Councillor calls on province to redefine flood zone

Under the current designation, he said 2,000 homes, or 5,000 people, are affected.

“That certainly is a lot of folks to try and mitigate a loss [for].”

The flood plain is one item covered in the City’s draft Official Community Plan. The plan will act as the City’s framework that will guide its policy for years to come. But it requires the province’s approval before it can come into effect.

And for the plan to attain that approval, it must reflect policies that are in the Statements of Provincial Interest, a provincial regulatory document. Among those policies is the one-in-500 year flood plain.

The City would have to adopt the one-in-500 year flood standard, which would ban development in the floodway and put restrictions on development in the flood fringe. The floodway is the area deemed to be the most flood-prone within the flood plain.

Cody doesn’t feel the Official Community Plan should go forward with a one-in-500 year standard until the City knows what it will cost to mitigate any losses.

“We don’t know what a dike’s going to cost. We don’t know what mitigation is going to cost. And before we have that information, I certainly don’t want to put my hand up saying ‘yes, I agree with an Official Community Plan.’”

He explained that he is raising this now, because it’s the first opportunity he’s had to put these suggestions forward since the last flood plain meeting at the end of March.

“There was no prior opportunity to do so,” he said.

This comes days before the City will host its second of two flood plain meetings with the community at Riverside Community School.

Since the last meeting, the City received high-tech surface imaging data – LiDAR – which council approved a joint-funding agreement for during Monday’s meeting. The City, Rural Municipalities of Prince Albert and Buckland, ministry of highways and infrastructure and the Water Security Agency will all pay for the cost of the LiDAR imaging.

Director of planning and development services, John Guenther, said the City will post a LiDAR map, which will show specific elevations for specific properties. The City will also have examples of instances where people have asked for data and have been successful.

The City has had the LiDAR data for three weeks, but the department is now trying to make sense of it because it’s difficult to map, Guenther said. He said when you put all of the data on a map, you get a building, a tree, a topographical location, and a property line, which clutters the map.

And the data will give them a rough idea what is and isn’t below the flood plain elevation line.

“The front door of the water treatment plant is right at the flood plain elevation. So, it’s almost above the flood plain elevation. The sewage treatment plant is a different story. And we didn’t know that until we got the LiDAR data back,” he said.

The data will show the finished floor elevation as it relates to the river elevation, he said. And the data will be able to show whether each individual property sits at, above or below, the one-in-500 year flood elevation.

“It just gives solutions to people on how they can build,” Guenther said of the value of the data.

He said the department is also looking to propose that the City works together with property owners to manage flood proofing. It is also looking at flood mitigation, such as a dike, which Guenther said would solve a lot of the flood plain issues.

“And instead of everyone hiring their own engineer, potentially the City developing [its] own standards for everyone.”

Thursday’s flood zone meeting is open to the public and will also be attended by representatives from the provincial government. It will start at 7 p.m.

tjames@panow.com

On Twitter: @thiajames

by Thia James

Councillor calls on province to redefine flood zone

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