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The flowers in Martin O’Brien’s former home in Grand Forks, BC, are blooming, though no one lives there to care for them.
The whole neighborhood is being emptied, to the mouth of the fire and to the last piece of pipe above and below ground. Some houses have been relocated, some have been chosen by rescuers and others, such as O’Brien’s, are scheduled to be demolished.
The 71-year-old has gone on to save some thoughts.
“My thoughts are beautiful and the tulips are already opening,” he said, digging them up and putting them in a pot for the small balcony of the new apartment he found in the nursing home just minutes away.
O’Brien’s house was one of nearly 90 properties purchased or expropriated for the city after May Floods of 2018 which flooded the North Ruckle neighborhood and most of downtown Grand Forks south of the BC interior.
In May 2018, North Ruckle suffered severe property damage from heavy flooding. Heavy snowfall and several days of torrential rain caused local rivers to overflow. (Tina Lovgreen / CBC)
After years of resistance, he was one of the last to leave, forced in February when the city expropriated his property.
Instead of rebuilding or protecting the neighborhood from future flooding, Grand Forks chose a path that is likely to become more common as sea levels rise and the weather becomes more extreme due to climate change.
It is called “managed retreat” and means that people, their neighborhood and all the dreams they had for the land must go, returning the area to a natural floodplain.
“It was kind of a shock to the whole neighborhood to find that we were going to eliminate it,” said O’Brien, sitting on the porch of his old home.
“He had been here for 30 years, but there were some who had been here all their lives.”
He remains optimistic about the situation, but the process has been painful in Grand Forks.
Now other BC cities, including Abbotsford, which will announce its plan on Monday, are being forced to consider a managed retreat as they recover from last November’s extreme floods and mudslides and prepare for what is to come.
A road is flooded during flooding in Abbotsford, BC, on November 15, 2021. On Monday, the city says staff will present a plan to the council on how to rebuild from these floods and prepare for the risks. future. (Ben Nelms / CBC)
“A feeling of mourning”
As climate change threatens residents and infrastructure, more people will be forced to relocate. A Study 2019 published in Nature estimates that without urgent emission cuts, some 300 million people are vulnerable to rising seawater worldwide.
In Canada, managed retreat has previously been used in places where the chance of recurring flooding is so high that it was considered the best option, such as River ALTA, Alta., i Gatineau, Que.
In Grand Forks, Mayor Brian Taylor says that when the waters receded, the problems did not.
“We really had to have a long-term solution, that propping up a dike here and there or changing a few things didn’t really give us that security as a community in the face of this new climate uncertainty that we needed,” he said. .
They decided to remove the neighborhood to make way for the nearby Kettle and Granby rivers to overflow and build new dike systems to protect the city center and other areas.
The idea was controversial and sparked protests, especially when residents were told that the compensation they would receive would be based on the post-flood value of their properties.
Eventually, the city increased the compensation to the residents, to alleviate the blow, although it had to have a deficit to do so.
Beyond the money, Taylor said, it was a painful process for friends and neighbors.
“This was a community. It was a group of people who knew each other, supported each other,” he said, standing on the banks of the Kettle River, next to one of the walled houses.
“There is a feeling of mourning.”
Grand Forks Mayor Brian Taylor says many residents are happy to see that the mitigation project is being worked on, but that it has been a difficult process to get here. (Curtis Allen / CBC)
O’Brien said the grief is exacerbated by the way the neighborhood has been uprooted, not enough in terms of alternative housing and financial, legal and even trauma support. It made many feel like a number, he said.
“They talked about resilience as if it were something, like, a common denominator. Everyone had it, and everyone had the same amount. It’s not like that,” he said.
He hopes there are lessons to be learned from his community, whose flood mitigation plan is seen by some as a precedent in the province.
Grand Forks has recently received calls from other cities devastated by last November’s floods and mudslides, which destroyed highways and forced up to 20,000 people to leave their homes.
