Spring rains mean the nerve-rattling river watch begins anew for a Riverside Drive resident.
After watching floodwater surround her Riverside Drive home twice in eight years, Okotoks resident Laura Kendall keeps a close watch on the river flowing a few hundred metres from her back door.
She said she feels helpless every time there is a threat of a flood.
“You do kind of feel like a sitting duck,” said Kendall.
The Riverside Drive area was one of a several locations in Okotoks where the Sheep River spilled its banks on June 20, 2013, and earlier years including 2005.
Floodwaters almost reached the first floor of Kendall’s home in 2005.
Kendall said she would like a berm built in the Riverside area to protect her home and businesses in the area.
“I’m not talking about a four-foot berm, just to feel like we had some kind of protection,” she said.
Depending on which way water is moving, Kendall said it can either be a slow deluge over her property or a raging torrent. Floodwaters poured across her property in three separate incidents in June of 2005. She started cleaning out her basement after the first event when the second swept across her property, taking one of her freezers with it. It was eventually found by the Okotoks Public Library, said Kendall.
She also wonders how changes to topography in the area have been affected by new commercial developments in the area.
While a neighbouring commercial property was built up higher out of potential flood area, Kendall said hers sits in a bowl-shaped area and could still be impacted in a major flood.
Okotoks CAO Rick Quail said the Town has never considered a berm in the Riverside Drive area. He said berming the area would require a large, expensive structure.
“It would be almost impossible,” said Quail.
Though there was overland flooding in the area in 2013, he said most flooding that has occurred in the area in previous year was the result of storm-sewer back ups.
Okotoks Mayor Bill Robertson said the railroad tracks through the centre of town function as a berm to protect the downtown area.
However, additional berms aren’t an option in Okotoks, said the mayor. Once a berm is built in one location, Robertson said it impacts others downstream.
“If you move massive amounts of water away from something it has to go somewhere else,” he said. “By decreasing the flood risk in one area you make it that much worse further downstream.”
The provincial government is also highly restrictive about where berms can be built, said Robertson.
Kendall said she understands a berm is a big request to protect a handful of homes and businesses, acknowledging it could result in a higher likelihood of flooding somewhere else.
She said she is just looking for more help to protect her home.
“I don’t know how realistic it is, but it would be nice to feel like we have a little more protection than we have right now,” she said.
She would like the Town to include her street on the list of locations where the Town sets out sandbags as a precaution in the event of a flood advisory. The Town already sets out several palettes of sandbags at the nearby Anglican Church, but it’s a distance to go back and forth carrying heavy sandbags, said Kendall.
Though the town delivered a palette of sandbags delivered to her home in 2013, she said her home is at enough of a risk she shouldn’t have to ask.
This request has a sympathetic ear with Okotoks’ protective services director.
Scott Roberts said he met Kendall and toured her property with Okotoks’ fire chief.
After touring her property, he said he and the chief agreed the Town could also set out sandbags on her street as a precaution for Kendall and be prepared to respond with additional measures if required.
“She has told us historically how the flooding has impacted her property, so we discussed it with her, and Ken and I looked at it and thought this is perhaps where we need to change our strategy,” said Roberts.
