I like that a lot!!!! Way to go!

What a waste of time and money. The dike will be built because it needs to be built, just like the R.C.M.P. building. Now the City will spend a huge pile of money, explaining the need for it to the public (like they should have to begin with to avoid this nonsense) and then go to a referendum.

sine nomine why now after all these years do we need a dike? what has really changed?

sine nomine…When your bathtub starts to overflow,do you run around trying to build the sides higher. Most people would pull the plug. The same applies to dredging the river, COMMON SENSE. I’am sorry, but on this subject, the dike proponents have it all wrong. Big time.

Good job, Eric Allen! I am relieved that this passed, and ecstatic that it passed by so much.
I guess all those uneducated little people had something to say. Perhaps the smart, big people should listen.

They went to the well one too many times!

The AAP for the purchasing office pissed me off more than the dyke as it easily could have waited and been put on last November’s ballot.

I hope mayor and council have their ears open as this message from the taxpayers is loud and clear.

Thanks to the other 9270 for helping send the message. Make that 9269….Brian Skakun has more than likely changed his position again, voted against the dyke, for the AAP,then signed up against the AAP.

Hopefully this will be the end of the alternate approval process as well.

Good going PG! I bet you a lot more younger people voted this time! Some said it was great to vote at 18! ;) :)

Has anyone who has commented here read the reports about why the dike is necessary? Think investment and insurance. Would you build your business on a known flood plain? How much do you think you would have to pay the insurance company to indemnify you against flood damage and business disruption?

Sure everyone has opinions, and emotions tend to come into play when there is money involved, but really people, you need to educate yourself a wee bit.

The dredging suggestion is moronic in the extreme and shows a complete lack of even the rudiments of understanding about geology, hydrology and common sense for that matter.

Congratulations to all those who sent in their no vote and especially those who did their civic duty to rally people around the cause.

I realize that there were sevral different reasons why people made the effort.

After the fact, I noticed that there was no visible movement by those who did not want the numbers to be high enough to stop the process or force a referendum. I found that to be the most interesting part of this process.

People “voted” against the borrowing for a variety of different reasons.

I “voted” to hopefully send a message that an AAP is not the way to go. My secondary point of view is that to spend this amount of money on a dike to protect industrial facilities that would not be there much longer is investing in the wrong location.

CN is ready to move since the yard they have does not have the capacity they require for projected future growth.

Winton Global is out of there.

Lakeland had a tragic industrial accident which may see them not rebuild or want to relocate a new plant for better access.

Brinks should never have built a new facility in the known flood plane on the north side of River Road.

It is time to mourn the lost lives of the blast and help those who can recover from their injuries to do so, as well as help the families who have lost an income.

Once that is over, it is a time for the City, the Province, and the remaining industries in the flood plain to have a new look at what the future for that part of town should look like so that the right kind of investment in facilities is made.

Karjai, not only have I read the report, but I am also very aware of what other parts of the world are doing with those kind of lands on rivers such as the Mississippi, Rhine, etc.

The modern approach is to give the rivers a wider bearth. In most cases that means going back to the original lands occupied by natural watercourses over parts of the year as well as creating flood water reservoirs further upstream which will hold flood water adjacent to the river’s course.

Working in the delta’s only, which is working with no alternative options remaining, is asking for catastrophy. Think Katrina. Think ice jams.

Karjai – ” but really people, you need to educate yourself a wee bit.”

So you are saying that the majority of the 9,271 are not educated? or just the few that post? Either way it is perhaps you that needs to educate yourself a wee bit…

I also have read the report and and it does not hold water in my opinion. There is no guarantee in life or mother nature.

Not everyone posting on this site believes dredging is the answer. I believe Gus said it best. I moved here in the late 70’s and it was quite common to see sections flood there.

Karjai I feel sorry for you. You sound like a knowlegable person but when you open your mouth that nonsence starts to flow. Are you aware of the costs that occur when the front end of a vehicle starts to deteriorate, and the safety ramifications involved? I will tell you that the city could get sued well into next sunday because of a pot hole that caused an accident. Besides all of this you can write so I suggest you can surely read the numbers that voted against the dyke. Prince George has infastructure priorities that come well before building a dyke. If you wish to call us a bunch of morons that’s your opinion. It would my opinion to judge where your opinion is comming from.

Can we keep the extra votes in this AAP to use on the next one? We got more than needed this time.

