Another update from the Boundary Flood Recovery Team sees a string of upcoming meetings. Three community engagements are being hosted by the Recovery Team and consultant Urban Matters to discuss rebuilding the community, including short term needs and long term buyout planning.
Recovery Manager Graham Watt explains. “You know council’s endorsed the buyout and the reinvestment of those properties and relocation of the folks elsewhere so, one part of that is the equation around finding funding to be able to buy properties out, and the other part is ‘where are people going to live next?’ you know ‘how do we make a great place for people in the community?’ and that starts with discussion in the community.”
Watt adds that the public engagements are mainly for flood affected households and housing stakeholders. They’re being held November 7th from 6PM to 9PM, November 8th from 12PM to 3PM, and November 8th from 6PM to 9PM in Gallery 2. Also, while the Kettle River Watershed Authority leads voluntary debris clean-up efforts, some man-made debris is too big for crews.
Recovery Manager Graham Watt says it’ll be good to remove it. “Several of the objects are quite a bit larger I think they’ve got 5 sites identified where there’s something as large as a truck that needs to be removed from the river and of course those things have an ongoing hazard for floaters, rafters, swimmers, that sort of thing so it’ll be really good to get them out.”
The Recovery Team continues to check and see where funding requests stand with Provincial departments and ministries, and are also taking steps in planning work on registered dikes.
Recovery Manager Graham Watt gives an example of that in the short-term. “During the flood of course the dike over-topped and then breached by 5th Street and so there were temporary works put in there to stop the gap, we had to rebuild those works to a permanent state so basically the dike at that point is better than it ever was.”
The long term work includes significant engineering and costing for dikes that would for example: raise roadways and protect downtown. The Recovery Team is working on a detailed application for the Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation fund to help with that long term work.
Click here to visit the Boundary Flood Recovery website.
Click here to read our previous update.
