Manitoba government water strategy will cause major flood: biologist

WINNIPEG – A University of Winnipeg biologist says the Manitoba government’s water management strategy will mean another major flood next spring.

Scott Forbes told 680 CJOB on Monday that the province’s failure to make full use of a channel to get water out of Lake Manitoba will likely contribute to flooding in the spring.

Not having the Fairford control structure open this year is “a scandal,” he said.

The winter operation of the control structure is only designed to control potential ice damage in downstream communities on the Dauphin River.

The government has promised long-term relief for high lake levels on Lake Manitoba by 2020.

Don Clarkson, president of the Association of Lake Manitoba Stakeholders, said the lake’s current level is two feet above normal, the same as it was in 2010, which contributed to massive flooding and damage to property in the spring of 2011.

“We thought we would have learned from our mistakes, that the provincial government would have looked at the management of lake levels and said, ‘We can’t do this again. We need to be smarter, we need to more prepared for spring runoff.’ ”

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story identified Scott Forbes as a University of Manitoba biologist. He is a University of Winnipeg biologist.

— CJOB