Karjai,
This river floodplain is gravel, not clay. The floodplain won’t stop water. In fact during the last flood, areas on 1st avenue were flooded by ground water coming up. Maybe you could explain to me how a dyke would stop the ground water from coming up? I think if I could understand how the dyke would solve this, then maybe I could support it?

Thanks.

Karjai – ” but really people, you need to educate yourself a wee bit.”

Maybe YOU do need to be educated on the fact that everyone is in the same boat when the taxman cometh to collect the usual increased taxes: Education (or the lack of it) does NOT come into the tax collection scheme at all!

So, every vote counts the same! Taxation is the entitlement to representation!

Fix the potholes, run a city with financial acumen and with a surplus rather than piling on the debt! Perhaps allow the land in the flood plain to become greenspace parkland with walking trails – if the river wants to flood it every few decades or so, let it!

Gus has the right drift on the industrial facilities and how and why they won’t be there much longer!

giterdun said: “sine nomine…When your bathtub starts to overflow,do you run around trying to build the sides higher. Most people would pull the plug. The same applies to dredging the river, COMMON SENSE. I’am sorry, but on this subject, the dike proponents have it all wrong. Big time.”

I don’t pull the plug when my bathtub starts to overflow, I pull the plug. Regardless, your suggestion that “pulling the plug” is the fix is just silly. That’s the same as draining some of the bathtub into a bucket and leaving the tap running. I’m not sure you’re a flood mitigation expert yourself.

Reminds me of the HST petition. Bet they just ignore it and go do the borrowing and project anyways. Why not? Nobody has said anything about how they ignored the people on the HST. Which by the way was organized by the same ERIC ALLEN and a superb job it was then too. So who wants to bet they ignore us again?

comments are being posted about how much we have to lose. Question is, who stands to gain with the construction of a dike?
Let’s see federal money, provincial money, city money.
I think the AAP result shows that honest, hard working, taxpaying people are fed up with people trying to make money directly off the taxpayer.

One Democrat hit the nail on the head.

Honest, hard working, taxpaying people are sick and tired with people earning their living directly off the taxpayer.

We need a better distribution of tax dollars. Why is it so difficult for the City to spend money on the necessities such as roads, watermains, sewers, garbage, etc; In other words the basics.

Who in Prince George asked for a Dike?? Certainly not anyone I know. Who asked for a Wood Innovation Building?? Not anyone I know. Who asked for a huge expansion to the Airport Runway?? Not anyone I know. Who asked for Boundry Road Cut-off?? Not anyone I know.

Who gets to pay for all the projects. Every bloody taxpayer I know.

Who asked for the roads to be fixed. Every person in Prince George that I know.

Why are we being ignored??? Could it be because vested interests have more clout with City Hall than the average taxpayers who must pay the bills??

Its time to stop the madness.

“When your bathtub starts to overflow,do you run around trying to build the sides higher. Most people would pull the plug.”

Gee, I turn off the tap …….. ;-)

“Question is, who stands to gain with the construction of a dike?”

Construction contractors in this city stand to gain whatever is built whether it is a dike or a new road or the patching of roads.

Any businesses or residents (and there are/were some of those) located in the affected area stand to gain. By some projections, that includes the occupants of properties in parts of downtown. I am not sure when the last time was that George Street and 4th was flooded, but there are projections that it may flood there on average of 1 in 200 years or so.

Remember, businesses do pay taxes in this City. I realize it is lower than in most other cities in BC, but they do pay taxes.

Remember, one of the roles of City Hall is to provide a reasonable place to live AND to do business. It is a symbiotic relationship. One cannot exist without the other.

So the notion that business is bad and residents are good is foreign to me. It is not a black and white world.

Do I think the pendulum has swung the wrong way over the past decade or so? Yes, it likely has, not only municipally but also provincially and federally in the belief that a coddled business environment will allow business to flourish and provide riches to the general population. I see no sign of the general truth of that.

What are the key indicators that that is a false belief? Simple. The rich are getting relatively richer and the poor are getting relatively poorer. In other words, the wealth created by business is not shared across the board.

I’m with Gus on why I “voted” to stop the dike. I too don’t agree with the AAP being used to build something that really has no value. I don’t think I approve of the AAP at all; unless someone can give me a compelling reason why I should change my mind. I think the AAP is something the City can use to go against the wishes of it’s people. At election time the people vote for a governing body, at the end of the day, the people are the government, sometimes governments forget that. The successful campaign spearheaded by Eric Allen is a reminder of that!

