whom reside in Roy's lake, would have had to have dealt with the natural volume now stored and slowly releasing out behind an RM road (dam).

[begood]

Don't necessarily take it for a fact that some RM's didn't breach many roads; and just because those reeve(s) and councillor(s) now steadfastly deny doing any of those works doesn't make them any less a liar(s). It's just that Highways; and environment and watershed managers are overlooking those panic decisions.
Maybe flood victims have to make room for rivers and runways to handle up to and beyond one in three hundred year events. Maybe 1 per 300 applied kind of close in the past and from now on it could be much much more frequent a possibility.
Maybe any flood compensation should be firmly tied to not rebuilding in flood plains and flood prone areas.
And because those statement are really goig to raise the ire of those self proclaimed "river rats" who appreciate the usual beauty of their low lying property; I suggest that it is much more important for everyone to permanently keep houses out of harm's way of disease ridden moldy building materials. Both Mother nature and human nature will combine to do this again and again to anyone who won't get out of flood water's way.
Attempting to assign blame (even where it is due) is going to cost the appellant more than they will ever recover.

[begood]

Perhaps what this SE Sask situation points out better than anything else are the personal fifedoms of several RM's and villages who have next to no overall water management planning; or skills in that department; or long planning and big picture perspective of a region. While in some cases those municipalbodies may well be doing their personal best; IT JUST ISN'T ANYWHERE NEAR GOOD ENOUGH in this day and age. Bring on some "County" system in Sask where there is enough critical mass to have some chance of moving away from a 100 year old system that hasn't advanced from the days when there was a family on every other quarter section.