A new structure in Canmore to prevent flooding

Canmore inaugurated a new structure on Friday that will allow the municipality to protect itself against possible flooding.

The project was designed in response to the overflow of Cougar Creek and other waterways that flooded many municipalities in southern Alberta more than a decade ago, causing tens of millions of dollars in damage. .

At the time, downed trees, huge boulders and other debris had rolled down the steep hillside, carving into the creek’s banks for a distance of 130,000 square meters and swallowing up homes and highways.

The 34 meter high structure was therefore designed using riprap, so that the piled up stone blocks control the volume of floods while filtering out large debris. It is located approximately 600 meters upstream from the Cougar Creek neighborhood, in the small Rocky Mountain town.

A structure like this will help retain water when the flood reaches its peak, preventing it from hitting the community all at once.explains Andy Esarte, Canmore’s director of engineering.

The Municipality of Canmore led and designed the construction of this $72 million project, investing just over $12 million alone.

For their part, the province and the federal government paid respectively $46 and $14.5 million in the project.

This is a small amount of money to pay, considering we will be protecting thousands of lives, hundreds of businesses and billions of dollars in assets and properties.underlines Canmore Mayor Sean Krausert.

The mayor also let it be known that the municipality intends to inject $100,000 per year to ensure the maintenance of the structure.

While some details still need to be finalized by next year, such as the installation of signage and landscaping surrounding the structure, it is now completely functional.

In Canmore 11 years ago

Pascale Tétreault, owner of Le Fournil bakery, was in Canmore during the 2013 floods.

She had to rebuild after her business was swallowed up by water, shortly after opening.

For the merchant, the end of the work should be taken with a grain of salt.

There are a lot of people who are skeptical. It’s a lot of money, it took a very, very long time. It’s still been 11 years since it happened, the floodsshe said.

Pascale Tétreault adds that the circumstances leading to the floods were special, and that she does not fear that they will occur again at Cougar Creek.

Anything can happen, we know, with climate change and the scary things that happen. But does the fact that they did this reassure me? No, because in any case it wasn’t Cougar Creek that was [l’origine du] problem hereshe explains.

At the time, the Bow and Elbow Rivers had overflowed their banks after abnormal rainfall swollen both streams, flowing into downstream streams, such as the Cougar River.

With information from Laurence Taschereau and Joey Chini