Five years after floods raged across southern Alberta, Highwood’s MLA want the Province to release a report detailing measures to reduce the impact of future floods.

George Groeneveld said the report he spearheaded is still sitting on Alberta Municipal Affairs’ shelf and he hopes recent flooding in southeast Alberta will put more pressure on the Province to release it.

“As soon as a flood goes past a year and beyond, people seem to forget about floods,” he said. “Now I’m starting to get calls on the report again asking where it is. This is a good time to go back and get the report completed.”

Groeneveld was tasked with drawing up the report after floods devastated the foothills and much of Alberta in 2005 causing millions of dollars in damage. At the time, he led a committee that was part of an initiative by Alberta Municipal Affairs, Infrastructure and Environment.

When former premier Ralph Klein stepped down all committee work ceased and Groeneveld said the report was never completed.

“This thing was only about 90 per cent completed and the 10 per cent that was left was coming to terms with the feds in how they might be involved,” he said.

Groeneveld would not discuss the contents of the report because it has not been released. He would only say it covered the entire province, included 16 recommendations and primarily addressed flood mitigation.

Alberta Municipal Affairs spokesperson Tim Chander said the report was intended for provincial cabinet and was never meant to be released to the public. It’s up to cabinet to decide whether or not to make it public, he said.

“The report was meant to provide guidance and ideas on flood mitigation for cabinet for discussion,” he said. “As we’ve moved on since then we’ve decided more work is required and participation and agreements from other levels of government including municipalities.”

This comes as a surprise to Groeneveld who said it was always his impression the report would be released to the public.

“I guess it’s a kind of way of saying we’re never going to release the report,” he said. “It was a tri-municipal report and we spent a lot of money doing it.”

Chander would not comment on Groeneveld’s response, but said the Municipal Affairs minister has publicly stated the report was not going to be made public.

According to Chander, the Province is working with the federal government on creating response strategies and it wants to ensure the report aligns with work on the national level.

“The federal government is working on a national flood mitigation strategy and they’re including all the provinces and territories,” he said. “We want to be on par and work together with them at the same time to develop a strategy.”

At present, Chander said the Province is not acting on any of the report’s recommendations.

It hasn’t been made available to municipalities, but he said many recommendations are already being worked on or implemented by municipalities on their own initiative.

Okotoks Municipal manager Rick Quail said he’d like to see the report because it would help line-up the Town’s flood plans with the Province’s strategies.

“It would be informative for the Town to understand what the Province’s thinking is and how we might be able to integrate and align Town efforts with bigger picture initiatives,” he said.

The Town has developed its own flood response strategy, which includes a number of initiatives such as installing back flow preventers on storm sewers and special manhole covers that can be installed in the event of a flood to prevent water from going into the sewer system.

Highwood MLA George Groeneveld

The Province will fund repairs for flood damage, but Quail said it will not pay for preventative projects such as building flood berms.

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