REGINA – Not much is certain when it comes to predicting Mother Nature’s next move, but the City of Regina is pretty sure the dog park, the bike path next to it, and part of 13th Avenue will soon be under water. The area west of Lewvan Drive next to Wascana Creek is a natural flood plain.
“The snow basically in the city of Regina probably amounts to about 5 percent of what we expect to see,” Jay O’Connor, manager of emergency management explained how the city expects to see two peaks – one from urban melting, one from rural.
“The rural water will be our second spike in elevation and that’s because of all the water making its way through the Kronau marsh and up through to the city and then off to Lumsden,” he said.
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O’Connor led a tour for members of the media Wednesday of the city’s flood preparations. Equipment is already in place to break up ice on Wascana Lake, while control structures will be lifted to release water downstream. There are still two layers of ice covering Wascana Lake. one six inches deep covers a layer of water and another sheet of ice 18 inches deep. That amount of ice could cause significant damage when it starts to break apart.
Barriers have also been set up, which include four-foot high bulk bags the equivalent size of 120 regular sandbags.
Now the question is when will the flooding begin?
“We’ll see some more (melting) this weekend when we hit the double digits,” said O’Connor. “We would love to know what Mother Nature is planning this year, but we know how much snow is out there. That’s a certainty.”
He added, “If we do our jobs properly, this passes as just a spring run-off event, the water flows through the city and we all go on with our lives. But again there’s the potential. We always have to plan for those ‘what if’ scenarios.”
A contingency plan includes measures for evacuation as a worst case scenario, but both the city and the province are hoping it won’t come to that.
“The Water Security Agency has lowered all the reservoirs, and created as much room as possible for the spring runoff. So all that can be done, has been done,” said Ken Cheveldayoff, Minister responsible for the Water Security Agency.
He added that more than 220 communities have also applied for funding from the Emergency Flood Damage Reduction Program.
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