So far, so good in Manitoba as far as flooding is concerned, but communities south of Winnipeg are keeping a close eye on river levels after the province issued flood warnings Tuesday.
St. Jean Baptiste and Morris, along with the surrounding area, are under a flood warning, while a flood watch is on for a number of other communities in the south of the province.
Rural Municipality of Morris reeve Ralph Groening told 680 CJOB his community deals with flooded roads as a matter of course each spring, and that at this point, they’re more worried about farmland being flooded than people’s homes.
“We are mostly talking about overland flooding,” Groening said.
“The response after the 1997 event was that the homes were built up and protected – communities were protected.
“So it’s not really residents we’re concerned about — it’s property and it’s overland flooding — water coming from the very, very slow melt.”
Groening said the municipality is working on its flood mitigation efforts to minimize the damage — and that being prepared is a fact of life in the area.
“It’s almost an annual event for us — here we are again making preparations for an event we hope doesn’t happen.
“We simply live with the reality that every spring we will have the potential challenge of too much water in places we don’t want … this is our home, and we accept the challenge and prepare for it, and we are prepared.”
In the Rural Municipality of Montcalm, similar precautions were taken after the flood of ’97, but councillor Paul Sabourin says although houses are well protected, the way the situation this spring will affect infrastructure is still a bit of an unknown.
Sabourin said the slow melt means there’s still lots of water to come, as well as lots of ice jams.
“Last week, we thought we were out of the woods, and here we are now, we’re getting concerns again,” he said.
“There’s quite a bit of overland flooding happening in our municipality on the east side of the Red River.
“(The water is) damaging roads — there’s a lot of site clean-ups and damage to drainage ditches. The unknown equation is how high this water will go — we’re all hoping for the best.”
The province said the river upstream of the Red River Floodway still has some ice on it — but flood forecasters say it could be gone by the end of the week — which would allow the province to use the floodway for flood control.