Drivers frustrated after flooding for a second time in four days on Whitemud Drive will have to wait for answers.
Flash flooding once again led to the closure of Whitemud Drive between 111 Street and 99 Street on Saturday night. Several people had to be rescued from their vehicles.
READ MORE: Summer storm shuts down portion of Edmonton’s Whitemud Drive
City Councillor Andrew Knack said administration is expected to report back to council in the spring about its recommendations for the freeway.
“They’re suggesting that the costs to actually properly prepare that to be able to handle those one-in-every-five-year floods would be in the hundreds of millions, which I think is a pretty substantial amount.”
Knack said most of the complaints he heard were from drivers who didn’t know the road was closed and were inconvenienced by the detours.
He said he heard from people who were commuting back from the west end after work and didn’t get any information about the detours. Knack believes improving communication about traffic changes might be a better solution in this situation.
“If this realistically is going to be only one in five years… do we have the proper protocol in place to be able to deal with this?
“I think it would be a hard sell to say, ‘let’s spend hundreds of millions of dollars for something that might happen once every five years’ when instead, maybe we can have proper processes in place to mitigate concerns.”
READ MORE: Edmonton streets flooded as city battered by rain during thunderstorm
July is typically a big month for thunderstorms, but what stands out to Environment Canada Meteorologist Dave Phillips is the relentlessness of it in Edmonton.
“You had 18 thunderstorm days! Over half the days had a thunder boomer!
“People were watching the skies and either seeking shelter or wondering why the atmosphere seemed so turbulent and chaotic,” Phillips said.
And, it wasn’t just storms. Edmonton has seen quite a bit of rain, too.
“I don’t think it’s been as wet in July as some people may be imagining it,” he added. “You’ve had, I would say, more than the normal amount of precipitation, but not record breaking at all.”
If severe downpours get more frequent with environmental change, Knack admitted council might have to have some conversations.
“We are seeing that change,” Knack said. “That concentration of rain coming now in our storms – we’re seeing much greater stress on our systems. We do actually need to develop that longer-term plan and what the committee and then council as a whole will be debating is whether or not we enact this plan over 25 years, 50 years, 100 years. We really need that data in front of us.”
READ MORE: Several parts of Edmonton experience flooding
Much like its neighbourhood renewal program, the city is looking at a drainage renewal program.
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