Does Common Sense Play A Part In The Nechako Flood

By Ben Meisner

I don’t like going down to the scene of the flooding on the Nechako River because I get annoyed as hell and frustrated and then I realize there is little point in getting my blood boiling when nothing gets done.

Case in point, just how many times have we sent a back hoe down to take the logs out from under the foot bridge that has been straddling the stream that is trying to cut a new channel around the ice jam on the river?

I have been in attendance at two occasions, but I am told there are more. Now I know this may be a novel approach, but did someone, perhaps even an engineer or an ice expert suggest that maybe we should pull the bridge out of the channel so we can allow the water to flow by unrestricted, or is it better to run up the tab for the equipment by having them appear every few days to dredge it out once more? Now it might take a few minutes for a D-8 to pull the bridge out (which is now battered to hell from the logs and is becoming of less and less value) but then there must be brains smarter than I who have determined that it should remain in place, sort of a make work project.

Now I return to an item that I tried to convince the city to move on, with I might add, little to no response.  That is the matter of opening up that side channel that exists around the ice jam and making it large enough to accommodate the flow of the river so as to prevent the increase in flooding. It might cost 5 or even 10 thousand to do the job , but when you look around at the million and a half we have spent so far, it doesn't seem like a high price to pay. I really don’t care if it even stops 10% of the flow from heading into people’s yards or the businesses along River Road, that is a good investment. By the way don’t throw the Department Of Federal Fisheries as being the hitch into the matter, the city knows that is not an issue.

When you were a kid you often built little dams as the spring melt took place. What did you do when you wanted the water to escape?  Well you cut a little channel around your dam and whamo out went the water.

Pretty basic stuff, instead we seem content to build our dikes higher and higher instead of trying to find a way for the water to pass around the ice jam.

The diversion around the jam is easy to construct, it doesn’t get rid of the ice jam which is now far too large to tackle. There is far too much ice to dredge the mouth of the river that will have to wait for the summer, but given the speed at which we have been operating don’t look for that to happen oh until maybe after the next flood.

But instead we seem content  to head down to that channel where God is trying to tell us that the river would like to go, and pulling the logs out from under a bridge busted all to hell .  I should add we are not going to get Alcan (Rio Tinto) to cut the flows into the Nechako, those flows are three times what they normally are during the winter and strangely enough the last time they released a large amount of water was in 1996 when we had our last flood. But then you might want to ask the question if any of those experts advising the city have done any work for Alcan?  

Common sense is common sense, or is it?

 I’m Meisner and that’s one man’s opinion.

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