After two years of extensive flooding along Meighan Creek, the City of Armstrong finally has permission from the province to dredge part of the waterway as a preventative measure.
It’s welcome news for those who live and work along the waterway.
“We are really excited… knowing that we won’t have to spend the spring worrying about what is going to happen,” said Cindy Masters, the development officer for Kindale Developmental Association.
The non-profit’s Armstrong facilities backs onto Meighan Creek, and in 2017, the group — which serves people with disabilities — experienced destructive flooding.
The city had hoped to complete the dredging work last year but didn’t get permission. The area flooded again in March of 2018.
Mayor Chris Pieper said the city has been working to get permission to do remediation work on the creek since flooding in the area in 2017, roughly a year and a half ago.
“We put that as the number one priority in 2018 and we didn’t get permission last year, so we carried the money over into 2019,” Pieper explained.
Pieper said the city went through an extensive process to get the necessary permission in place, including a complete study of the creek.
The mayor said the city doesn’t have much experience seeking this type of approval, so there was a learning curve involved in getting the permission for the work.
“The ministry looks after the environment very well. We were pretty impatient, but at the end of the day it is going to work out for both of us,” Pieper said.
The province said it originally received an application from the City of Armstrong in February, 2018, but that the city “had not given any hydrologic consideration towards the proposed plan, including the need to mitigate downstream impacts.”
The Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development said dredging can “cause more harm than good if not carefully thought out.”
The ministry said it was prepared to expedite the approval process for the work because the high snow pack in 2018 posed a flood risk.
To get emergency approval within days, the ministry said the city needed to get a hydrologist or engineer to do a small study to make sure the changes to the creek “would not cause problems in other areas of the creek, including highway infrastructure or city infrastructure.”
The province said this expedited approval plan was proposed on March 22, 2018. The city declared a state of emergency due to flooding the next day.
Last week, the province granted Armstrong approval to dredge, and Pieper is hopeful the creek work will prevent a repeat of the 2017 and 2018 floods.
The work on the creek is set to begin in less than two weeks and will include dredging but also replanting of vegetation.
Pieper said around $350,000 has been set aside for the project.
Watch Below: Global News coverage of the 2017 and 2018 floods in Armstrong.
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