CALGARY- A new phase of riverbank stabilization work has brought big diggers and trucks into the Bow River bed.
The city is hauling over 600 truckloads of sand and rock out of a gravel bar that grew much bigger in the June flood. They’re scraping it down to spread out the flow of the water during spring runoff.
“Because the river has changed due to the flood, we wanted to ensure that the impact from the work on the 8th Avenue side didn’t have an impact on elevation along the entire river at that stretch,” says Lee Hang-Liu, team lead for Infrastructure Recovery with Water Resources.
During the June flood, about 100 metres of land washed away. In the first stage of the project, crews added rock to the riverbank along 8th Ave. to strengthen it and prevent further erosion.
The gravel is only being moved a couple hundred metres downstream, to the other bank. It won’t affect river flow, and may protect Inglewood Bird Sanctuary from erosion.
Once the work in Inglewood is done, crews will start to fortify three other critical erosion sites along the Bow, near Memorial Drive, Home Road and Douglasdale/Diamond Cove. The project cost over $12 million in provincial funding.
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