The City of Calgary’s Expert Management Panel on River Flood Mitigation invites Calgarians to share ideas

The City of Calgary’s Expert Management Panel on River Flood Mitigation is seeking input from the public on their ideas about reducing the impacts from river flooding in the future.

“Seeking input from our citizens is an important step in this process,” said Wolf Keller, Chair of the Panel. “There are lots of good ideas and important questions out there and we want to examine all options.”

The Panel has identified six theme areas to work on: changing climate; event forecasting; watershed management; storage, diversion, protection; infrastructure and property resiliency; and additional risk management. To ensure there is a thorough examination of these areas, the panel will be seeking input from technical experts locally and worldwide.

With regard to storage diversion, and protection, the Panel is already making headway on some priority initiatives:

What are the options, costs and benefits of increasing the capacity of the Glenmore Reservoir;
How did existing mitigation measures such as the berm at 4^th St S.W. perform during the event;
What solutions and future infrastructure requirements would address the specific challenges in the community of Sunnyside;
What additional protection measures such as temporary or permanent berms could be implemented with maximum benefit for river communities.

“We have been working very closely with The City’s Water business units and have been making good progress,” said Keller. “We anticipate we will have recommendations on the first two priority initiatives by year end, and work underway on the others before spring, as time and budgets allow.”

Citizens interested in sharing their ideas with the Panel can do so through calgary.ca/floodpanel or by calling 3-1-1.

Background:

The City of Calgary has established a program to review Calgary’s flood response measures and mitigation efforts and to investigate ways of reducing and managing river flood risks to Calgary in the future. An expert management panel has been created to employ a wide-ranging process to examine, evaluate and prioritize environmental, infrastructure and policy measures that would significantly reduce the potential harm from floods.

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