Skip to content

Communities bounce back from flood

Two foothills towns are almost done picking up the pieces after the Sheep River ravaged parts of their communities two years ago.
Residents and volunteers in Black Diamond’ s northwest clean up after the Sheep River flooded their homes during the 2013 flood.
Residents and volunteers in Black Diamond’ s northwest clean up after the Sheep River flooded their homes during the 2013 flood.

Two foothills towns are almost done picking up the pieces after the Sheep River ravaged parts of their communities two years ago.

While flood mitigation projects and repair work is nearing completion in Black Diamond and Turner Valley, Turner Valley Mayor Kelly Tuck is feeling the pressure financially.

The Town is dipping into its reserves and funding set aside for other projects so it can complete upgrades to its Quad Regional Water Project (QRWP), a shared water project between Black Diamond, Turner Valley, the MD of Foothills and eventually Longview, as it awaits Provincial funding. The Town has been supplying water to Black Diamond since it lost its water treatment plant in the flood.

“As of June 15 we have spent $12.6 million,” said Tuck. “That means the shortfall is $3 million. We have contracts we signed with contractors. At the end of this week we have to have another $700,000 to make another payment.”

To make up for the shortfall, the Town has used Disaster Relief Program funding allocated to repaving Decalta Road, creating a pathway along the road and completing the Royalite Way extension, Tuck said.

“The other projects can hang back and wait,” she said. “Lots of things need to occur but water is our first concern.”

Tuck felt a sense of relief after receiving written confirmation from the Province on June 22 that the Town will receive $2.5 million for the QRWP within 10 days.

While Tuck said she’ll continue to worry until the Town receives every penny from the government, she admits some good has come out of the flood.

“It made all of us in our community very wise to water,” she said, referring the severe water restrictions residents faced for more than a year. “Even today I still practice a lot of the water measures that were implemented when we were in level three.”

The catastrophe also brought the two communities closer together, said Tuck.

“I was very proud to watch neighbours helping neighbours,” she said. “We are looking out for each other. That’s always been there but it just seems we are closer. I think we all learned that we needed each other that day and the days to follow.”

Black Diamond Mayor Sharlene Brown said the flood increased the towns’ sharing capacity.

“I can’t believe how great our communities pulled together,” she said. “We’re very resilient.”

In Black Diamond, the majority of the town’s $8 million worth of flood mitigation work is complete, including the construction of two berms upstream and one downstream of the Black Diamond bridge for future flood protection.

Work is ongoing on the Bob Lochhead Memorial Park, the Foothills Lions Club campground that received extensive damage during the flood, as well as a berm to protect a water source at the old water treatment plant, which is expected to be completed this fall, Brown said.

While the flood filled more than 50 residences and about a dozen businesses with water in the town’s northwest, Brown said they’re bouncing back nicely.

“For the most part everything is taken care of,” she said. “Volunteers were in within the first 48 hours and that really mitigated a lot of losses in the community. If you look at what happened in other communities where people had to stay out longer, they lost their houses and there was a lot more work that needed to be done.”

Black Diamond resident Linda Fraser said while her neighbours are back in order after the flood, that’s not the case for her.

With no family in the area and having moved to the community just months before the flood hit, Fraser said she didn’t have much help and had to do most of the work herself.

“People like to say there’s caring neighbours but at the end of the day they aren’t,” she said. “My house got the brunt of the flood. They all know about it and nobody has come knocking. That was the case from the beginning.”

Fraser expects she won’t have her home back to normal for another year. She has to replace furniture and only a quarter of her basement is complete. She also needs help installing her new garage door.

“It’s disheartening, but I just plug on,” she said.

Fraser also has concerns that a berm wasn’t built closer to her and her neighbours’ homes.

“They protected the campground and they protected Vale’s Greenhouse and in the middle between the two they’ve done nothing,” she said. “There is nothing to protect the town when (water) comes over the exact same spot that it did before, and it’s going to happen again. Why worry about getting the house fixed now because it’s going to be ruined again.”

Also hit hard in the community were businesses, which Brown said were cut off after the flood washed out a portion of Highway 22 to the west. Brown said they’re recovering nicely.

“People are still coming back to the whole Diamond Valley region,” she said. “Look at the success of the parade. Those kinds of things have not stopped and they are just getting bigger. It really talks about the resilience of the community members.”

Brown said the biggest impact the flood had in Black Diamond was the loss of its water, electricity, phone and Internet.

“That whole connectivity to the community from the outside was gone,” she said. “We were on water restrictions for well over a year.”

Brown said the Town is currently working on getting funding to reroute its sewage system, which is run through the Sheep River bank. She said the system was not damaged in the flood, and that it’s preventative work.

“All major servicing should not be in the river valley,” she said, adding other services have since been rerouted.

push icon
Be the first to read breaking stories. Enable push notifications on your device. Disable anytime.
No thanks