Dear fellow Wallacevillers and High Riverites, Below is a copy of an e-mail I sent to the Town Council of High River, which I also CCed to government officials such as Doug Griffith, Alison Redford, Danielle Smith, and Rick Fraser. These are my thoughts and opinions; these same thoughts and opinions have been shared by other residents of Wallaceville in e-mails and at Town meetings. If you agree with anything I have said, I would highly encourage you to relay your support and opinions to those individuals who I sent this e-mail to. There is power in numbers, and I believe that the Town and province need to know what the people of Wallaceville and High River are feeling and believe should be done with our homes and the community of Wallaceville. Whichever side you sit on, rebuild or tare down, I believe the Town should know how we all feel. The more feedback they get from us, the more informed a decision they will be able to make. Hopefully, the decision will be made sooner rather than later. You can e-mail town and province officials at: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] All the best in these tough times. Katherine E-mail as sent: To the mayor and town councilors of High River, Following the flood on June 20th, I sent the town a letter pleading with you all to seriously consider giving Wallaceville back to the river. While my initial plea was filled with emotional as well as practical reasons for this, I am writing you again today to state the case for giving Wallaceville back to the river for purely practical reasons. Historically, Wallaceville is an area that floods and in the future will certainly flood again. Once upon a time the Wallaceville Sawmill occupied this area. It was only after the Sawmill was flooded and the CP railway berm was put in place that the residential community of Wallaceville was built. Since then, Wallaceville has had various levels of flooding almost every spring. With the CP rail berm having been washed away, there is no longer anything protecting this neighborhood. To replace the berm that washed away with another berm, might be effective in the short term, but in the long term it may fail just as the previous berm did in a larger flood. The natural course of the river as it stands wraps around the back of the Willows condos and behind a large part of Wallaceville. As a part of its natural course, the river has been trying to take the short cut across Wallaceville in order to straighten its course. The rivers natural progress and redirection has been prevented by the towns developments. This is evidenced by the manner in which the water came up at Marcraft and ran behind the berm until it was able to breach the railway berm and flow through Wallaceville. Even before the water was able to come over from the west side of the berm, Wallaceville was experiencing flooding from water cutting back from the east side of Wallaceville to the west. When the water breached the berm around 10 a.m. a rapid flow of 4 feet of water quickly engulfed the area, as seen in this youtube clip taken from my front door and garage. youtube/watch?v=ZgTMTvRX1V4 Shortly after taking this video, my husband was evacuated on a front loader that nearly washed away with the force of the current. In the aftermath of the flooding, I look at the homes in Wallacevile and see nothing but destruction: houses off foundations and in sink holes. I also see peoples lives and investments. While it is an emotional and difficult financial decision to make, it is impossible to decide to rebuild without knowing what the town and provincial plans are for the area. Even without knowing what the plan to protect the area is, some residents of the area will have to take their homes down to the ground and restart with a new foundation or have their homes raised in order to clean their crawl spaces and soil under their homes. While some individuals would love nothing more than to be able to do this, they have been denied by DRP and Tervita because of the astronomical cost of doing these repairs. For the average person, taking on this financial burden that even government agencies say is too big, is simply not an option. Much speculation and gossip is being passed around about potential plans to protect the area or turn it into a park. I believe you must look at the town as a whole, not just in terms of tax revenue and land values, but also in terms of protection and future expansions. I have heard reports that the bridge (train and car) are both causing major obstructions to water flow and that plans for the widening of the bridge and road leading up to the bridge are being considered. I have not taken any measurements, but it would seem that town land around the bridge is insufficient for such expansion, thus land from the Wallaceville area would be of use to this type of project. Furthermore, with a larger bridge in place, I believe Wallaceville would make for a good place to channel and store excess water during times of high water. While I consider a park a good alternative, a park would also need to be protected, whereas an extension of the river would not. As it is, Wallaceville is crowding the river, and many of the people of Wallaceville no longer have faith that they can peacefully and safely co-exist with the river so close and powerful. I believe that expanding the bridge and using Wallaceville as a place to channel and store water would go a long way to improving water flow during times of flood. Simply placing more berms perpendicular to the river, does not increase the amount of room for excess amounts of water. The river has shown that when push comes to shove, it can and will push its way into town; by giving the river more room and focusing rebuilding and future developments of High River further away from the river, I believe the Town stands to gain a whole lot more than it would lose by giving Wallaceville back to the river. While I cannot tell you for sure if this is true in dollars and sense, the 2D flood mapping model is a great tool at the towns disposal, which would likely give you valuable information about my theories. I would like to know what the results of mapping a flood of June 20ths magnitude looks like in the absence of homes in Wallaceville and with a larger bridge to accommodate high flow events. While I recognize that the decision to NOT rebuild Wallaceville is financially daunting to some key individuals who have invested much of their money into the area, Wallaceville as it once was is already gone. To rebuild Wallaceville means funneling countless government and personal dollars into these properties and into this neighbourhood, just so that it can all be lost again in 5, or 10 or 20 years. Regardless of whether we try to sell these properties today or in 10 years, they are no longer worth as much and they are unlikely to ever be worth what they once were; to sink more money into them, just to lose it all over again is crazy and irresponsible, especially if something can be done with this land to improve the chances of the rest of the town come the next big flood. I know you are all working hard to see the best possible High River come through this, and I would like to thank you all for your hard work. As discussions of Wallaceville and the towns future continue, please keep in mind the big picture, and seriously consider the benefits of giving Wallaceville back to the river, as perhaps it should have been after the Sawmill was flooded so long ago Yours truly in these difficult times, Owner of a Willows Condo Unit Former Resident of Wallaceville in High River, Ab Foothills School Division Elementary School Teacher University of McGill Graduate Bachelors of Education; Major in Geography High river flash flooding june 20,2013 This video was taken a few minutes before a front loader came to our rescue outside my front door. The current was so strong it seemed to be pushing the fron...
Posted on: Thu, 03 Oct 2013 18:56:12 +0000
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