Ice Watch In The Rivers

Sunday, February 03, 2008 03:58 AM

view of the confluence of the Nechako and Fraser Rivers (photo courtesy of City)

Prince George, B.C. - The urgency surrounding the Nechako River icejam seems to have abated, for the time being...

Flood prevention measures -- gabion diking and earth berms -- are in place along the lower Nechako River and water levels have dropped at most monitoring stations over the past few days.

Emergency officials continue to monitor the situation on a 24-hour basis, but for now, there doesn't appear to be any immediate risk to homes within the city or in rural areas covered by the regional district.

The City's Liaison Officer, Kevin Brown, says the Nechako River is now covered by ice for a distance of about 31 kilometres. He says, "Most of the ice upstream from Prince George is surface ice and not ‘jammed’, as is the case in the lower section of the river."

Even further upstream, the Nechako is frozen over from Isle Pierre (about 66 kilometres up river) onward.

Brown says the Fraser River is also frozen over from Prince George, south to the Fort George Canyon -- a distance of about 30 kilometres.

"A new short open channel of water is beginning to emerge on the Fraser within the city limits," he says.

"However, the confluence of the Nechako and Fraser Rivers is blocked with jammed and surface ice for about 300 meters up the Nechako and 400 meters downstream in the Fraser. This is not causing any challenges for water flowing from the Nechako into the Fraser."

The open channel in the lower Nechako remains at about 6-kilometres long.

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Posted on Sunday, February 03, 2008 03:58 AM in News by 250 News

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Comments

Posted by: apester on February 3 2008 7:59 PM

I understand that the city is being charged 10 grand a day for the water from the Canfor mill being pumped into the river. Maybe Ben could do some research on this fact. While you are at it Ben maybe you could also find out how many of our city officials hold shares of Canfor stock.

Posted by: donmor46 on February 3 2008 8:56 PM

When this all started, I mentioned that a v about 100 meters long should have been blown in the face and then blow about 100 meters each day until the jam was gone. It was only a couple miles long at that time.
Same thing with the pine beetle. Should have build a 1/2 mile road around it and burnt it all down. What a waste they said. Now we have wasted better than 1/2 the province.
I don't think the so called experts will ever just use common sense. Once they get finished talking about it, it is too late to do anything about it.
Next time something like this happens, lets fix it and then talk about it.
Effected persons should sue the engineers for lack of common sense and sitting on their you know whats while the ice just kept growing.
Good luck to the people when the jam starts to thaw.