Repaired dikes and the destroyed Voght Street bridge along the Coldwater River in Merritt, B.C. June 3, 2022. The catastrophic flooding in November 2021 covered the entire foreground.Melissa Tait/The Globe and Mail
B.C.’s Minister of Forests acknowledged Wednesday the province’s diking system remains plagued with problems two years after devastating flooding, but he declined to commit his government to taking over responsibilities for the structures, something municipalities have long sought.
A new report issued Wednesday shows the province and municipalities were repeatedly warned dikes were at risk of failure in the years before atmospheric rivers caused the floods in 2021.
After reviewing nearly 5,300 pages of documents released through a freedom-of-information request, author Ben Parfitt, a resource policy analyst at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, said he was “disturbed” by a lack of response by the province to clear evidence of major problems with the dikes in the community of Merritt. His organization is calling on the province to take over responsibility of these critical structures. The Union of B.C. Municipalities has made the same call.
The B.C. government offloaded responsibility for flood protection to local governments in 2003, and the majority of dikes are now owned and maintained by local diking authorities. They are regulated under the provincial Dike Maintenance Act, with oversight conducted by the Ministry of Forests.
“It’s clear that that system – and that became very clear in the atmospheric river in 2021 – doesn’t work,” Forests Minister Bruce Ralston said when asked about the report at an unrelated news conference.
“That’s part of the reason why we’re developing a much more expensive flood control strategy for the province.”
The report prompted renewed calls among local governments for the province to take over management of dikes, with municipalities saying they can’t afford it. Mr. Ralston did not answer when asked directly whether the province would take that on.
He said repairs and development of a more resilient diking system have a big price tag, but his government is working with Ottawa on disaster relief.
B.C.’s battered flood protection still a patchwork, despite promises of change
Merritt Mayor Mike Goetz said it’s unfortunate that proper inspections weren’t conducted, as the report points out. But he said ensuring communities remain safe means provincial government oversight and responsibility.
“We need to have a provincial diking authority built with people who are qualified hydrologists, whatever to make the proper inspections. And once the inspections are made, and sent to the province, then they need to be acted on,” he said in an interview.
The 2021 event forced the evacuation of the entire community of Merritt, a city of more than 7,000. Mr. Goetz said “not one thing” has been done to repair the inadequate structures.
He said the city has been waiting for help from the federal government’s disaster mitigation and adaptation fund.
“Up to this point, our dikes look exactly the same today as it did on Nov. 16, 2021. Nothing has changed,” Mr. Goetz said.
Mr. Parfitt requested copies of all the inspection reports filed between 2017 and 2021 by the cities of Abbotsford and Merritt and the Town of Princeton – the three communities where sections of dikes collapsed and extensive flooding occurred – as well as reports filed by the cities of Chilliwack and Richmond.
He found that for four years beginning in 2018, inspection reports filed by the city with the provincial dike inspector showed that Merritt’s dikes were in a deplorable state.
According to Mr. Parfitt’s research, a registered professional engineer named Aaron Hahn who was contracted by the City of Merritt noted several issues in a report he prepared for the city, including that the community’s dikes were “severely modified by unauthorized excavation and soil stockpiling,” and the dike structure was damaged by rampant unchecked growth of large cottonwood trees and other vegetation.
Mr. Hahn suggested these problems be handled with a high priority.
Mr. Parfitt wrote the same problems were noted in Mr. Hahn’s subsequent reports, which the city then sent along to the province.
Mr. Parfitt’s research also indicates that the Town of Princeton and the City of Abbotsford did not properly report on their dikes, but that didn’t trigger any alarm with provincial dike authorities.
Mr. Parfitt’s report said Princeton filed only minimal information with the provincial Inspector of Dikes and submitted only two reports during the five-year time frame he examined.
But Mayor Spencer Coyne of Princeton said three dike reports were filed with the province in the time period and the B.C. government has never voiced any concern over the level of professionalism from Town of Princeton staff.
Meanwhile, the City of Abbotsford didn’t measure its dikes in its annual inspection reports, even though local dike authorities have been required by the province to do so in recent years, according to Mr. Parfitt’s report.
“Yet Abbotsford’s failure to respond to such a key question did not result in the Inspector of Dikes ordering Abbotsford to do the measurements,” the report says.
Aletta Vanderheyden, a spokesperson for the City of Abbotsford, said the city submits annual dike inspection reports to the province that include a checklist indicating whether there has been a dike crest elevation survey completed within the last 10 years. However, she noted in a statement, the specific measurements of each dike are not part of this checklist, and the city has not received any requests for additional information from the province from these submissions.
Ms. Vanderheyden said in July, the City of Abbotsford submitted a $1.6-billion application for disaster mitigation and adaptation funding to re-enforce the Barrowtown Pump Station, to construct a pump station on the Sumas River conveyance system and to create a flood storage area.
“As mentioned in many past reports shared with the Province and others, as a local government, the City of Abbotsford does not have the funding to meet the financial requirements to support this critical community safety and disaster mitigation work, which is why we continue to advocate for this urgent flood protection funding from senior government.”