Drumheller Mayor Terry Yemen has finally started to get some response from the Alberta Government about flood mitigation.
Yemen met with members of various departments of government on Wednesday, September 9 and said it was a “positive meeting.”
“There has been a re engagement hopefully we can keep it moving forward. We weren’t able to come to any real commitment or consensus but I’ve asked them to summarize what they are going to be looking at in Drumheller so we can get it out to the people,” Yemen told the Mail.
“I want it to be coming from the government of Alberta, from their words and they said they would do that. What that actually looks like we will have to wait and see,” he said continuing by saying that it is progress, more progress than just a few days before.
“We are better off than the day before (Wednesday). They are at least talking to us now. It was a positive meeting, they seem to genuinely want to help move this forward, but time will tell. We have heard these stories before and we’ve gone down that trail before but after this long period of time obviously we are looking at it as positive. We will have to wait and see what we get back from them in some form of print. That is what I am waiting for,” he explained.
Yemen has been waiting over a year, he said, for any type of response from the government about the mitigation.
Yemen said the mitigation project the town has submitted for is worth about $12 million, which will help provide dykes and barriers to prevent another flood from happening in the Drumheller area.
“It is their time lines too. We understood there was going to be another approval process in September and I said it was fully our intend that we would be able to give you something in September and be ready to go in the Spring and they didn’t say yes, they didn’t say no. They said we are going to consider all options so that was positive too,” he said.
