Drumheller Mayor Terry Yemen wants flood mitigation answers and he is hoping to get them from newly re-elected MLA Rick Strankman.
Yemen took no time sending a letter to Strankman after he was re-elected last Tuesday, looking for an update about the new NDP government’s policy in regards to flood mitigation.
The letter stated that former MLA Hon. Fawcett - Environment and Sustainable Resource Development Minister, informed the town in April that the town was not approved for the first part of the funding from the government and that approval for the town’s application would be on the agenda in September. Yemen wants to make sure this commitment will remain in place.
“There are people’s lives that have been put on hold since the 2013 flood. It is completely unacceptable, and irresponsible for the provincial government to go on for as long as they did. If Drumheller was Calgary or High River, we would have had that funding by now but they keep forgetting about us. It is my job to keep reminding them that they have a bunch of work left to do here,” Yemen said.
Not getting the funding in the first allocation, “came as a shock” he said. “We fully expected to be (approved). The package that we put in was comprehensive. It had everything they asked for, and then to find out that no they wanted an environmental impact study that they hadn’t asked for. We had done that too, that was part of our application, and we talked about all the elevations. The information is there they just, for whatever reason, chose not to accept it.”
Yemen said the town will work with the Alberta Community Resilience Program (ACRP) to complete the grant application and re-submit it for September.
“I don’t know what the NDP’s government plan is, so it is imperative and important that our MLA gets to speak to whoever as quickly as possible and gives us the information that we need,” Yemen said.
“I am going to reach out to them too at the municipal level, but this is a provincial government, he is our MLA, he should be answering the questions. I am to the point now where if you knock on the door and you don’t get an answer then knock the door down and get us an answer because enough is a enough. It is time that people found out what the real plans are for flood mitigation in the Drumheller Valley.”
