Dredge Out A Channel Through Cottonwood Island To Prevent Flooding- Now That's a Novel Idea

By Ben Meisner

The progress report on the Flood Risk Evaluation and Flood Control Solutions Risk Analysis is laughable. It cannot be described in any other manner.

On January 1st, 2008 I, along with a couple of hoe operators, took a serious look at the Nechako River and how we might prevent further flooding of the river due to the ice jam.

The solution was very simple, open up the side channel through Cottonwood Island Park and allow the water to go around the ice jam and back into the Fraser. We can’t do it came the cry from the City Brass; we don’t have permission from the Federal Fisheries to do that kind of work. Well they all know that I did get a hold of the DFO and, to their credit, within 45 minutes they had given the okay to begin dredging that section of the river with a view to sending the water around the jam.

Cost of that advice, nothing, cost of getting the DFO on board, two phone calls, but no cost to the city, zero, I paid for them.  Now we are being told at great cost to the province (and we the taxpayers) that, Hey! This is an option, how about we dredge the river through Cottonwood Park and around the jam. Wow, is that some forward thinking. But low and behold it even took some serious new flooding before the logs and the bridge were removed from that channel. The River was trying to tell us something but the experts knew different.

But just think had we sent a couple of hoes down to dig out that side channel there would have not been a serious flood along River Rd. and anyone who would suggest otherwise  is dreaming.

I raised the issue again on January 7^th-2008 in an editorial.   

I asked at the time  about how much money would be burned up making that side channel deeper and wider , 20 to 25 thousand would do the job I was told.

I asked the city and the Engineers to consider this move because of the risk of a new ice jam forming and really creating a flood. Well guess what happened, we had a new ice jam and this time we had a real flood in the area, and yet we continued to use the finger in the ice jam to fix the problem.

It is no surprise that we are now being told that a good idea would be to create a side channel capable of carrying the water around the confluence of the Fraser and Nechako. My God I think my dog could have come up with that idea back at the end of December last year and now we are about to be told that dredging the mouth of the river would be of little benefit . Again advice without the benefit of any common sense.

We just don’t seem able to accept the fact that this city has dropped the ball on the flood event of 2007-08 so many times that it is no longer a joke. It is about time that we applied some common sense to the matter which to date has been sadly lacking.

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

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