This is a fantastic result for Eric Allen and all the other volunteers who gathered up the names required. True patriots all of them.

I hope we can now get back to being a democracy and the city will not go to the AAP process again in the future… I hope.

Like I asked previously, when are they going to start digging? HST come to mind?

Mistake above, I meant to say:

I don’t pull the plug when my bathtub starts to overflow, I turn off the tap.

I have no problem with dykes. Some of my best friends…
The worrying issue here is the City’s inclination to keep borrowing and borrowing at a time when our tax base is about to take a dive with Lakeland’s taxes gone and a probable exodus of workers.

I pose this question to the proponents of the dike- Explain to me why the area to the north of the Pulp Mill Road flooded out and several homes were flooded during the last big river ice jam? The Pulp Mill Road was never breached, the Nechako River did not come close to going over it. They even put up a temporary dike system along it, but it never stopped the high water table from flooding out those homes.

how deep do you build the dike??

Gus, the dike would not protect the George Street area and the bottom of 2nd Ave would still get flooded as it does almost every year. Maybe phase 2 of the dike would help that area. Why do they not clear the side channel to take some of the pressure off the Nechako. When you have two rivers joining, the Nechako at 90 degrees to the Fraser, you will get a buildup of silt and debris at the mouth of the smaller Nechako. What hurts it more is the Fraser also has slight bend in the same area which ‘pushes’ some of the silt coming down the Nechako back creating a sandbar, which stops the ice from flowing down to the Fraser, which starts the seepage of water. It actually went under the Pulp Mill Road on the other side of the river and flooded those properties including Sun-Ko and did not damage the road, just the trees between it and the river.

Dike is stupid (ask the Kelowna properties behind their dike this year) and rather investigate a way to help the ice make it to the Fraser and you will eliminate the pretend 200 year floods we are having and be left with the actual 200 year flood of spring runoff.

PS Lonesome Sparrow, a dyke is not a dike, a dyke is a ditch – the opposite of a mound

Rambleon, with a river you cannot simply ‘turn off the tap’ unless somehow we can convince them to stop runoff from the Dam, but that would still take a few days.

Wasn’t it the opening of the Dam (tap) that caused one of the ice jams to get worse? And I think even one spring during a flood in Vanderhoof they opened the Dam to relieve pressure and helped flood a few more properties, but my memory could be getting worse…

Gus, sorry, going back over them think I misread the intent of your posts

Anyway, was listening the an environmentalist on CBC who said the salt water is getting ‘saltier’ and the fresh water is getting ‘fresher’ all over the world…along with the rich getting richer, and the…well you know what I am sort of getting at

Slinky said – “Rambleon, with a river you cannot simply ‘turn off the tap’ unless somehow we can convince them to stop runoff from the Dam, but that would still take a few days.”

I know. The point is, draining some into a bucket if you don’t change the flow will not help. Dredging the river is not the same as opening the drain, it’s the same as draining a little into a buck and then stopping when it’s full.

The reason we ice jams is because the ice cannot flow into the Fraser is it not, or am I mistaken?

Not sure if dredging will work 100% but the buildup of silt captures debris all summer which includes dangerous log jams as some tubers found a few years ago. When the area gets congested with ice or logs it impedes water flow and the water has to find a new route in and around the debris.

To use the bathtub analogy it is like opening the tap and drain. If you adjust the flow so the drain can keep up with the tap you are OK, tub stays empty.

But now toss in some hair or ice cubes and the drain can no longer keep up, it still works – just slower so the level in the tub will rise…

Getting rid of the hair and ice through manual means will allow the drain to once again keep up and the level will go down. You can also wait until the ice melts small enough to pass through the drain, the hair will always be there until you manually remove it or the hydraulic pressure is great enough to push some of it through…

The thing people fail to realize is the ice at the mouth of the Fraser is not just at the surface but is squished in right to the bottom of the river before the river begins to rise, as it rises it dislodges and cracks up more ice and the problem moves up the river.

It was piled up past the brewery last time and that is why the area around Purolator was starting to flood

@slinky

Oxford American Dictionary

dyke=dike

Doesn’t Kenny Dam eliminate the possibilty of a big flood since it was built? The 200 year event.

And congratulations to all who got out and voted on this. Just shows that when people get incensed enough, they will say, “Enough is enough!”