Work Underway to Shore Up Nechako River Frontage
Back hoe places rip rap against bank – photo 250News
Prince George, B.C. – The work has started to shore up the north bank of the Nechako River along three properties on P.G. Pulpmill Road.
The owners of three parcels of land which have frontage on the Nechako River, petitioned the City for a Local Area Service. That means the City will have the work done, and the property owners would share the cost.
The north bank of the Nechako River has experienced significant erosion over the past few years, a problem which was exacerbated by the most recent ice jam of 2012.
The cost of the work to shore up the bank is estimated to be $473 thousand dollars, and the costs will be shared among the three property owners based on the length of their river frontage. The City is recovering the costs through a parcel tax levy that will be added to the property taxes for the three parcels.
Comments
That’s the risk you take when you build right beside a river. This is similar to the people who built houses on a flood plain in High River Alberta then are shocked when their house gets flooded…
easy to say that, if it is not your home and investment
Yes it is, I would not build in either location. People build in these areas and when something does happen they expect the Government (us taxpayers) to bail them out.
Based on your line of thought.
Does that apply to people who build cabins and houses in forested areas?
Where we the taxpayers have to pay for the forest fire fighters.
To protect the property and fight the forest fires.
Or even better yet why do we have a fire department?
Hard crowd this morning. Taking a page from Trump and the rest of the fighting world.
I think it is very sad.
Remember, the government is NOT helping these people.
1. the government should have know this as well as the engineers who approved the subdivision and restricted the location of building from the edge of the bank. In Scarborough it was in the order of 500 feet from the bluff, for instance, as I can recall.
2. the costs of this are borne by the homeowners. What part of that did people not read!!!
People are no longer interested in details. They simply react on their biases far too often without reading and often understanding what they read.
Essentially these people are paying for the error of the original subdivision approval. They likely thought that they were safe. I mean how many are geological engineers? How many have lived on the edge of a river before? How many understand the actions of a fast moving river. How many understand on which side there will be erosion and on which side the river deposit a beach of sand or pebbles to further protect their bank? Or the 200 year flood height property should be respecting?
I think that if we wanted to find out who was responsible for this erosion on the North Side of the River, we would have to look at the big picture.
The first thing to consider is that the Kenney Dam built in the early fifties, diverted a substantial amount of water through the Kemano Tunnel and into the Pacific Ocean. This resulted in a loss of approx. 30% of the normal flow of water in the Nechako. While the loss of this water reduced the flooding in the greater Prince George area, it also allowed for more silting of the river, especially on the South East side. This silting resulted in the water being forced to move to the North Side and of course you then started to get some serious erosion.
The ice jam of 2012 had no bearing on the erosion over the years.
People who use boats on the Nechako will tell you that the channel has changed from the South side to the North side over the years.
So we can say with some certainty that this erosion is caused by the Governments of the day not dredging the silt from the South side of the river so that the natural flow remained the same.
Even now they should be dredging this river, and making repairs to the South side of the river, which they have allowed to deteriorate over the years.
I think the bigger picture is no remediation work allowed in the river by fisheries. The salmon river changes course and no dam on it.
Without the dam there would have been more high water issues than there have been.
It looks like there’s barely room for the backhoe.
We own property on the Nechako River and have over the years watched the river flood and seen it so low you can walk across it. In our opinion, Rio Tinto Alcan could better manage the river system. Right now it is higher for the fish return, however, they could have started releasing water earlier so it doesn’t have to erode the banks. It’s the common sense way of doing things.
The river is also 70% wild, do not forget to factor that in. Rio Tinto does not have total control of the river.
Those thumbs down look at a map and google for information, its all there.
Fisheries do not allow any remediation work. This is an urban legend.
If the work is necessary, then it will be down. How do you explain the constant dredging of the mouth of the Fraser. How do you explain the backhoes dumping rip rap into the Nechako as shown above.
If the silting on the South side of the river is the result of less water in the river because of the Kenny dam, then we have already done some inadvertent remediation. To do some dredging and gravel removal would for all intents and purposes return the river to it normal flow.
By keeping the main channel on the South side, we would eliminate the Nechako flow from the North side running up against the Fraser river, this should reduce the flooding overall, as the Nechako water on the South side would be more easily integrated into the Fraser.
In any event I don’t expect anything to be done with this issue any time soon. We will sit on our asses and not do any remediation until all of park is gone. We should be putting in a cement wall and rip rap on the South side of the Nechako to stop erosion and to save the park.
Not an urban legend but fact. No channel realignment is allowed. The Salmon river is a perfect example with the channel change eating away at the camp ground. No realignment was allowed.
Yes there is dredging and gravel removal at the mouth of the Fraser and as far up as Hope. That just goes to show how ridicules the rules and regulations are and how they are applied.
Gee….you mean like a dyke ? Or a lesser than S.Green version of one ?
Family member building new house on the third raise from the Nechako River; neighbours come by and ask “why are you building so far from the river and not getting the best view”. Family member said for protection from flooding, neighbours say but it nicer down on the lower level.
So yes, it is people fault for building on the river banks, flood plains, etc. and then expecting City to help them.
If you collect Taxes from us, you have to provide Services , never mind if you have Trees around you or Rivers and Lakes , Government of all Levels collect Money from us, at Times you have to spend some on us, you can’t use all of it for Admin and Pet Projects !
Who owns that piece of property??????
Pretty sure the owner of that property is the city council member that was all for changing the name of Ft George Park
The Dyke proposed by the City was going to be located between the River and River Road. They wanted to build this dyke for no other reason than there was money available from the Federal Government, so they created a project that would allow them to access this money. Of course they wanted to borrow a few million for their portion of the cost of the project. Anything North of the dyke would (over time) have been allowed to erode. Nix on that idea.
Having some work done along the South side of the Nechako, say from Brink Sawmill to the CN Rail bridge to keep the park from eroding away, is a different kettle of fish.
This actually should have been done years ago.
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