Now that the country and this province have dramatically gone from black to green, there is considerable gnashing of teeth over the lack of preparedness for a flood on the Fraser River,

In a report released on November 16, 2006) The Fraser Basin Council, told us, after considerable study, warned us that the overarching trends show that communities throughout the Fraser Basin Council are at risk warned that communities “ … from the Upper Fraser[Prince George}, the Cariboo-Chilcotin and Thompson down through the Fraser Valley and the Greater Vancouver-Sea to Sky region - face serious sustainability challenges. For that read that the dikes and dredging are not what they should be,

From a news report of the day, this summary:- “On June 10, 1948, the Fraser reached a peak elevation of 7.6 metres at Mission. Before the waters receded, over a dozen dyking systems had been breached and more than 22 000 hectares, nearly one third of the entire lower Fraser Valley floodplain area, had been flooded to this depth. The floodwaters severed the two transcontinental rail lines; inundated the Trans-Canada Highway; flooded urban areas such as Agassiz, Rosedale, and parts of Mission, forcing many industries to close or reduce production; and deposited a layer of silt, driftwood and other debris over the entire area.

As a high school lad I worked on that flood and the devastation was shocking to my young eyes.

Now that the country has gone from black to green almost all the media is turned to environmental with newspapers  wringing their hands in distress over the sad lack of preparedness for another flood.

The dikes have been repaired and rebuilt to a higher level since 1948 but this is what the Fraser Basin Council’s most recent report (2003) has to say about the current situation measured against the 1894 flood, the biggest in recorded history:-  “Diking systems from Chilliwack and Kent to Surrey and Coquitlam would be overtopped at one or more locations n; the Delta dike at Fraser Shore would be overtopped at one location and freeboard for a winter storm flood would be inadequate in Delta and Richmond”.

What the Council did not deal with is a coincidental earthquake.

How have we reached this point? What have we neglected to do?

Amongst other things, we’ve not done our dredging. There’s no point raising and fortifying dikes if the dredging doesn’t happen for every rise in silt in effect lowers the dam by that amount.

What is so distressing is that this has been known for years. Now we come to a year where there has been a large snowfall such that the runoff, combined a fast melt and high tides (never mind an earthquake) could be devastating.

Only now are our governments and the media paying attention.