Flooding

[farmers_son]

I had an opportunity to go Drumheller to see the flood yesterday. The image that most struck me was a family on their porch sipping lemonade (or some other beverage, couldn't tell) while the muddy water was all around their house.

A different picture from the typical TV scene where the person is choking back tears and declaring they have lost everything.

My impression is the family on the porch was secure in the knowledge that the province would see their house completely renovated at no cost to them. Should the province help flood victims with ad hoc payments? Or should the province provide flood insurance to cover those risks that private insurance will not handle and either make it mandatory for people who make the decision to build in a flood plain to participate in the insurance or alternatively make the flood insurance volunatary and let the people sink or swim, so to speak.

[Joe-2]

Same question is posed by CHED today . I think that the province should provide assistance for items that cannot be insured. I spoke to a young couple from Sundre that had lost everything they owned . They lived in a basement suite and didn't have insurance. Insuring their belongings would have cost less than $150.00 per year !

[cakadu]

I'm willing to give people the benefit of the doubt and maybe these folks were coming to terms with it and knew that there was nothing they could do at that point. People handle stress differently and maybe they were doing what suited them best. Personally, I don't think that I would be calm at all, especially knowing that the clean up would be horrible.

After seeing what happened in our area and south of us, I am beginning to think that those that want to develop and build in a flood plain "pay their money and takes their chances".

On the Calgary news the other night they showed a sound bite with one of the people who live in the multi-million dollar homes along the Elbow (Ralph's riding to be exact) and she was commenting that the $100,000 that the government would be offering wouldn't even come close to helping to repair the damage. Now that could have been taken a couple of ways, but the point is that it is hard to feel sorry for someone in a multi-million dollar home who has their home on a flood plain.

It certainly should be given serious consideration when development permits are being sought.

This was an extreme occurance of rain to be sure, but how do we know that this will not happen again and sooner than we think? The damage downstream of the *****on Dam would have been a lot worse had there not been a log jam on the Little Red Deer River.

Given that we are removing trees, wetlands and permanent cover areas, we could very well see more of this type of thing in the future. We are removing the barriers that help to slow the water down and make it less destructive. When the officials were touring the washed out roads in the Rocky area, they were commenting that they would have to get the roads rebuilt as quickly as possible in order to get the logging trucks moving again. I have mixed feelings about that as removing more trees creates less resistance and the possibility of future and more frequent problems when heavy rains do come.

What is even more mind boggling is that people have to be told not to use any extra water. It just shows that as long as you can turn on a tap and water comes out, there is no thought given to it. Not only is there all the debris and pollution being carried away by the recent rains, but the sediment that had settled at the bottom of the rivers is also being knocked loose at this time as well.

Certainly the feedlots along the Little Red Deer will have to be looked at as heaven only knows what is coming downstream from there. I suppose one can look at it as pollution by dilution. I believe we need to start looking at the bigger picture here.

[cakadu]

Linda, in my view municipalities should not allow further development in flood plains. High River is a prime example.

Its not just feedlots that have had run off in this flood, some lagoons have overflowed and likely so have some municipal sewage lagoons.
I would suspect that some older lagoons don't have the freeboard that is required for all new and expanding livestock operations that develop under the new regulations.

[cowman]

I often remember a letter to the Red Deer Advocate, after they had done a little "rip" on the feedlots close to the river. The writer, owned a relatively large feedlot(3,000 head) on the Little Red. The main point he made was he was spreading the waste from his 3,000 head and very little was finding its way into the river, while at the same time the city of Red Deer was a 65,000 head "human feedlot" that was dumping their entire waste into the river! He also went on to describe how this "human feedlot" was also dumping a large volume of fertilizer and pesticides into the river through the storm system...run off from the lawns!
I thought the guy had a very valid point.

[blackjack]

...you bring up a good point Cowman...I remember 30 years ago as a kid fishing on the Red Deer river east of the Joffre bridge how clean the water was...by the 90's there was such a build up of slime and weeds it made a guy wonder where all the phosphates came from other than if was not the city...

[blackjack]

One feedlot owner on the Little Red has done some extensive work in conjuntion with the U of C to protect the riparian areas along the river, and to mitigate the impact his operation has on the river.

The City of Calgary is always concerned about the impact of cattle operations on their water supply, and the city of Edmonton has always pushed for legislation to keep livestock away from the Saskatchewan River, however they know damn well that they are the largest polluter on the river.

[cowman]

Emerald: That feedlot owner was the same one who wrote the letter to the editor I mentioned.
Regarding the slime below the city of Red Deer...that is so true! Check out the water just below the dam...pretty clean? Then go east of the city and try to wade in the river...the rocks are covered in slime!
A farmer east of the city told me he thought this recent flood was probably a good thing for the overall health of the river...sort of like flushing a toilet bowl!

[cowman]

one thing for sure cowman, is that there was run off from every imaginable source, not just the livestock industry.