The flooding of Abbotsford Sumas Prairie lasted three weeks, destroying blueberries and other crops and killing thousands of animals. Here are farmland flooded on December 3, 2021. (Maggie MacPherson / CBC)
Abbotsford considers a withdrawal managed
In Abbotsford, 70 miles east of Vancouver, Fraser Valley, that November flood blocked Highway 1 and covered Sumas Meadow, a lush farmland that produces half the milk. eggs and dairy products of the province.
The mayor of Abbotsford said repairs and improvements made after last year’s floods leave residents better protected than before, but more needs to be done, especially when climate change is taken into account.
“We could experience it again in November, and that’s a concern, a big concern, that’s why we’re working so hard to develop this plan,” Henry Braun said.
Everything is complicated by the fact that much of the Sumas prairie was a lake, until it was drained in the 1920s to create some of the most valuable farmland in the province. A series of dikes and a pumping station work day and night to keep the lake out.
Barrowtown Pumping Station in Abbotsford on December 10, 2021. During the height of the flood, a group of volunteers rescued her to make sure she was not flooded and stopped working. (Ben Nelms / CBC)
The city consulted the neighbors four options ranging from $ 200 to $ 2.8 billion:
- Option 1: Improvements to the pumped station and repair of the damaged dike in November.
- Option 2: All of the above, plus an additional pumping station on the Sumas River.
- Option 3: All of the above, in addition to widening the floodplain through the relocation of dikes, which may require the purchase of real estate within it and the widening of dikes along the border.
- Option 4: All of the above, except for a narrower waterway and three additional pumping stations.
On Monday, the city said staff will recommend a mix of options 2, 3 and 4, the latter being preferred by most Sumas Prairie residents. Details and price tag have not been released, but will include dikes along the border and four new pumping stations.
Abbotsford Mayor Henry Braun says flood mitigation should have been improved decades ago. Beyond the options his city has proposed, he wants the collaboration of other levels of government for things like dredging the river. (Dillon Hodgin / CBC)
Options 3 and 4, which will be part of the proposed plan, include the possibility of a managed withdrawal with the purchase of certain properties. The City Council does not say how many properties could be affected.
“If you’re one of those farmers, it falls on their ears. I’ve had some difficult conversations, but our overall role as a council is to protect our citizens and the farming community,” Braun said. “There are a lot of things at stake here at the same time.”
Kuldeep Gill doesn’t like what he sees.
“I don’t like any idea what the city says,” Gill said in front of his 14-acre farm. “I don’t want anyone to touch my berry to put a lake or something right here. I don’t want that.”
Kuldeep Gill worries that his farm will have to be bought to become a floodplain. He wants the city to look at other options such as better drainage and sewer maintenance to help prevent future flooding. (Susana da Silva / CBC)
He bought his property seven years ago and spent millions on a new home. In November, his fields were under a meter of water.
“This is my dream [retire] I want to stay in this quiet area and my land, “he said.
Young blueberry bushes damaged by last year’s floods. (Susana da Silva / CBC)
Return to the lake?
But some are concerned that the options considered may not go far enough to allow the rivers to rise.
Tamsin Lyle, a flood management engineer and consultant, has been studying flooding in the region for more than two decades.
“The options that are currently on the table are very focused on the status quo, so doing things that we have done for the last 50 years, but making it a little bigger.”
Lyle says he acknowledges the urgency, but fears politicians will pressure him to act without regard to the biggest implications, from fish habitat to the policy of a dike on the U.S. border.
“It can be too fast because we rely on things we know haven’t worked in the past,” he said.
“We have to look at our big toolbox of options.”
For her, this includes the question of whether the ancient Sumas lake should be allowed to flood the Sumas meadow again.
TARGET | 100 years ago, Sumas Prairie was a lake and could once again be:
The 100-year-old decision that contributed to the flooding in Abbotsford, BC
More than 100 years ago, a lake outside what is now Abbotsford, BC, was drained to create lucrative farmland. Many say that this decision contributes a lot to the devastating floods.
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