City doesn't expect flooding in Calgary this spring but says it's ready

City officials reassured members of city council at a meeting Tuesday that Calgary is much better prepared today for a flood than it was in 2013.

That disaster caused $6 billion in damages as heavy rains falling onto the mountain snowpack resulted in a once-in-a-century flood inundating Calgary and surrounding region. Over 110,000 people were forced to temporarily flee their homes due to the rising waters.

Since then, the City of Calgary has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on flood mitigation projects to limit the damages from future floods.

Council's emergency management committee heard that with the steps taken so far, 55 per cent of the damage from a 2013-sized flood would now be prevented.

That figure will rise to 70 per cent once the province completes a new off-stream diversion project on the Elbow River in Springbank. Construction officially started earlier this year.

Snowpack deeper

The city's team lead for river engineering, Sandy Davis, said the snowpack in the Rockies west of Calgary is about 20 to 40 per cent higher than average.

However, that alone cannot cause flooding. It's when heavy rains fall on that snow that it can create flood concerns downstream.

She said city officials are on duty 24 hours a day, seven days a week during flood season, which runs from mid-May to mid-July, so they can constantly monitor conditions.

Even though the longer term forecast is for drier than normal conditions, Davis said they'll monitor the situation.

"We don't see those big rains that cause river flooding in Calgary more than three to five days out, and so that's where my team is monitoring conditions, to watch for those big rain systems and provide the early warning up to a week beforehand," said Davis.

The chief of the Calgary Emergency Management Agency, Sue Henry, said city officials recently took part in a mock disaster exercise and that it was a flood scenario.

She said flooding and dam breaches are among the top 15 major disaster risks for Calgary, so it's important for emergency officials to be prepared to respond to such situations.

Reservoirs are ready

In preparation for flooding, water levels are already being lowered on both the Glenmore reservoir on the Elbow River system and at the Ghost dam on the Bow River, just west of Cochrane.

The province is studying the possibility of a new dam being built upstream of Calgary to help mitigate against future flooding affecting Calgary.

The city's manager of watershed planning, Frank Frigo, said even after that upgrade happens, Calgary will still have to monitor river conditions in the future.

"We recognize that we'll probably never have enough storage to adequately manage all the risks that we may see," said Frigo.

Coun. Kourtney Penner, the chair of the emergency management committee, said the city learned a great deal from the 2013 flood and that experience will help whenever Calgary faces another flood emergency.

"I am confident that if we were to experience another large flood that we would be well prepared to manage that," said Penner. "When we talk about management, I think it is our ability to respond quickly to save lives, to save livelihoods, and so it doesn't mean that there won't be damage."