While the plan to buy out the residents comes with a hefty price tag, it's definitely the right thing to do. Given a choice between 1) continually fighting mother nature and paying for the restoration of homes and property and 2)building the best riverside parks in the nation - should be a no brainer.

I understand home owners wanting to keep their spot on the river but sometimes it comes down to the common good. If it were not for forced (but equitable) sales, we would have no large parks, roads, etc..

I know a few people who have an inspiring vision of what those riparian parklands could look like and I wish they would find a way to communicate that wonderful picture to the citizens of PG.

I, for one support the City in the plan to transform this problem into PG's greatest asset.

It must be an awkward nut to crack for the city council considering that there are two property owners involved as city councilors. One ex-councilor and one sitting councilor, and there are not too many property owners in the residential list. Sure, the councilors will do what is good for the community, but why did they build in a flood plain when anyone else that comes before city council gets told the city will not be responsible for flood damage? Will they say no? Does city council vote on what to do and uproot their friends? How generous should the compensation be? Is there a nice spot in the city or regional district that the city councillor property owners would like the city to fix them up with?

I never could figuire out what the attraction is to living by a bloody river. Don't people think? Sure own a boat launch, but don't live there! Don't they know what is going to happen?

The same goes for those that bought and built places upstream and across the river from all those gravel pits, and then complain about the gravel pits. Duh!

DREDGE THE F@(KIN RIVER... PROBLEM SOLVED AT MINOR COST. WHEN WILL THESE SELF PROCLAIMED XPERTS GET IT THROUGH THEIR PEA BRAINED HEADS. QUIT WAISTING MONEY AND GET ON WITH THE TASK. TOTAL CHANGE REQUIRED AT CITY HALL. I HAVE NEVER SEEN SUCH IGNORANCE DISPLAYED OVER A SIMPLE PROJECT IN MY ENTIRE LIFE.

Hopefully the businesses affected will not close down as a result of them selling the property. I for one of the above employees would be affected by this.

Removing a little bit of gravel won't do much for that volume of water, but it would be a good gravel source.

Who said anything about "removing a little bit of gravel". Get at it, and remove as much as necessary to incease the flow in peak times.

Whos talking a little bit of gravel polecat?
They need to remove major amounts of gravel and they need to get going as soon as possible.
Why is this so hard to understand for these people.

At this moment there is a huge gravel removal project underway to mitigate possible future flooding near Chilliwack that dwarfs anything we need to get done here.
Before that project started there were not even a fraction of the BS studies we see here in our little village.
Down there they JUST DO IT.
Here we pay money to so called experts that think we can do this or think that won't work or perhaps that may work if we do this first.

I for one am completely fed up with our local politicians lack of real brains.

IT'S TIME FOR YOU ALL TO LEAVE, ALL OF YOU. YOU ARE USELESS.

What is it exactly that drives these local politicians into spending our money to study things to death instead of using it for real action to get things done?
You know like they do down south.

GRAVEL REMOVAL NOW, GRAVEL REMOVAL NOW, GRAVEL REMOVAL NOW, GRAVEL REMOVAL NOW.

What is it you are trying to say Lostfaith?
;) metalman.

As far as buying these homes and property I am sorry but you made your bed and you gotta sleep in it. Most of these homes have been there for years.
Now some boneheads at city hall want to try and become some kind of hero's.

DREDGE THE FRIKKEN RIVER YOU IDIOTS

Metalman, what do we need to do to get these idiots to wake up and smell the bacon? This is incredibly rediculous.

While they are dredging the FRIKKEN RIVER I wouldn't mind if they would do the same with the Nechako River...

;)-

I have been saying it for 8 months, spend one million dollars and dredge the river, extract the gravel and sell the gravel to recover costs.

Simple. They did it through the sixties, and we still have salmon and sturgeons in the river.

I wonder if any of the city councillors are reading this blog site. Lets make it a political football for the election.

Lostfaith, I am at a loss for an explanation. Some of the homes along the North side of the river have been there well over thirty years that I know of, and I agree, if you build or buy a home next to the river, you must be responsible for your own problems if the river floods. If I was one of the fortunate who owns property right on the river, I would be furious if the city told me I have to move and heres a cheque. I would want to stay.
With total hindsight here, I guess a person would want to build their foundations higher than normal, and not have living space at or below ground level. The concrete and steel would be expensive, but you sure would appreciate the extra height if/when the river backs up again. Build it on columns, like our public library, except without the ground floor elevator. Tie your boat up right under the house that way. No, I do not believe that the city or the province should be buying people out of their own choices of locale.
metalman.

Which building inspector gave them a permit to build on a flood plain? Isn't that why we have building inspectors?

Use the damn gravel to fill the FRIKKEN POTHOLES!!! EAST AUSTIN ROAD COMES TO MIND! IT BLEW MY BRAND NEW TIRE!! Cough up! I am putting my claim in to the hotline. If you morons can waste tax dollars on study after study and not fix the dang roads, you can darn well buy me a new tire. Just be thankful my rim is ok.

I doubt the local Company who's busy strp-mining gravel at Foothills and North Nechako would apreciate the competition when millions of cubic meters of gravel becomes available from the Nechako dredging project !!

They're making a killing creating that monstrous eyesore right in city limits on prime residential property!!

Oh well, when they reach river level, and flood, we can always make a dump out of it and fill it up with garbage like they did nearby on 1st ave. Then we can put in gas pipes to bleed off the methane, paint 'em green, weld on a few steel branches, and pretend they're trees.

Then the numbnuts who approved this cancerous eyesore would be able to tell us they were creating a "park" all along !!

HD, I think that a large portion of downtown is flood plain, so why not build on the udder side of the river also?
Plaza 400 has 2 big sump pumps that run when ever the water table rises, and so does that monument to justice the law courts. I worked east of Queensway for a couple of years in the seventies, and there are areas where water would percolate up out of the ground in the spring, you could even hear it flowing underground, or maybe that was just the voices in my head-not sure. Point being, if you remove all structures that are in the official flood plain, theres a heap of people gonna be goin' to high ground to live and work.
metalman.

I thought that Kleins own the gravel rights to river. They were taking gravel out of the river until the MOE stop the removal of all gravel. Therefore it would not cost the City any money, they just have to have MOE give Kleins the approval to start removal again.